In A Lonely Place Lyrics
I got to see New Order in Philadelphia at the Paladium in ?1988. They went on late. They played 58 or 59 minutes. I remember thinking, "That was not quite even an hour!" They played strange music over the sound system before they came on.
This song stood out as one they cared about and put their heart into. The rest of the show I got the feeling they were fulfilling a contract and that was it.
This spooky song was originally a Joy Division track, but is probably best known for its inclusion on the double-disc New Order 12" singles collection, Substance. I think that the song is about the ambiguity of love and hate; violence and affection both elicit such strong emotions so as to confuse the meanings of both ("awful delight").
This (along with Ceremony) was one of two Joy Division songs "left" to New Order, and the lyrics are Ian Curtis'--which never fail to give me a chill when I listen to them.
The title, as I recently found out, refers to the 1950 Humphrey Bogart film noir classic, which I suspect gives more insight into the lyrics.
I think maybe New Order changed the last line from "How I wish you were here with me now" to "How I wish we were here with you now" (Like they also want to be dead)....just a thought.
I agree with thebodiesobtained that it looks like they changed the last line to "how I wish we were here with you now", although it always struck me that they did that because that was their way of saying "We wish we were here when you wrote this to help you while you were still around".
According to 'Touching from a Distance' the 3rd line is 'the waste in the fever I heat', the 6th line is 'and shares that awful daylight', and in the last verse it's not gullet but cord. The final line, as written in the book, does switch 'you' and 'we' and as I think these are taken from Ian's actual writings it probably isn't a New Order change.
No idea what the songs about really, but it always makes think of ancient Mayan cities hidden in the jungle - 'carressing the marble and stone', 'waste in the feverish heat' (which is what it sounds like to me regardless of what the book says). I'm sure it isn't really about that though.
The ultimate in bleakness