THB Lyrics Explanations

[Vogon Poet]

Hey I was wondering if there is an analysis of The Holy Bible's lyrics anywhere. Some are obvious, others less so. For example, what is Die in the Summertime about? I presume there is more to it than the obvious? Also, what does "I have crawled so far sideways, I recognise dim traces of creation" mean. Thanks!

I don't want to take the magic out of the lyrics, but I am interested in what some lyrics, such as the aforementioned, mean.

[Mr Richey]

http://www.manics.nl/

[Atrocity Exhibitionist]

Awesome sig!!

[richeysite]

http://articles.richeyedwards.net/holybible.html

[Vogon Poet]

Originally Posted by Richey83

http://www.manics.nl/

Thanks that's a great site.

Originally Posted by richeysite

http://articles.richeyedwards.net/holybible.html

Thanks for this too. Is there anything like this for other albums/songs on this site?

Also, does anyone know what the voice is or whatever it is that you can hear in the background during the second chorus of The Intense Humming of Evil? I can hear it but am unsure what/who/ it is? At least I can hear it in the US version I am currently listening to (I presume it is inn the UK version as well).

[Tetsuo]

Originally Posted by Vogon Poet

Thanks for this too. Is there anything like this for other albums/songs on this site? .

There was but I can't find it. There was a site just for Manics lyrics that had a lot of text on explanations and stuff. A sticky with Manics links would be good...


Edit:



Generation Terrorists –

Slash n’ Burn :
We can all work together, black, white, young, old, writers, poets, artists, musicians, thinkers, politicians to be one mass of individuals with one common aim – the destruction of criticism immolation of the present white disease and corporate cancer that is killing us before we can challenge – we are conditioned to be an oblivious mass, into a catatonic dead life of false desires and created needs…we are force taught to hate, be greedy, cheat and to follow some false dream.

Born to End :
The Manics are Sisyphus endlessly pushing the rock up the mountain only to see it topple back onto them – they are born to end – but before they go they are going to drag a few fat bastards down with them – they are shooting stars but they shine forever.

So Dead :
This is where MSP’s ideology differs, breaks away – it is not apathetic, not wallowing in self styled indie shit, not dancing on drugs – no rebellion to them and their true fans is life.

Repeat :
As much an attack on our own generation of 14-26 yr olds as it is to the older generation of adulterated people – you know, the escort banking, official civil service, know not, think not, hairsprayed, beer shoe gazers only concerned with their own security and wage packet – rebellion to these is a fight up the pub, dyed hair or not doing homework.

Methadone Pretty :
We are all working together – we are the dislocated but in our severance there bleeds the mind of Molotov cocktails and we are the future, we are petrol poets with nothing to lose.


Gold Against the Soul -

Sleepflower :
Nobody seems to be able to get to sleep without artificial aid these days – whether it’s alcohol, pills or even exercise programmes. Round from where we come from, lots of people seem to be walking around with muscles bulging everywhere, even if they’re only five foot two, and it’s unnatural to be like that. I don’t think it’s a matter of vanity, because it’s not as if anyone ever sees them.

From Despair to Where :
In the Western world, living conditions really aren’t that bad. Most people have somewhere to live and enough to eat – and yet most people are unhappy. I don’t think many people ever come home at night thinking ‘What a great day that was!’ And that’s why totalitarianism will always be tempting – because a fascist leader can say ‘I’ll make all the decisions for you. You don’t need to have any responsibilities. I’ll take care of your life’.

La Tristesse Durera :
We took the title from a book on Van Gogh, although the song’s got nothing to do with Van Gogh. It means something like ‘the sadness goes on’, and it’s about the way life doesn’t get any better as you get older. It’s always a beautiful image every year when the war veterans turn out at the Cenotaph, and everyone pretends to care about them – but then they’re shuffled off again and forgotten. I’m much more sympathetic towards older people than towards my generation – I think they have a lot more dignity, and seem to be able to take care of their problems themselves. People of my generation seem to be so selfish. I’m no exception, because you can’t escape from the culture that surrounds you. A phrase like ‘Trade Unionism’, and the idea of caring about the community you come from, is now seen as laughable – and of course, that’s a product of the political culture over the last 15 years.

