This song has been widely interpreted as being "pre-apocalyptic", the apocalypse meaning, based on the time Jackson wrote it, nuclear war. This is the "naked dawn" he refers to. Those who lived through the cold war know what I mean. I have been listening to these lyrics for some time, and recently, thinking about Japan's recent "apocalypse" I thought about the 1940's, and what they endured then. It "dawned" on me that Mr. Browne was inspired by a 1960 "post-apocalypse" novel by Walter Miller, "A Canticle for Leibowitz". The phrasing parallels Miller's work. This song is relevant at all the levels cited by those who have commented before, but it is such a "rich" lyric that it boggles the mind.
This song has been widely interpreted as being "pre-apocalyptic", the apocalypse meaning, based on the time Jackson wrote it, nuclear war. This is the "naked dawn" he refers to. Those who lived through the cold war know what I mean. I have been listening to these lyrics for some time, and recently, thinking about Japan's recent "apocalypse" I thought about the 1940's, and what they endured then. It "dawned" on me that Mr. Browne was inspired by a 1960 "post-apocalypse" novel by Walter Miller, "A Canticle for Leibowitz". The phrasing parallels Miller's work. This song is relevant at all the levels cited by those who have commented before, but it is such a "rich" lyric that it boggles the mind.