 |
[ T | Introduction | Song Index | Updates ]
Tales of the Road
The
song:
One of many songs that uses driving as subject matter or
metaphor, like After Something,
Happy to be Here, Headlights, 125 MPH, Orange
Tree Roads, The Price, Stormclouds, Sunrise, Vagabonds,
or Wipeout. Justin says about "the
Road":
"I
was too young to be a hippy, but as a result of having older brothers
and sisters and a vivid imagination, I took in much of the wild romance
of that era. My mum says if she was ever going anywhere in the car I
wanted to be going too. I started hitch-hiking when I was about 15 and,
at 19, spent four months alone on the road in America having a
predictably bizarre set of adventures. A few years later I drove a van
to in a convoy to Pakistan - through Iran, Afghanistan etc working for
some Bradford Mafiosi gang and I've gone on craving and having road
adventures ever since. Even after thirty years on the road with the
band, I still think it's romantic to eat rubbish food in some
godforsaken roadhouse at 3am by the side of an empty motorway in the
back end of Poland with truckers and prostitutes. Really. Honestly I
do. I hate being in any one place for more than a couple of weeks at a
time. I once gave a ride to a hobo in the wilds of a Canadian winter
who told me that he was finally thinking of 'settling down'. He then
told me he was 74. So I guess I have at least another 20 years of this
addiction to play out."
- Source: Justin Sullivan on the official NMA
Site -
Prodigal son:
One of Jesus' parables in the bible is
called 'The Prodigal Son'. It is about a young man who leaves his
father and wastes his inheritance. Poor and hungry he decides to go
back home and ask his father to forgive him. The father is overjoyed to
see his son again and arranges a large feast. The elder brother gets
angry, because he has always worked hard for his father and never been
treated so generously in return. But the father answers him: "Son, thou
art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we
should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is
alive again; and was lost, and is found". The point of the story is
that God will always forgive a repentant sinner, and that one repentant
sinner makes God happier than many just persons. It is typical for
Justin's treatment of biblical stories to change their content and
meaning into the opposite: his "prodigal son is not coming home".
Similarly, the idea of being lost and found again is turned around in Gigabyte Wars; however, a positive,
though not Christian, presentation of the same idea can be found in Orange Tree Roads.
- Source: The Bible. Luke, 15.11-32 - Read more:
King
James Bible -
Ferrybridge:
A village in the north of England, west of Leeds. The junction
is probably the place where the M62 and A1 cross. The M62 leads from
Bradford to Kingston-upon-Hull, from where ferries leave to
mainland Europe. The A1 leads to London in the south and Newcastle in
the north (from where also ferries leave to mainland Europe). The cooling
towers belong to the Ferrybridge Power Station that dominates the
skyline around the village.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
Wishing-well:
An idea in European folklore describing wells where it is thought that
any spoken wish would be granted if you throw coins into the water.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
[ Back to Tales of the Road | Back to Lust for Power | Back to March in September | Back to Whites of Their Eyes ]
Ten Commandments
The
song:
We recorded this for 'The Ghost of Cain' but the producer Glyn Johns
never liked it and it ended up as a B-side. In the end we think he was
probably right . . . [I don't . . . SF]
-Source: B-Sides and Abandoned Tracks booklet -
Moses:
An early Hebrew religious leader. The first five books of the Torah
as well as the Bible are attributed to him. He was born by a Hebrew
mother in Egypt and was commanded by God to deliver the Israelites from
slavery and lead them through the desert
to the
Promised Land.
In the bible God meets Moses on the Mountain Sinai in the desert and
gives him two tables with the ten commandments written on them. The
people of Israel that Moses leads meanwhile build a golden calf that
they worship. The whole first verse of 'Ten Commandments' is based on
Exodus, 32.15-20:
"[15] And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two
tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on
both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.
[16] And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the
writing of God, graven upon the tables. [17] And when Joshua heard the
noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a
noise of war in the camp.[18] And he said, It is not the voice of them
that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for
being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear. [19] And it
came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the
calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the
tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. [20] And he
took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground
it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of
Israel drink of it."
- Source: The Bible. Exodus, 19.1-32.20 - Read more:
King
James Bible - Wikipedia
-
Ten
Commandments:
The set of rules written by God on the two tablets he gave
to Moses on the Mount Sinai (see Moses above). Jews and Christians
today still consider these rules to be a guideline for moral behaviour.
Here they are: 1.
I am the LORD your God; you shall have no other gods before me. 2. You
shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. 3.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 4. Honour your
father and your mother. 5. You shall not murder. 6. You shall
not commit adultery. 7. You shall not steal. 8. You shall not bear
false witness against your neighbor. 9. You shall not covet your
neighbor’s house. 10.You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male
or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your
neighbor.
- Source: The Bible. Exodus, 20.2-17 - Read more:
King
James Bible -
Wikipedia -
Book
of Revelation:
By Jesus's disciple(?) John. The last book of the Bible, in which the
end of the world, the apocalypse, and
the Last Judgment are prophesied, when God will send all those to hell
who don't believe in him.
