This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
I would love to be the lucky one on chill
Avenue
Who could keep your heart warm when ice has turned it blue
But with the beggin' sleeping losers as they turn in for the night
I'm looking back for home and I can see the lights
I should be jumpin' shoutin' that I made it all this way
From Camden Town station to Fortieth and Eighth
Not many make it this far and many say we're great
But just like them we walk on an' we can't escape our fate
Can't you hear the sighing
Eastside Jimmy and Southside Sue
Both say they needed something new
So I'm standing at the gates of the west
I burn money at the lights of the sign
The city casts a shadow of the perfect crime
I'm standing at the gates of the east
I take my pulse and the pulse of my friend
The city casts a shadow, will I see you again?
The immigrants an' remnants of all the glory years
Are clustered around the bar again for another round of beers
Little Richard's in the kitchen playing spoons and plates
He's telling the waitress he's great
Ah say I know somewhere back'n'forth in time
Out on the dustbowls, deep in the roulette mine
Or in a ghetto cellar only yesterday
There's a move into the future for the USA.
I hear them crying
Eastside Jimmy and Southside Sue
Both said they needed something new
Standing at the gates of the west
In the shadow again
I'm standing at the gates of the west
In the shadow again
Avenue
Who could keep your heart warm when ice has turned it blue
But with the beggin' sleeping losers as they turn in for the night
I'm looking back for home and I can see the lights
I should be jumpin' shoutin' that I made it all this way
From Camden Town station to Fortieth and Eighth
Not many make it this far and many say we're great
But just like them we walk on an' we can't escape our fate
Can't you hear the sighing
Eastside Jimmy and Southside Sue
Both say they needed something new
So I'm standing at the gates of the west
I burn money at the lights of the sign
The city casts a shadow of the perfect crime
I'm standing at the gates of the east
I take my pulse and the pulse of my friend
The city casts a shadow, will I see you again?
The immigrants an' remnants of all the glory years
Are clustered around the bar again for another round of beers
Little Richard's in the kitchen playing spoons and plates
He's telling the waitress he's great
Ah say I know somewhere back'n'forth in time
Out on the dustbowls, deep in the roulette mine
Or in a ghetto cellar only yesterday
There's a move into the future for the USA.
I hear them crying
Eastside Jimmy and Southside Sue
Both said they needed something new
Standing at the gates of the west
In the shadow again
I'm standing at the gates of the west
In the shadow again
Lyrics submitted by aebassist, edited by Mellow_Harsher
Gates of the West Lyrics as written by Mick Jones Joe Strummer
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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So just what is this moogfaag fellow talking about? This song has little to do with existentialism, much less socialism. And, no, it is "sighing," as written above, not "sirens."
floating_eye gets it right, though the song strikes me as a bit more melancholy, ambivalent and anxious than the word "conquer" might suggest.
From 1979's Cost of Living EP, after they'd achieved a level of success in Britain, but before they really hit the big time stateside. (N.b.... also on that EP: their classic rendition of "I Fought the Law.)"