Yourself :
It’s about being dissatisfied with yourself. We humans are the only animals who are burdened with the knowledge that we’re going to die. So every day you look in the bathroom mirror and try to convince yourself you look OK, so you can carry on with your daily routine, when actually you know that you’re a flabby piece of shit. It’s really difficult to keep feeling good about yourself when you keep seeing all these perfect, airbrushed images in magazines.

Life Becoming a Landslide :
It comes from the idea that the first thing a baby does is shriek at the horror of it all. And as when you get to adolescence, the rewards of being older don’t really give you any satisfaction whether it’s getting a car, or a fuck or a CD player. It’s also about the fact that, if you go into newsagents and see pornography on the shelf’s at an early age, it becomes very difficult to reconcile that with the idea of ‘love’ that you’re presented with later. I think we’re romantic people in some ways, but when it comes to relationships it’s not a question of ‘Can you trust another human being?’, so much as a question of trusting yourself. The animalistic nature of man seems to mean that you’re bound to find other people physically attractive. And there’s something dishonest about shutting those feelings off – it seems puritanical to deny yourself that. The idea of sin is still so widely pervading.

Drug Drug Druggy :
It’s just a very ambivalent attitude to drugs – and the different things that people use as drugs. Everybody has their own little obsessions. I find it really annoying the way people come up to you and say ‘Hey, I just smoked a couple of joints and I’m really off my head’. So what? If someone said ‘I’ve drunk 10 pints and I’m really out of it’, you’d think they were pathetic, and it’s the same thing.

Roses in the Hospital :
It’s just about the idea of something beautiful in a decaying place. It’s about people who hurt themselves in order to concentrate, or just to feel something.


Nostalgic Pushead :
It originally started off with the idea of a middle-aged person knocking things that would be exciting and valuable to a new generation. So many people said to us when we started. ‘Oh, seen that, done it, don’t do it again’. It’s really depressing that there’s a new generation growing up and being offered the same icons, like The Rolling Stones. The biggest bands now, like Pearl Jam, obviously grew up listening to the same records their parents did. But the whole Sixties perspective of change no longer exists.

Symphony of Tourette :
It’s based on Tourette’s syndrome, which is a disease where a child constantly swears and spits at everyone around him. He can’t help himself. He’ll go out on a shopping trip, and up to an old lady and say ‘fuck off you old cunt’. It’s a twentieth century disease, only identified this century, and there’s no cure for it. It’s almost as if they’re saying what everyone else secretly wants to say. Because most people spend their lives doing things they don’t really want to do, and no one gets to tell that irritating little man to fuck off.

Gold Against the Soul :
It’s an apocalyptic vision of Britain from the Thatcher years to the ‘caring Nineties’. People got so selfish in the Eighties. To me, Roy Lynk (the right-wing leader of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers) was the archetypal Eighties person. He probably thought he was doing people good – but he’s a class traitor. I hope that his children grow up to realise that. The media thinks that if you’re working class , you’ve got to be one of two stereotypes – either tipping your cap to your employer, or a drug fiend permanently bombed out of your skull. You’ve got to be a lager lout, or an effete Morrissey fan who never does anything. But working class people can be violent and sensitive.

The Holy Bible –

Yes :
Prostitution of the self. The majority of your time is spent doing something you hate to get something you don’t need. Everyone has a price to buy themselves out of freedom. “Say Yes to Everything”.

Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfa llapart :
America is trying to convince itself it if positive, enlightened and absolute. Zapruder the first to sow doubts behind the reality/death of JFY. Brady Bill typical – glorify gun culture until The Massacre gradually moves from the inner cities to the suburbs. The consequence arrives. Still believe Democrats are an alternative.


Of Walking Abortion :
“There is little hope…” East European truths – Horthy + Tisu (anti-Semitic/Fascist) – revived and brought back home. Facts ignored. Carve your mortal certainty there Should we have been born/still born/walking sideways unable to make a decision of any consequence. Modern life makes thought an embarrassment. Your true reflection = Junkies, winos, whores. Who’s responsible?


