| Tom Waits – Pony Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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@[Lazlo:48209]: Excellent explication! I agree with most, though as someone else mentioned, Tom has confusingly claimed that "44" and "99" refer to restaurant slang for coffee. But Tom is *such* a fibber! I've always associated "Burnt-Face Jake" with the devil. The protagonist ran his race with the Devil, and somehow beat him -- "gave him a manzanita cross". I notice the protagonist is never mentioned riding or caring for a horse. I think the pony here is the old man's spirit, perhaps his soul. He's facing death, he knows it, and he hopes that after he dies his spirit "knows the way back home." |
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| Tom Waits – Black Wings Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[brando39:48208]: I agree with the Biblical clues, though I take a little different slant. But one of the great things about the best songwriters is that they can sometimes write something so mysterious that many different ideas can flow from the same lyrics, depending on the listener. I think your explication is a good one. | |
| Tom Waits – Black Wings Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[nathan1149:48207] Your interpretation is a really good one. I think that some great songs can have many valid interpretations, depending on the listener's experience, philosophy, culture, whatever. Nobody knows what really happened in Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty", but we all make guesses. | |
| Tom Waits – Black Wings Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I think brando39 is closest to the song's meaning. I think the subject of the song is a *variation* on Jesus. He's a being who is punished by the authorities ("they broke a lot of canes on his hide"), who miraculously escapes every prison, who can either kill ("once killed a man with a guitar string") or save ("once saved a baby from drowning"). And yet he is dangerous, unpredictable: "One look in his eyes" is all it takes for everyone (not just one disciple, Peter, but *everyone*) to deny meeting him. The line "because he steals his promise" (I have never seen it written "steels") may refer to the promise of eternal life after Earthly death, for such a promise is completely impossible to verify as true or false. The dead never return to tell us what lies beyond, and so in a sense the promise is "stolen" because we the living cannot know whether it's a promise or a con game. Death is "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns" (Hamlet). But I think Tom is writing about a "dark angel" or a Jesus-like figure, not Christ Himself. Tom does not mention crucifixion, or other specific Biblical events. His "dark angel" is a killer, and is "seen at the table with kings", which rings a bit false to the New Testament. It may be that Tom does not rhyme "turn himself into a stranger" with "born away in a manger" because that would specifically suggest Jesus. (Or it may be that he wanted to preserve his loose A-B-C-B rhyme scheme, and "manger" would be too neat: A-B-A-B. But Tom breaks his own rules easily, so I don't think that's it.) At any rate, this song plays with a religious mythos turned dark and perhaps dangerous (in the intro to one live performance, as the music starts Tom says "That's the sound of danger"). It's yet another masterful song from a master. |
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