- Read more:
King
James Bible -
So in Christianity, it's the book
that's written sometime afterwards, Revelations, that is the "sting in
the tail" of Christianity. Christianity is all about love and truth and
light and beauty, and blah-blah-blah, and then there's the sting in the
tail: if you don't join us, you're in trouble.
- Source: Allan
MacInnis: "New Model Army: Tribal Warfare and Western Civilization.
Telephone interview on May 18th, 2008 -
A god made in the image
of man:
According to the bible, man was created in the image of god: "And God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness".
- Source: The Bible. Genesis, 1.26 - Read more:
King
James Bible -
Mohammed:
First and most important prophet of the Islam.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
Holy war:
Holy wars appear in all religions (e.g. the Crusades
in Christianity). In Islam, the Holy War or Jihad means "to strive or
struggle in the way of God", i.e. to lead a good muslim life. The term
is not meant to include violence, but is often misinterpreted and used
as justification for martial or terrorist actions by fanatics.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
Heretics:
Heresy is the denial by a professed, baptized Christian of a revealed
truth or that which the (Roman Catholic) Church has proposed as a
revealed truth. Heretics were persecuted by the Inquisition.
Dead
Sea Scrolls:
Ancient manuscripts (of leather, papyrus, and copper) discovered in
desert caves and ancient ruins in the wilderness of Judaea. They are
among the more important discoveries in the history of modern
archaeology. Their recovery has enabled scholars to push back the date
of a stabilized Hebrew Bible to no later than AD 70, to reconstruct the
history of Palestine from the 4th century BC to AD 135, and to cast new
light on the emergence of Christianity and of rabbinic Judaism and on
the relationship between early Christianity and Jewish religious
traditions.
- Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica - Read more:
Wikipedia -
[ Back to
Ten Commandments | Back to
Chinese Whispers | Back to Devil's
Bargain |
Back to Mambo Queen of the Sandstone City | Back to
Part the Waters | Back to Shot 18 | Back to Space ]
Till the End of the Day
The
song:
This was the first single Justin ever bought, probably back in 1966.
- Source: Justin Sullivan in an
interview
with Chris Benn in February 1997 -
[ Back to Till the End of the Day ]
Today Is a Good Day
The
song:
"Everybody keeps saying to me about the terrific irony of the song
'Today Is A Good Day,' but it's not, it's an absolute celebration [. .
. .] The day after Lehman Brothers collapsed [. . .] you must have had
a toast. You must have enjoyed the moment, no? I enjoyed it hugely! Not
because - 'oh, the bankers are going to fall.' The bankers are going to
be fine; they've been bailed out by the rest of us. It's not that. It's
just that you get sick of being lectured - particularly since the fall
of communism - that 'market economics are the only game in town, and
bankers have to pay themselves because they're intelligent people; we
have to get the best people to be bankers, because they really are
amazing people who create this wealth.' You got sick of being lectured
like this - because we all knew it was a fucking lie! So when the whole
thing is exposed as a lie [. . .] there's a moment of fucking great
joy, because those tosspots can never come and lecture us again! [. . .
.] the crash should be particularly educational to the
'wannabe-at-the-top' class of people, who bought into this idea that
you could pluck wealth out of the sky, and it's inevitable that it
would go on growing. Your house that was worth 20,000 pounds last year,
would be worth 25,000 this year, and et cetera. Well, actually, most
common people never bought into this. Most people have an ancestral
memory that you have good harvests and bad
harvests. And the nature of nature is, some things go well for
awhile, and then they don't."
- Source: Justin Sullivan interview with Allan
MacInnis -
The collapse of the Lehman Brothers, one of the oldest
and largest banks in the USA, was one of the major events in the 2008 financial crisis.
This crisis began with the bursting of real estate bubbles in the USA
and other countries in 2007, spread to the stock exchanges and
investment banks all over the world and from there to the real economy,
which wasn't provided with capital any longer. In other words, when all
the fictional money that bankers produce turned out to be fictional, it
was real people who lost real jobs, while the banks everywhere were
saved with taxpayers' real money.
-Read more: Wikipedia
-
Ashes in their mouths:
(Turn to) ashes in one's mouth means "(become) something that is bitterly disappointing or worthless."
- Source: The New Oxford Dictionary of English -
This phrase might have its source in the "Apple of Sodom", a
fruit that looks tasty but is extremely bitter and was historically
described as turning into ashes in one's hand or mouth.
- Read more: Wikipedia -
Stepford
Wives:
"We were all like Stepford Wives running around the supermarket,
wondering what we could buy, and now - that's kind of over, isn't it?
So today is a good day, because that stops us from becoming that
horrible creature that we were all becoming."
- Source: Justin Sullivan
interview with Allan
MacInnis -
'Stepford Wife' is a
satirical expression for a submissive housewife or, more generally,
a blindly submissive person. The term comes from a novel of the same
title by Ira Levin (some of you might know his even more famous novel
Rosemary's Baby) that was
adapted to the screen in 1975 and again in 2004. The women in the
fictional small town of Stepford are too beautiful, cheerful and
obedient to be true, and indeed it turns out they were turned into
robots by their husbands.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
[ Back to Today Is a Good Day | Back to Autumn | Back to Bad Harvest | Back to Burn the Castle | Back to Winter ]
Tomorrow Came
The song:
"Do you remember the song A Liberal
Education?
