So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
An imitation from New York
You're made in Japan from cheese and chalk
You're hippy tarts hero
'Cause you put on a bad show
You put on a bad show
Oh, don't it show
Still out on those pills
Oh, do you remember?
You think it's swell playing Max's Kansas
You're looking bored and you're acting flash
With nothing in your gut
You better keep your mouth shut
You better keep your mouth shut
In a rut
Still out on those pills
Do the sambo
Four years on you still look the same
I think about time
You changed your brain
You're just a pile of shit
You're coming to this
Ya poor little faggot
You're sealed with a kiss
Kiss me
Think it's swell playing in Japan
Everybody knows Japan is a dishpan
You're just a pile of shit
You're coming to this
Ya poor little faggot
You're sealed with a kiss
Still out on those pills
Cheap thrills Anadins
Aspros, anything
You're condemned to eternal bullshit
You're sealed with a kiss
Kiss me
A kiss, a kiss
You're sealed with a kiss
A looking for a kiss
You're coming to this
I wanna kiss
You do just about anything
Oh, kiss this
Tatty bye
You're made in Japan from cheese and chalk
You're hippy tarts hero
'Cause you put on a bad show
You put on a bad show
Oh, don't it show
Still out on those pills
Oh, do you remember?
You think it's swell playing Max's Kansas
You're looking bored and you're acting flash
With nothing in your gut
You better keep your mouth shut
You better keep your mouth shut
In a rut
Still out on those pills
Do the sambo
Four years on you still look the same
I think about time
You changed your brain
You're just a pile of shit
You're coming to this
Ya poor little faggot
You're sealed with a kiss
Kiss me
Think it's swell playing in Japan
Everybody knows Japan is a dishpan
You're just a pile of shit
You're coming to this
Ya poor little faggot
You're sealed with a kiss
Still out on those pills
Cheap thrills Anadins
Aspros, anything
You're condemned to eternal bullshit
You're sealed with a kiss
Kiss me
A kiss, a kiss
You're sealed with a kiss
A looking for a kiss
You're coming to this
I wanna kiss
You do just about anything
Oh, kiss this
Tatty bye
Lyrics submitted by spunkykitten
New York Lyrics as written by Johnny Rotten Glen Matlock
Lyrics © Kanjian Music, BMG Rights Management, Hipgnosis Songs Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
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me too - i've always loved this song. but (for some reason) i have never actually owned a copy of this album, and it wasn't until the other night that i made an effort to track down the lyrics, and of course that then made me start thinking about them... i have read all the comments below and would like to thank wrob in particular for explaining a couple of things.
having mulled it over and over ( = i have played the song again almost ten times, and have had it on continuous loop in my head for the last 36 hrs!) i want to add and/or clarify a couple of things:
unfortunately (@ wrob) there is nothing tongue-in-cheek about this song. lydon's contempt and vitriol is (as usual) 100% genuine
the target is not the dolls as such, but david johansen in particular (and even there it's not so much what DJ was, as what lydon felt he had allowed himself to become, by 1977)
i have no opinion on the new york dolls really, so don't side with one or the other, but i do know that lydon would not have turned his scorn on DJ unless he felt sure in his own mind that it was warranted. "nothing in your gut... stuck in a rut" translates/unpacks into the following: "you spent all your money on drugs and now have to toe the record company line, just do whatever they want, which is the same pathetic sideshow day after day". the kiss references later in the song are really vicious, turning one of DJ's most famous moments against him by implying that he's not only been bought and sold, he's allowed himself to be gift-wrapped as if for some horrible lecherous abuser. (many, many artists have felt this way after - or during - careers in the entertainment industry!)
a few more observations:
"made in japan" was (back in the 70s) how everybody in the UK described something cheaply mass-produced. (this later, and rather more accurately, became "made in taiwan" and eventually "made in china")
"coming to this" - as in, "that it should come to this"
"hippy tart" will have been some poor unfortunate whom lydon encountered on his first visit to the big apple... someone who insisted that the dolls were still worth seeing cos DJ was her hero, he always messes up onstage, to show that he's not playing the game etc etc - and john is thinking "that's the best you can come up with??" - i'm just guessing here
peace out x
@cent <br /> My extremely late reply is due to just now reading yours. Way yonder when I first heard the song I completely thought it was a put down of the city (a definitive winning of the 'Who REALLY started 'Punk'' war). Later learning it was about the Dolls/JoHansen it made more sense (plus the McLaren association).<br /> <br /> Yes, I agree, Rotten/Lydon ISN'T given the kudos he deserves as a (dare I say) poet. 'God Save The Queen' alone has some BRILLIANT lines/imagery: We're the flowers in the dustbin/We're the poison in the human-machine - absolutely peerless. <br /> <br /> So, that is my long-time-coming response to your interesting reply. Stay safe and well
I love this song.
The subject is the New York Dolls. It references specific songs of theirs including "Looking for a Kiss" and "Pills" ("do the sambo" may allude to their more novelty-esqe tunes), and themes such as cross dressing and drug abuse for which they were known. At the time this was written, the Dolls would have been either defunct or in the process of sputtering out.
I like to believe that it was meant as good natured trash talk between groups that weren't that far removed from each other - musically, as has been noted, and socially. However, I can't discount the possibility that Lydon intended it as an attack. It would not be inconsistent with his confrontational nature and notion of artistic integrity.
Max's Kansas City was a hip club in NYC at the time. "Japan is a Dishpan" is a song by Captain Beefheart, whom I believe was a noted influence.
@wrob <br /> Oh yes, the Dolls had long been over and McLaren even took Sylvain's guitar back for Steve Jones (Sylvain Sylvain was even asked to be a Pistol before the band had even really formed, too)
ignore the E.M.I. at the end...sorry
Its about how Sid was such a tit
sorry phil lynott (from thin lizzy) was irish!
yeah but also check out sad vacation nuthins simple expecially not the pistols of whom who greil marcus said draw a line anywhere and the sex pistols are on the other side of it also jones saying he ripped off johnny thunders in the filth and the furry is a nice moment but still, the dolls never went near as far and were never terrifying nor wierdly gnostic as johnny rotten and i think thats what makes the pistols the pistols and if johnny rotten hated half the people he said he hated he wouldnt be a quarter as funny
@moogfaag <br /> 'Lipstick Trace: A Hidden History Of The 20th Century' by Marcus is, while quite eggheadish, brilliantly written
Other than the input of McLauren the Pistols weren't really inspired by the New York scene; the influences go further back accept for maybe Jones' style. Basically McLauren was always telling them about the NY scene and aggrandized it so much that the band got so sick of it that they wrote this song trashing the scene. It was more like taking a piss on McLauren, which I think is proof for the nay-sayers of the band's independent streak which the even the manager could not often restrain.
Yes, this song is about the New York Dolls, the kissing business is a reference to their song 'looking for a kiss', and the stuff about pills is about the dolls song 'pills', and to clear things up, the Dolls were a pre-punk glam band who wore their girlfriends clothing (they weren't actually...you know) after the dolls came the bands the heartbreakers, jhonny thunders, and richard hell & the voidoids....
i thought he was saying "teddy boy" at the end.
i think it means like fuck off all of you manufactured bands that are out now. Everybody knows the pistols h8 that shit