She is Suffering :
‘She’ is desire. In other Bibles and Holy Books no truth is possible until you empty yourself of desire. All commitment otherwise is fake/lies/economic convenience. “Salvation is purity”.

Archives of Pain :
Benthams ‘Panopticon’ – visibility is a trap. Foucault – Savagery is necessary, Is revenge justified? Nothing in common with Manson or Dahmer cult and its current fashionability. There is no glory in innocent death. Death/Murder/Redemption part of the human condition.

Revol :
All adolescent leaders of men FAILED. All love FAILS. If men of the calibre of Lenin and Trotsky failed then how can anyone expect anything to change. Won’t get fooled again.

4st.7lbs. :
Vanity/innocence/anorexia. True of false. Finding your own self worth and admiring yourself for it, whatever that involves. Kate (Moss), Kristin (McMenamy), Emma (Balfour), Karen (Sky agony aunt).

Mausoleum + The Intense Humming of Evil :
Brother/sister songs. Visited Dachau and Hiroshima. What reflections should be for everyone. Otherwise we’re all Edwards Scissorhands Avon Lady. Winners dictate history. Holocaust one of the few examples where even truth is being questioned. Revisionist historians. Danger of Schindler’s list –Portrayal of merely flawed man. Never question our own past – myth of Churchill. “An individual death means little – millions must mean something?”

Faster :
Strength through weakness. All morality sown in the soil of the ruling caste. Self-abuse is anti-social, aggression still natural. Society speeding up – finds worth is failure.

This is Yesterday :
Why do anything when you can forget everything. Memory more comforting than future. “Doing nothing = happy”.

Die in the Summertime :
Condition of old age – youth always remembered fondly. OAP wants to die with favourite memory month in mind. Adult memories tawdry, of little value.

PCP :
Links PC + PCP + New Moral Certainty. Language aimed at the working class. Condemns the very people it aims to save. Self-censorship wrong. “Liviticus” used by homophobes to justify their hatred. To take one sentence from the bible to justify views very PC. Also PCP the Revolutionary Portuguese Communist.



Everything Must Go -

Elvis Impersonator/Blackpool Pier :
Starts with the sound of water lapping at a shoreline which is soon joined by a distant, disembodied voice and Vini Reilly-style acoustic into before a slice of impassioned super-rock bellows “Overweight and out of date/American Trilogy in Lancashire Pottery?/It’s so fucking funny/It’s absurd.” A rough version of the song was completed prior to Richey’s disappearance.

A Design For Life :
The single comes complete with a quote from the king of Catalan modernist architecture, Antoni Gaudi, in which he says that “Originality consists in returning to the origin”. Concerning the conditioning inherent in working-class life, the song also draws parallels with the Manics’ own career and the need to go back to the start – to seek solace in the past.

Kevin Carter :
Named after the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who documented the war in Rwanda. After being accused of exploiting the situation for his own name (his photo of a child’s body with a vulture in the background became a famous image of the war), he turned to wildlife photography. Unable to live with either the guilt or his memories of the conflict, he took his own life. Music incorporates such unlikely influences as The Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach. The now multi-talented Sean Moore plays trumpet.

Enola/Alone :
Melancholia to the max. A song about memory, loss and looking back at old pictures. Lyrically, one of the most personal songs on the album, but ultimately about carrying on, no matter how hard things get. As this is the Manics, it also appears to incorporate various ideas nicked from French semiologist Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida.

Everything Must Go :
Explicitly a Manics about the Manics. It is also the Manics song to their fans and finally brings home the degree to which the disappearance of Richey was a personal tragedy for the rest of the band.

Small Black Flowers that Grow in the Sky :
Written by Richey after watching a BBC documentary concerning the condition of European zoos and how animals in confinement eventually go insane. Musically it is heavily influenced by Nick Drake and pre-prog Pink Floyd.

