Flood I begins with a quiet guitar drone, and on the album this is mixed in with the closing Sturm und Drang Wagnerian chant of Mother Russia rain down! from Mother Russia. Mother Russia's radioactive rain (and whether this is viewed literally or figuratively as a hail of Soviet missiles raining down is largely irrelevant) can therefore be seen as the cause of the Flood.
"And her hallway..."
Halls and hallways feature at especially dramatic moments in some of The Sisters' more libidinous songs. Some Kind of Stranger has "I'll settle any time for unknown footsteps in the hall outside", in Ribbons "her lovers queued up in the hallway/I heard them scratching at the door". Tenders are invited from sound Freudian psychoanalysts to sort this one out.
"At the head of the river/At the source of the sea"
Hamburg, at the head of the river Elbe.
"strange men rent strange flowers"
"What happens in Hamburg is that, at two in the morning, these Turks come round the bars selling roses to couples who aren't quite couples yet but might be by half past two. I rather liked the idea that these couples could rent these flowers until they became couples then they could give them back and they would be recyclable. The Turks would make more money and the couples wouldn't get burdened with these thorny things. Actually, I think it's a metaphor for ephemeral love." [ATF]
-Andrew Eldritch
"Sackcloth and Ashes"
A medieval form of penitence, popular with monks and other religious types, which involved wearing sackcloth and presumably doing something with ashes. Collins Dictionary has it as "public form of extreme grief".
"Stolen guitars"
"The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar/you're the blessed, we're the Spiders From Mars"
-Hang On To Yourself, David Bowie
Eldritch is a noted Bowie fan and often cites seeing Starman (also from Ziggy Stardust) on Top of the Pops as the reason why he became a rock star.
Flood I begins with a quiet guitar drone, and on the album this is mixed in with the closing Sturm und Drang Wagnerian chant of Mother Russia rain down! from Mother Russia. Mother Russia's radioactive rain (and whether this is viewed literally or figuratively as a hail of Soviet missiles raining down is largely irrelevant) can therefore be seen as the cause of the Flood.
"And her hallway..."
Halls and hallways feature at especially dramatic moments in some of The Sisters' more libidinous songs. Some Kind of Stranger has "I'll settle any time for unknown footsteps in the hall outside", in Ribbons "her lovers queued up in the hallway/I heard them scratching at the door". Tenders are invited from sound Freudian psychoanalysts to sort this one out.
"At the head of the river/At the source of the sea"
Hamburg, at the head of the river Elbe.
"strange men rent strange flowers"
"What happens in Hamburg is that, at two in the morning, these Turks come round the bars selling roses to couples who aren't quite couples yet but might be by half past two. I rather liked the idea that these couples could rent these flowers until they became couples then they could give them back and they would be recyclable. The Turks would make more money and the couples wouldn't get burdened with these thorny things. Actually, I think it's a metaphor for ephemeral love." [ATF] -Andrew Eldritch
"Sackcloth and Ashes"
A medieval form of penitence, popular with monks and other religious types, which involved wearing sackcloth and presumably doing something with ashes. Collins Dictionary has it as "public form of extreme grief".
"Stolen guitars"
"The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar/you're the blessed, we're the Spiders From Mars" -Hang On To Yourself, David Bowie Eldritch is a noted Bowie fan and often cites seeing Starman (also from Ziggy Stardust) on Top of the Pops as the reason why he became a rock star.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/1217/