I Had a Dream, Joe

Nick Cave is a juxtaposition in that i think Nick here is refering to Jesus..literally through out.....erh yeah obviously......"I had a dream....JOE???" then later 'God is in the house'??!! Perhaps describes inri....arms to the sky...foam...mouth.....? He also says he keeps getting alot of mail after nights of consideration, yet he feels as if jesus is a body on his back. The mail is the literature that piles up behind his door. He is saying he lost his faith. "All dressed up in your ridiculous seersucker suit" "With that strew of wreckage......Forever at the heel of your boot"............."A pimp (jesus) in seersucker suit sucked a toothpick, And pointed his finger at me" ...judged him? Yeah that's all i've got but f**k it no one else tried, however amusing.

I'm not interpreting the song. However, I'm going to shed some lights.

At first section he talks about his dreams:

I had a dream, Joe You were standing in the middle of an open road Your hands were raised up to the sky And your mouth was covered in foam A shadowy Jesus flitted from tree to tree And a society of whores stuck needles in an image of me It was Autumn time and thickly fell the leaves A pimp in seersucker suit sucked a toothpick And pointed his finger at me"

More than a dream this is a nightmare. In that dream he sees Joe, a shodowy Jesus, Society of whores, And a pimp.

Then he wakes up. And talks about that horrible night which was full of terror. I think when he says:"And I thought of you and I felt like I was lugging A body on my back" There are 2 possibilities: 1- it's his own body. 2-it's Joe's body. If it's his own body means that life is very hard to him that he needs energy to carry himself around. If it's Joe's body maybe it means Joe's dead.

In the next section we'll see he asks from Joe that where has he been. And by linking the dream to reality, he reveals that Joe is the same person as the Jesus, and the pimp.

So in lyrics, Joe = That man in the open road = Jesus = the pimp

I'm stil confused about the meaning. But I hope it helps.

Why is there always this one reliably omnipresent commenter on Cave songs (and elsewhere) that assume this exaggeratedly astonished tone in their "general comment" simply because they're the first to comment? Is it really that unrealistic that no SongMeanings user had yet taken the time to type out their fleeting thoughts on one of the more underrated or underappreciated Bad Seeds' tracks, of which there are dozens? Or was it that these "first" commenters wanted to emphasize their supposed ingenuity or exceptional spiritual depth for deflowering a specific song page's comment section? As a cynical prick, I'm guessing the latter. I shouldn't get pissed off at internet ghosts, but fuck that. I've seen the same sort of comment across scores of lyrics pages today and I'm sort of sure Cave couldn't give a fuck who comments on these pages, when they do, and in which order. I'm all for music lovers showing outwardly direct support for the music they love, but I hate when it becomes some strange pseudo-popularity contest or race to say something all Cave listeners already know; when these first comments consist of statements of the artist in question's genius, and they usually do, I can't help but cringe at the ironically cliched emptiness. I'm clearly a monstrously insecure, sexually repressed, and pitifully friendless human being for typing all this, but it's nice to know your words exist somewhere in the universe. I guess I have more in common with these first commenters than I thought.

um... but this is an awesome song. I'm using it rather shamelessly in a playlist based on the film Nymphomaniac.

"I had a dream Joe, that you were standing in the middle of an open road I had a dream Joe that your hands were raised up to the sky and your mouth was covered in foam"

My Ruin (2009) 'Speak & Destroy' http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/65264/

Hope it got credited because: (Nick Cave & The Badseeds 'I had a dream, Joe' 'Henry's Dream' 1992)

I have translated this into greek. It is such a basass song, really full of andrenaline and pictures.

Why has no one commented this song?! To me it means Nick Cave seems to be composed of particles that could be classified on their own as pure genius.

I'm with this guy - why the hell hasn't anyone commented on this song? This is one of the best songs on one of their best albums. This song should be called "I Had A Horribly Vivid Nightmare, Joe" cause that's what this sounds like.

Great imagery going on here - "A society of whores stuck needles in an image of me" "a shadowy jesus flittered from tree to tree" and lets face it - this is just a rocking song.

It's a dream, so i don't know how much of it should make sense - maybe these guys used to be pimps - and one decided it wasn't for him anymore - i really don't know. Apparently Joe has kept in touch, but the narrator has sort of maybe locked himself away and tried ignoring the evil Joe - who's mere memory is like a burden to the narrator who has horrible dreams because of what they used to do.

Either way, kick ass tune.