The Girl Who Wanted to Be God :
An Abba-meets-McAlmont & Butler better intended as a point of uplift after ‘Small Black Flowers’. A strong Motown quality to Mike Hedges’ production. Apparently, Nicky Wire has no idea what it is about.


Removables :
Written two years ago when Edwards was heavily into the lyrics of Kurt Cobain. Bradfield and Moore has produced a fitting ‘Nirvana Unplugged’ backing. A one-take, live studio recording.

Australia :
The Who meets New Order. Escapism, hypochondria and Howard Hughes. About the need to get away from it all. Australia was chosen as a suitably mythic destination by Wire despite his chronic fear of flying.

Interiors :
Based on an Omnibus episode about Alzheimer’s. The ‘he’ is possibly the American artist William de Kooning, who, despite being stricken by the disease, carries on working even though he often has no memory of what he is painting. Musically, possibly one of the most delicate pieces they’ve done.

Further Away :
The sister song to ‘From Despair to Where’ and probably the closest they’ll ever come to a straight-ahead love song. However, this being the Manics, it also comes with a hefty wedge of loss and regret.

No Surface, All Feeling :
Recorded before Richey went missing, and then remixed, this is possibly the companion piece to ‘Everything Must Go’, but far more about looking ahead than wrestling with the past.


This is My Truth Tell Me Yours –

The Everlasting :
Musically James wanted this to sound like an old hymn i.e. ‘the old ragged cross’. The song is an elegy – like ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ it deals with an eternal search for something we can never find. The feel is romantic and strangely uplifting.

If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next :
Lyrically the song was inspired by Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’ and The Clash singing ‘Spanish Bombs’ – It is meant to be a warning – a need for awareness in the modern world – of knowing your history i.e. the international brigade’s bravery and courage. The music is organically futuristic – influenced by the peace and majesty of the recording environment in France.

You Stole The Sun From My Heart :
Musically the song is very simple, a mixture of New Order and Nirvana. The lyrics deal with having the soul ripped out of you – being so fucked that you are past caring anymore – what will happen will happen. Sean sampled the studio pinball machine for some of the drum sounds.

Ready For Drowning :
One of the earlier songs written for the album – the lyrics are very complex, dealing with mythology and Welsh self-destruction. Influenced by the poetry of R.S. Thomas. Musically the intro is very Stax Hammond organ – in many ways the Elvis Impersonator of the record.

Tsunami :
Probably the nearest to a pop song on the album – James wanted to give the song an oriental feel to reflect the title. The song was inspired by ‘The Silent Twins’, two girls who ended up in prison – they stopped talking at an early age. Drifted through petty crime and ended up in Broadmoor – ‘the crime of silence’.

My Little Empire :
James’ homage to John Frusciante and unplugged Nirvana, Nicky shares the lead vocals. Lyrically the song is about personal crutches and the kingdoms we invent ourselves to stay sane.

I’m Not Working :
A kind of fear of flying song. When your body breaks down with fear and sickness – trapped in airlessness – this is reflected in the music. The sitar gives the sound altitude and dizziness.

You’re Tender and You’re Tired :
The song lyrically is quite similar to ‘From Despair to Where’ i.e. the ‘weak like straw’ – the way society always seems to search out the weak and abuse them. Musically the song is based around the deep melancholic 70’s sounds of Badfinger and features a session whistler.

Born a Girl :
The song is a yearning for female aesthetics and sensibilities. Arranged very simply to an electric guitar and accordion. Beautiful in its starkness.

Be Natural :
James’ love of Jeff Buckley is evident on this song, which deals with happiness through simplicity – tiny epiphanies that occur in life and make everything worthwhile.

[Vogon Poet]

Hey thanks mate! Hope that didn't take up too much of your time!

[Tetsuo]

It was a copy/paste job. I don't know how accurate they are or where they came from. Around the time of the Greatest Hits release the Manics.co.uk website had a sort of written Q&A about the songs on the compilation. can't find it though...

[richeysite]

Originally Posted by Vogon Poet

Thanks for this too. Is there anything like this for other albums/songs on this site?

No, nothing like else that on my site.