The lyrics proper are scarcely any more comforting.
"Days since I last pissed", it begins, "Cheeks sunken and despaired."
"Stretching taut, cling-film on bone, I'm getting better."
"I want to walk in the snow and not leave a footprint" announces the chorus. "I want to walk in the snow and not soil its purity."
"4st 7, an epilogue of youth, such beautiful dignity in self-abuse,
I've finally come to understand life,
Through staring blankly at my naval."
I think J-Lo is planning a cover version.
What it amounts to, is that The Holy Bible is one of those incredibly rare records that can be read as well as listened to. You could sit for hours reading the shit that Dylan spits in Bringing It All Back Home. You could lose yourself in the lyric sheet of If I Should Fall From Grace With God. Same goes for The Queen Is Dead, Murder Ballads, Workers Playtime and not a hella lot else. Even Lennon and McCartney fail to light the page like they do the ears. On record, In My Life sounds like the most beautiful words you ever heard uttered. On paper, it seems a bit sparse.
Which is fine, man, some folks would just rather the words and the music operated as one. It's nice, though, to look through a lyric sheet and be blown away before you ever put the damn disc in the player.
And that's another reason why The Holy Bible is so exceptional, and why James Dean Bradfield's arrangements can't be underestimated. Reading this stuff, you can't imagine for a second how it's gonna sound. You can't tell where a chorus starts and ends. You imagine certain things are going to be depressing, contemplative, and then you hit play and the motherfucker tears lumps out your damn speakers.
How many high-profile rock bands would take a risk like this? The Manics' first two albums were glam rock to the core. For sure, the lyrics may have harped on about;
"Economic forecasts soothe our dereliction,
Words of euthanasia, apathy of sick routine"
but the sound was all big-production, choruses the size of Arkansas, guitar licks straight out of Slash's back pocket. Generation Terrorists may have attributed quotes to each song, motherfuckers like Camus and Confucius and Rimbaud, a reading list for to browse at soonest convenience, but the music was far from overly high-brow or elitist. It was cock-rock without the cock.
The Holy Bible, though, was something the fuck else. It's a record that sounds nothing like Generation Terrorists or Gold Against The Soul, fantastic albums both. It's a record that incorporated discordant post-punk long before Franz Ferdinand and so on were digging out the old Metal Box of an evening.
Article comments
1 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
hells bells. thats the third time i've used the word "fetishised" in almost as many articles. That Word Of The Day toilet-paper sure works better when a fella's got the runs...
2 - godoggo
re: fetishise: Your'e in America now, if I'm not mistaken. Allow me to introduce you to the letter Z.
That said, what in heaven'z name is LA Rock?
3 - wally bangs
Brilliant stuff, Duke. I bet you "laughed when Lennon got shot" too.
4 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
godoggo, i'm still residing in the UK, but it's a valid point. I keep forgetting to include the "z", which is odd, since is not only is it Costa Gravas' best flick, but it's a much cooler letter than s. I keep wondering why the MT desktop client has red lines under things i know are spelt correctly, and that's always the cause.
Wally, thanks man. And i didn't, probably, but i still roar along like as if i was there man. "Motown... Motown Junk!!"
5 - valeria
Here come the crazy urges to listen to the Holy Bible again, for maybe the millionth time in my life. It might be your incessant quotes that just beg a singalong, it might be that this article was just absolutely perfect.
6 - Duke De Mondo
Valeria, thank you! What a compliment it is, to have someone urged towards a re-listening of The Holy Bible on account of my scribbling.
and this reminds me, i really must pick up that grand new Everything Must Go set sometime soon...