Clarksville
Variable depth
But on the other hand, sometimes a truth is a thing that must be moved towards.
I'm glad you started this thread, Crystalgeezer.
I'm glad you started this thread, Crystalgeezer.
I wasn't aware of that version.
I found this:
"...You're, you're mine and your mother, she just never knew.
Oh, your mother, as long, as long, as long..."
(Are you sure it's "she must never know"?)
If you wanted to read deeper into it, you could wonder if he
was making reference to the fact that the child's mother was
dead and her ghost may well be outside......
there is always a melancholy feeling and somewhat feeling of
expecting a "sign"
when someone has died.
Ah, but I am probably reading way too much into it.
But remember the line:- "I did my best for her..."
Quite sure. It's this early live version - from the 3rd Smiths show, when Johnny was still singing backing vocals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zllibDQleJ0
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?
Holy fecal matter Comtesse.....thank you for that link.....I've never seen Johnny sing back up vocals whilst in The Smiths.....awesome!
And yet. I find it impossible to believe that the possible allusions to sexual abuse are entirely coincidental and unintentional, even if they are also easily missed (I for one listened to this for years before noticing). I do not think however that the most reasonable (and certainly not the only reasonable) inference to draw from this is that the whole lyric is a hyper-creepy coded tale of sexual child abuse. Rather I think, if I may speculate in authorial intention for a moment, that Morrissey mobilises that interpretative possibility without ever making it unambiguous. Turning away from authorial intention and back to what this ambiguity, this (whether by design or sheer poetic intuition) planted suspicion, actually achieves in the text, it has a remarkable effect. The most direct one is that you start listening to the narrator's constant outpouring of tender intent and assurances of protectiveness with scepticism and suspicion. You no longer trust his description of what he is offering. You start asking yourself who this person is, where he's coming from, what he's been doing, what he's aiming for. Which - also based on the second reading - there is every reason to do. In short, by committing an alarming ambiguous statement (which becomes even more ambiguous to the listener than to the character to whom it is addressed, because as usual the underlying story is implied rather than actually described which means we know nearly nothing of the narrator. We must give him shape in our own minds.), the narrator undermines what he has seemingly been building up and induces scepticism about himself.
In a more indirect sense, again if we assume the second reading, it also makes a powerful point by a sort of associative metonymy - by mobilising the possible subtext of sexual abuse, it also points intuitively by association to neglect and inability to connect as a different form of abuse - again throwing a critical light on the narrator by drawing the listener's attention in a sceptical direction and hence, stealthily, also inviting him to examine the possible faults of the narrator.
Oh well, half of this hadn't even occurred to me yet when I started writing this post, so maybe I ought to stop there. At least it shows that this lyric is not an open and shut case. Alternatively that I'm a lost case who's spent too much time fiddling around with textual interpretation.
Morrissey is neither advocating nor condemning, he is observing and conjuring up some profoundly disturbing, unspeakable things. The fact that he does so in a pop music context (while referencing earlier forms) is breathtaking.
Yes, this is Morrissey's genius, and it is something that no other singer I know has the complexity to pull off. The strength of this argument lies not only in Morrissey's lyrics, but in the way he sings them. It also lies in his character as a singer, and in "Morrissey" as a persona.
Essentially Morrissey "goes there," but he does so wreathed in an exquisitely poetic ambiguity. He hints at terrible, terrible crimes, but he never names them outright. He insinuates, he cajoles, he pulls at the heartstrings, he engages, and he allows the listeners to connect the dots themselves. He elicits terrible thoughts and tender thoughts simultaneously, and gives rise to a very complex set of emotions. This is Art of the highest caliber - heartbreaking, subtle and vaguely transgressive.
Morrissey's role as pop's most flamboyantly unreliable narrator is a stroke of genius, and a curse.
Sometimes that's the fun part.
When it comes to songs like "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle," I just let my emotions take me where they will, and free-associate. This song's emotional complexity makes it endlessly fascinating. As for "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore," it's the same trick, but his lyrics have become far less subtle (although his knack for coercive ambiguity is fully intact).
Morrissey is neither advocating nor condemning, he is observing and conjuring up some profoundly disturbing, unspeakable things. The fact that he does so in a pop music context (while referencing earlier forms) is breathtaking.
To paraphrase OW: There is no such thing as a moral or immoral song. Songs are either well written or badly written. That is all.
And a further reflection is that it's not even remotely connected to any of the things that most casual observers seem to think the Morrissey lyrical experience is all about - navel-gazing moping and narcissistic recognition of things we ought to have outgrown by now. It is, in fact, about human things beyond the range of the personal experience of any of us (at least I sincerely hope so). It's as rich and complex and rewarding as any poetry I know of - and like most great poetry it is a thing of strangeness, an entity of its own who may speak of human things but whose value is not entirely reducible to what it has to say on that point.
I think this reading gets leapfrogged over too easily. Yeah, that cleaver line, it doesn't seem to fit the song, but why not put it back in and have a look at it that way? It does cause the sense of menace. So is it about a father killing a mother?He killed the mother with a cleaver and the little tyke gets it tonight. He's soothing him telling him soon there will be nothing to fear.
I think this reading gets leapfrogged over too easily. Yeah, that cleaver line, it doesn't seem to fit the song, but why not put it back in and have a look at it that way? It does cause the sense of menace. So is it about a father killing a mother?
"The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world." That's from the original poem and it's about the power of the mother in the home. The power over the offspring.
But this song is about the father wresting control from the mother, and the whole point of the title is that he is ensuring that he is the hand that rocks the cradle, not her. "You're mine."
So I think it can be seen as containing a child's fear of his father taking over in his life, of taking control from the mother, maybe even by killing her, either literally or figuratively.
So it is an aggressive love, where it should be a nurturing one, it's all about the father rather than the son's needs, it's about being the one in charge and having power. (It doesn't have to be anything about sexuality.)
This is made worse by the fact that this father figure is clearly unreliable - he recounts his past failings which include erratic presence in his children's lives, and he also alludes to the relationship with the mother being a failure, but he rejects the blame for that, saying he did his best, suggesting it's her fault.
This is just another possiblity, to me, allowed by the fact that this song is written with all its doors and windows so wonderfully wide open.
(I don't see a reading where the father was going to kill the son, though. Just that he had, perhaps symbolically, perhaps symbolizing divorce, killed the mother, or was planning to.)
Hi Clarksville. I wasn't serious about suggesting the child would be killed, but just going from the "blood on the cleaver tonight" line.
"There'll be blood on the cleaver tonight" sounds like an old saying or a quote from somewhere. This next part is what I find strange.
Aesop (version) The Lion in LoveA LION demanded the daughter of a woodcutter in marriage. The Father, unwilling to grant, and yet afraid to refuse his request, hit upon this expedient to rid himself of his importunities. He expressed his willingness to accept the Lion as the suitor of his daughter on one condition: that he should allow him to extract his teeth, and cut off his claws, as his daughter was fearfully afraid of both. The Lion cheerfully assented to the proposal. But when the toothless, clawless Lion returned to repeat his request, the Woodman, no longer afraid, set upon him with his club, and drove him away into the forest.