That is a kind of a slag off of the sixties, that way of looking at the
world, and I think Tomorrow Came is a criticism of my own generation.
We are the ones that knew everything and still we did nothing, we
harvested the land and planted nothing [quoted from Ballad], it's kind of a continuation of
that. Rock and Roll was the
idea of 'I want it now
I want everything'. The youth phenomenon of the fifties and sixties -
at a time of growth and plenty - was then enshrined - partly by rock
and roll - into a kind of way of life of 'I want this now, why can't I
have it'. And I think eighteen year olds looking up at their parents
and grandparents today are entitled to say, 'fucking hell you spent it
all, you spent my future', and that's pretty much what that song's
about."
- Source: Justin Sullivan in The Yorkshire Times -
Born in the spring:
Justin
Sullivan was born on the 8th of April 1956. I guess, for the song it is
also significant that spring is the time of the year where nature
begins to bloom and grow again and where we sow and plant for the
harvest in summer or autumn.
Harvest:
Almost the same words are used in Bad
Harvest.
Freedom:
Freedom '91 also states that 'songs of
freedom' have lost their meaning.
Tomorrow never comes:
"Live for today, for tomorrow never comes" is a proverb.
Too Close to the Sun
Mary:
A frequently occurring name in the bible; it was the name of the mother
of
Jesus and several women he knew.
Accordingly, the
mountain could be Calvary Hill,
where Jesus was crucified.
Warrior monks:
Probably a Chinese monk (or someone influenced by this idea) from the
Shaolin Monastery, that is famous for its association with Zen Buddhism
and the martial arts.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
Melting wax and
feathers falling:
In Greek mythology, Icarus and his father Daedalus were imprisoned by
King Minos. They managed to escape by flying away with wings made out
of feathers stuck together with wax. Icarus flew too close to the
sun, the wax melted, the wings broke and the boy fell into the sea
and drowned.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
[ Back to Too Close to the Sun ]
Trust
The
song:
The song is about New Model Army's first bass player, Stuart Morrow. [I
still think he was their best bass player ever, though].
- Source: Justin Sullivan in an
interview
with Chris Benn in February 1997 -
Stuart, we see each other about
every other night, him and his girlfriend who is one of my oldest
friends in Bradford, so me and Stuart make music all the time up in the
attic. We are very close. When he left the band it was very suddenly,
he said 'right, I'm off' and it was right at the point were we were
commercially having a great deal of success and he left without any
explanation and he wouldn't talk to us for about three years and after
about three years, it was like this is a waste of time, let's be
friends. And we have been friends ever since. You know, Justin has a
different feeling over that and he was with Justin before I joined the
band, but we are very close.
- Source: Robert Heaton in an
interview
with Chris Benn in May 1997 -
The song Curse is about the same subject and person.
[ Back to Trust ]
Turn Away
The
song:
There's a lot of different things to be addicted to, but the hardest
thing is to live with someone that's addicted to something. It's always
the friends and the family of the person that get it in their neck.
- Source: Justin Sullivan on the Big Guitars in Little Europe
CD -
Twilight Home
The
song:
Obviously a combination of Justin's favourite subjects, family/home
(compare
BD3, Dawn,
Family,
Family Life, Home,
Inheritance, March in September, My People,
No Mirror, No Shadow), and the sea
(see
Big Blue, Happy to be Here, Marry the Sea, North Star, Ocean Rising,
Southwest, Sun
On Water,
Wipeout).
Surfers:
Justin himself likes to surf (although he is not very good at it) and
supports a Cornwall based environmental activity group, "Surfers
against Sewage" (SAS).
- Read more: SAS official site -
225
The
song:
It's about saving the world again, and against technology, the fact
that everybody is forced to use technology. It's supposedly good for
us, but I don't think it is. We didn't ask for any of it, but we have
to use computers, we have to use this, we have to use that; as if
somewhere else someone has decided that we have to use all this stuff,
'cause somebody is inventing it. If some clever person tomorrow invents
some amazing device that enables you that you don't have to walk
anywhere, we now have to feel we have to use this device because it's
good for us. And it's nonsense, it's all nonsense.
- Source: Robert Heaton in an interview with German radio station Radio
Bremen 4 in February 1989 -
White Coats is about a similar topic.
225:
225 beats per minute, that's the tempo of the song - which nobody does,
except for speed metal bands. No rock band does it, it's all like Bon
Jovie speed and stuff.
- Source: Robert Heaton in an interview with German radio station Radio
Bremen 4 in February 1989 -
Without rhyme,
without reason:
Withour logical explanation.
- Source: The New Oxford Dictionary of English -
[ Back to 225 ]
[ T | Introduction | Song Index | Updates ]
16/11/14; last update 17/06/17