Please don't cry for the ghost in the storm at night

[CrystalGeezer]

What do you think he's singing about? Who is he singing to? Listen to the song.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

And yes, as son as I hit POST I realized it's "outside" and not "at night."

 

[Clarksville]

"The ghost in the storm at night" signifies all the things a child might be scared of at night, I though. (My thought of it. anyway.) (Oh, yeah, "outside"... I didn't notice!)

You don't want a reading of the whole song, do you? It's kind of complex.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

It is. I don't know what I want. Nevermind. There's no way to figure out his intentions or to pin down who he was comforting.

 

[Clarksville]

I think he's either comforting himself as a child or he's imagining somebody else in a fictional setting, comforting (or not) his child.

I think on the surface it's a song about a man lulling his young child to sleep, its about a kind of love and looking after someone, about parenthood and putting another person's wellbeing before your own, but it's also about the man's regrets and his imperfect life. There are things in his life he's thinking about while he does this. I feel there's an undercurrent of something more complicated which stops it being straightforward, sweet and obvious.

The line about the blood on the cleaver could be the character going off on a tangent, thinking about the things that scare people, but it shows a kind of violence just beneath the surface of the song, which adds to the feel that perhaps all is not well. But all might be well. It's very hard to tell. But I do feel a sense of forboding, or something. As if the sweetness of the sentiment isn't real or it hides something else.

Or it could be a kind of a longing that it would be real.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

That's a very well thought out summary. Thank you.

 

[CrookedLittleVein]

For very personal reasons, I read it as being about a father who is left to raise a child after his wife's death.

(I know there's not much evidence to support this reading.)

At first, he flees from the responsibility, then he returns, compelled by paternal instinct. The nightmare images plague him as much (if not more so) than they do the child. The child is his comfort.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

For very personal reasons, I read it as being about a father who is left to raise a child after his wife's death.

(I know there's not much evidence to support this reading.)

At first, he flees from the responsibility, then he returns, compelled by paternal instinct. The nightmare images plague him as much (if not more so) than they do the child. The child is his comfort.

(I'm a mess.) This is an excellent interpretation as well.

 

[Clarksville]

For very personal reasons, I read it as being about a father who is left to raise a child after his wife's death.

(I know there's not much evidence to support this reading.)

Oh, I think it's certainly there. I'm just never sure if I settle on it completely.

 

[CrookedLittleVein]

(I'm a mess.) This is an excellent interpretation as well.

I find with most of Morrissey's work, the meaning becomes more elusive the harder you look, largely because the deeper you move into the song the more of your own identity bleeds into it and a kind of gestalt thing happens.

It's like Morrissey writes very personal lyrics but leaves little gaps here and there where you can 'slot in'.

 

[Clarksville]

As all the best writers do, of course.

 

[egosheep]

The line is, "Please don't cry, for the ghost and the storm outside will not invade this sacred shrine, nor infiltrate your mind "

So it's not about crying for a ghost in a storm outside(like dont cry for me, etc), its telling a child not to be scared of either a ghost or the storm outside... or the bogey-man.

 

[Bagpuss]

It's just a paternal & protective thing in my opinion.

It is a beautiful song and so sad some tabloid scum chose to portray it as alluring to paedophilia. Moz may not have helped himself over the years over certain years, but the knives have been out for him since 1983. No wonder he has become so weary and guarded. It's also rumoured to be the first song Moz and Marr ever wrote.

 

[Claudia2006]

It's just a paternal & protective thing in my opinion.

It is a beautiful song and so sad some tabloid scum chose to portray it as alluring to paedophilia. Moz may not have helped himself over the years over certain years, but the knives have been out for him since 1983. No wonder he has become so weary and guarded. It's also rumoured to be the first song Moz and Marr ever wrote.

I find it to be one of the most interesting Smiths songs for this very reason. Of course who knows when he wrote it or the exact circumstances explaining why it was first, but I can't help thinking of this song representing what he most needed to get off his chest as a teenager. I also switch between imagining Morrissey as the child and Morrissey as the paternal figure.

 

[Bagpuss]

It would be interesting to know which of the Smiths' lyrics were written, prior to JM knocking on Mozzers door. I like to think some of them hung around on dusty notepads for many years, just waitng for a melody and a handsome band.

 

[Clarksville]

It's just a paternal & protective thing in my opinion.

It is a beautiful song and so sad some tabloid scum chose to portray it as alluring to paedophilia. Moz may not have helped himself over the years over certain years, but the knives have been out for him since 1983. No wonder he has become so weary and guarded. It's also rumoured to be the first song Moz and Marr ever wrote.

Alluding to?

Yeah, I'm not surprised they did, because they are as they are. But that is, to be honest, one of the readings I can see as a possibility. It is a faint possibility, it's hardly a shimmer, it sits alongside plenty of oter possibilities, it's obviously meant to be open to interpretation and to say "this is what it means" would be completely wrong, IMO.

 

[Clarksville]

The line is, "Please don't cry, for the ghost and the storm outside will not invade this sacred shrine, nor infiltrate your mind "

So it's not about crying for a ghost in a storm outside(like dont cry for me, etc), its telling a child not to be scared of either a ghost or the storm outside... or the bogey-man.

Yeah, it's like crying about a ghost and a storm. Not about feeling sorry for the ghost.

It's not about Wuthering Heights.

 

[Bagpuss]

Clarksville, you write much sense.

The refrain at the end of the song, 'climb upon my knee my sonny boy,' was, I believe, the harbinger for the child abuse accusations. I think it was very brave of Moz to release Ambitious Outsiders in light of all this. Suffer Little Children is possibly one of the most poignant moments in pop history, but the tabloids, again, chose to villify Moz as some kind of Hindley/Brady apologist. Even though he had personally visited the family of 1 of the victims and it is blatantly an elegy and sympathetic symphony for the children.

 

[Orson Swells]

It sounds like an older man saying he'll "look after" a younger man...

A paternal rewrite of "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World" by William Ross Wallace, perhaps?

 

[Comtesse]

I thought for a second there was some song I'd never heard before until I realized the title of the post was an erroneous reference to "the ghost and the storm outside". Seems like a completely straightforward lyric to me. He's keeping the young'n safe from the storm and the ghosts... so that he can have him climb upon his knee and do naughty things to him that he must promise never to tell his mother. Duh.