The first part of the song tells us about somebody who feels the intense need to get away from all the pressures that life has thrown at him. He is perhaps feeling suicidal, angry and stubborn all at the same time, maybe imagining what his spirit or inner self would say to anybody who sees him should he pull the trigger... the lyrics translating to a vastly more articulate version of "Hey! I LIKE being dead and there's nothing YOU can do about it! HA!"
The next part is when the person has gone away and he feels relief and a sense of peace, completely unaware that he might not succeed in killing himself until a still small voice calls him from far away, trying to bring him back. He turns his back in a desperate attempt to stay dead so he can remain in this peaceful state he's just found. So peaceful that he cannot imagine how or why anybody would really want to be alive. Its dark, its all his dreams in front of him, but nothing bad matters anymore.
But just then he is being very rudely dragged back to life by a defibrillator and he can hear all the bullshit he's had to put up with in his life repeating itself as he's slowly coming back. And he tries again to ignore it, but the defibrillator is too strong and unable to be fought. Slowly all the negative thoughts and feelings return to him and he is back, only to feel even worse than before.
The end part of the song tells us that he feels how useless absolutely everything and everyone is, so he ignores it all, trying to regain the feeling of peace that he had when he was dead, but to no avail, all he feels is guilt and negativity. He knows he can go out and do normal things, he knows he can do that, but when his life is so focused on and there's always going to be certain expectations of him, he doesn't want to because those expectations would break him one way or the other, should he take note or not.
.... and I can see exactly why this took a year for him to write! Interpreting all those feelings at once and putting them in a song. No wonder its so long, no wonder its all so different! One would think it would be easier to simply shout at the world "GET OFFA MY BACK!" instead. But that would be taking the easy way out, and I don't see Axl EVER doing that.
And we got the best damn song out of it.
Thank you Axl. :)
my interpretation is as follows!
The first part of the song tells us about somebody who feels the intense need to get away from all the pressures that life has thrown at him. He is perhaps feeling suicidal, angry and stubborn all at the same time, maybe imagining what his spirit or inner self would say to anybody who sees him should he pull the trigger... the lyrics translating to a vastly more articulate version of "Hey! I LIKE being dead and there's nothing YOU can do about it! HA!" The next part is when the person has gone away and he feels relief and a sense of peace, completely unaware that he might not succeed in killing himself until a still small voice calls him from far away, trying to bring him back. He turns his back in a desperate attempt to stay dead so he can remain in this peaceful state he's just found. So peaceful that he cannot imagine how or why anybody would really want to be alive. Its dark, its all his dreams in front of him, but nothing bad matters anymore. But just then he is being very rudely dragged back to life by a defibrillator and he can hear all the bullshit he's had to put up with in his life repeating itself as he's slowly coming back. And he tries again to ignore it, but the defibrillator is too strong and unable to be fought. Slowly all the negative thoughts and feelings return to him and he is back, only to feel even worse than before. The end part of the song tells us that he feels how useless absolutely everything and everyone is, so he ignores it all, trying to regain the feeling of peace that he had when he was dead, but to no avail, all he feels is guilt and negativity. He knows he can go out and do normal things, he knows he can do that, but when his life is so focused on and there's always going to be certain expectations of him, he doesn't want to because those expectations would break him one way or the other, should he take note or not.
.... and I can see exactly why this took a year for him to write! Interpreting all those feelings at once and putting them in a song. No wonder its so long, no wonder its all so different! One would think it would be easier to simply shout at the world "GET OFFA MY BACK!" instead. But that would be taking the easy way out, and I don't see Axl EVER doing that.
And we got the best damn song out of it. Thank you Axl. :)