| The Pogues – The Old Main Drag Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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The song describes a 16-year-old (implied to be of Irish descent) coming into London as a dreamer, hoping to be a performer. After a brief tourist-style arrival, he finds his young, fit body is his only significant resource and finds solace in London's red light district. He is introduced to a downtrodden yet oddly Bohemian community of sex workers and outcasts, and comes to know their customers. His life in male prostitution begins with handjobs in shady alleys. Before long, the rough lifestyle and local culture has led him to become a habitual drug user, trading his earnings and services for the pills commonly available. He relates a story where he was "lying down" in a public space, ambiguously either passed out drug/stoned or possibly giving his body to a customer. He is accosted by the local police, and beaten so severely (or possibly given a 'Glasgow grin' or similar mutilation) that his "good looks are ruined", damaging his value as a prostitute. Thus flawed, he muses on the older and rougher denizens of the street community, who descend further into squalor and rough use as they age. He sees in them his future of abuse, degradation and decline, and sees his experience with the police play out again and again. In the end he is a used-up shell, never having managed to raise himself up from the lifestyle he fell into. He has suffered every inhumanity, certain that he is dying either slowly from this way of life, or literally and immediately from injury or circumstance at the moment of retelling. The closing words, and musically unresolved monotone, can be interpreted either as the last thoughts of a dying man, or the depressing entreaties of a ravaged beggar telling his story to the listener. |
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