| Townes Van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I didn't note in my comment above, but I've always heard the first lines as "Living on the road my friend/ WAS going to keep you free and clean." The lyrics on this page have that as "is," not "was," which would change the meaning signficantly. | |
| Townes Van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This has to be one of the most perfect songs ever written. It tells a beautiful, complete story, without one spare word to it. That said, I've always been intrigued by the first stanza. It seems unrelated to the "plot" that makes up the rest of the song, but somehow the song wouldn't be complete without it. Just on its own, it's an amazing piece of poetry. I like how it sends up all the myths about the freedom and virtue of "living on the road" that were so common in the 60s and 70s. He's talking to all the innocent romantics who went out to live that life, which was never more than a dream, who they could drop out of society and live "free and clean" on the road forever. In reality, all it did was turn them into cold, tough, hard men, and break their mothers' hearts. Like I say, I love that first stanza, but I can't figure out how it relates to the rest of the song. Maybe Lefty started out as one like them, dreaming of a romantic bandit's life. Then, after circumstances got out of control and he betrayed Poncho, he lost his faith in himself and his own goodness, and now he looks in the mirror and sees himself as the "bad guy" with the skin like iron, breath like kerosene. So I guess the whole thing could be about good intentions gone wrong, the dangers of letting dreams and romance influence your decisions. |
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| Townes Van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I like your interpretation about the down-and-out, washed-up "Lefty" being Townes himself, looking in the mirror. I can picture him sitting in that cheap motel in Cleveland, watching himself play guitar in the mirror, talking to himself: "Well, Lefty, you're not singing the blues like you used to, are ya?" | |
| Townes Van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Wow, I got the narrative in the song, but I never noticed the Jesus Christ-Judas Iscariot parallels. | |
| Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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For me, this is the song of a woman who is so powerfully, desperately in love that she doesn't give a damn what destruction she wrecks. She's tried being patient and she's sick of it, and now she's pursuing him with the fury of a tornado. The casualties she's leaving in her path could be children, spouses, friends, and so on. She's aware that her actions are leading to their destruction, but she is so fixated on her love that she doesn't have room left in her to care about their fates. And when she finally reaches him, and he's standing dumbfounded in the midst of the desolation, all she can say to him is, "But I love you." |
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| Neko Case – The Needle Has Landed Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I read this song as all the complex emotions involved in returning to the place where you grew up after a long absence. It's where the record needle started playing the song you've been living ever since. A lot has changed, but you can send the needle back to the beginning and realize that it's still the same song as it was way back when ("When you left me at the Greyhound the year I moved away"). I definitely think it's her hometown based on the fact that she "moved away" so long ago that you'd remember it only by the year. Then, in the second verse, she's explaining why she "never comes back here," indicating that she burned a lot of bridges, pissed off a lot of people before she left. Specifically, I think there was a tumultuous love affair that made her notorious in her town, and maybe even forced her move away in the first place. The guy's subsequent girlfriends have all hated her, deterring her from returning. They have been superficially moral and virtuous, probably painting her as some kind of evil harlot who screwed up everyone's life, even while they themselves are straying from the idea of Christian forgiveness by harboring so much hate for her. Thus, they've "clawed up the Bible" (waved it around, abused it, destroyed it) in their efforts to keep her away from town. I don't really have anything about the eagle swooping down, the sharp/shark-toothed freighters, and so on. I'd be interested to hear what people have for those lines! |
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| Neko Case – Hold On, Hold On Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I like littergrrl's interpretation, especially if it's describing the narrator's own state of mind. I read it a little differently. I thought that the line was describing "my own blood" from the line before, either her own family, or her symbolic family of friends and lovers. Based on that reading, I thought maybe it meant that the people she is close to tend towards suicide (by hanging... a literal interpretation), or to problems with drugs and mania that make them feel or seem like they are out of reach, hanging round the ceiling. If she has been hurt by these things many times, it would explain why she considers them "too dangerous" to allow into the "most tender place" of her heart. |
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| Neko Case – Hold On, Hold On Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I interpret the first stanza as saying that her own family is so riddled with suicide and madness that she has learned not to allow herself to feel too much tenderness for them. "Hanging 'round the ceiling" could be literally hanging from a rope, or "high" because of drugs or mania (I knew a manic-depressive guy who described his manic episodes in exactly that way). The "half the time" line would then be a form of hyperbole indicating that this sort of thing happens all to frequently. Furthermore, the "my own blood" need not necessarily be her blood family, it could be her adoptive family of friends and lovers. Either way, they've hurt her enough that she's learned not to let them get too close. The "devil" that she loves isn't any one person or thing, it's sort of a collective "dark side" that she finds herself drifting towards. For example, the "devil" could be the guy who never even pretended to you that something was forever, never promised you anything in return. He's the devil, plain and simple, and that's something she can understand, know where she stands with. Likewise, a drug habit could be part of "the devil," as something that she's entered into of her free will, knowing full-well that it will likely end badly. The "echo chorus" is all the well-intentioned messages to "hold on, hang in there, things will get better." She held on, and now things are just darker and worse than ever. But now that she sees it as a lie, she can say that she doesn't care if they get better or not. She has her devils, and with them she's as close to "happy" as she feels herself capable of being. |
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