The Ballad of Lucy Jordan

From Wikipedia: In an interview on ITV's South Bank Show aired on 24 June 2007, Faithfull herself said that the story she intended to put across was that Lucy climbs to the roof top but gets taken away by "the man who reached and offered her his hand" in an ambulance ("long white car") to a mental hospital, and that the final lines: "At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever / As she rode along through Paris with the warm wind in her hair ..." are actually in her imagination at the hospital.

Well... WHY she climbed the roof is still unclear. Maybe because of the laughter because she ran naked trough the streets, maybe because she wanted to commit suicide...

Its about a woman comitting suicide because she realizes she will never live her dreams.

I think it's about a house wife how gets bored with her life or think her life is going nowhere so she kills herself.

This song is not about a suicide... She is a house wife who realize that "this is her life" So she goes nuts and runs out in the streets. When people start laughing she climbs up on a roof, and then a man from the mental hospital comes to get her down to the mental car. There is nothing in the text that impliese a suicide

She is suffering depression and as a result she feels she can't cope any more. She dreams of a life she realises she can't have, and climbs onto the roof. The man who offers he his hand is the fireman coming up to rescue her and the long white car waiting beyond the crowd is an ambulance.

Recurring memories of childhood and blocking out the present, i.e. ignoring the telephone is a distinct symptom of depression, along with dreams of better things. Suicide is not mentioned, but it is hinted. Altogether a very cleverly worded song.

I think she’s gone to pieces because she realises that life has passed her by and she’ll never achieve the things she always thought would happen “one day”. She’s given her life to her husband and children, they don’t need her any more and she can’t go back to being a young girl having fun. Sadly, she breaks down at the realisation of this and has to be taken away for her own safety.

@orngrimm. How could Faithfull reference the "meaning she meant to put across"? She didn't write the song. It was written by Shel Silverstein. And also recorded by Dr. Hook before Faithfull did her version.

This song could have been written about my ex-wife. She too was mentally unstable, and used to run to the upstairs room when she was upset, and lie in a foetal position on the floor, rocking back and forth for hours, while singing softly to herself. She did actually run naked through the street, many times, although laughing, not screaming.

Than she had an affair with a friend of mine, so I kicked her out, and after a short while, when he realised what she was really like, so did he. She tried desperately to come back. Her depression worsened.

One day she called me, sounding so blissfully happy, and saying that I should call her tomorrow. When I finally realised what that all meant, the long white car had already been and gone. She had already seen Paris though. Oh, and, she was 37 (not joking).

In the anthropological, sociological and philosophical sense, to say that woman came from Adam's rib is a reading that places her as the second sex, subsequent to the masculine, subservient to man, which is reinforced by religious fundamentalism to accentuate gender inequalities worldwide. It happens that, nowadays, the mentality that needs to be in force is not that women are to compete with men but that they share equal conditions. The chauvinists on duty, with their fallacious phallic fallacy, should understand that we are in the middle of the 21st century!

God, you lot are a bit depressing. I'm always unfortunately taking things literally.... why can't she just go off and live her dreams?

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems to be a typical wife that's done her duty and has missed out on other great things in her life.

Just sayin'