CrystalGeezer
My secret's my enzyme.
Seriously?
Please don't cry for the ghost in the storm at night
- Thread starter CrystalGeezer
- Start date
Seriously?
Comtesse
Starved Of Mirth
Allegedly. Well, how do YOU interpret the lyrics in the early live version: "Climb upon my knee, Sonny Boy. Although you're only three, Sonny Boy. You're mine and your mother she need never know, your mother she need never know, your mother she need never know..."
not_me_not_I
New Member
I only heard that live version for the first time recently, and got a little uncomfortable. I welcome any alternative explanations.
Yeah but thats what's so great about the song. It's ambiguous, but I don't think you can paint morrissey as a pedophile over this song. He isn't necessarily the protagonist, he could be the child for all we know, or neither.
It's an amazing, darkly beautiful song.
Clarksville
Variable depth
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"?)
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"?)
FYI, discussion about the lyrics was done in this thread
Media Whore
Nowhere. Everywhere.
I'm not saying this interpretation is correct, far from it, but as an alternative? Perhaps the child is a pawn between mother and father. An overbearing mother, the father gives into the child's whims.
Another. There is a question of paternity. Perhaps the mother was drugged and raped, the rapist cuddles the child who will never know his real father.
I think there are a number of interpretations other than "it's paedophilia."
Bagpuss
New Member
Al Jolson originally sang the "Sonny Boy" refrain. As for the "mother you just never knew," Moz wrote at the time "it comes from a relationship I had that didn't really involve romance." I just think it's an early example of Mozzers delicious entwining of fact/fiction/imagination.
Clarksville
Variable depth
If he is anywhere I think it's the child, but obviously you can't say an artist has to be anywhere in a song.
It seems pretty insane to paint him as a paedophile over this. Especially as it was written when he was so young, it's about a father and the song doesn't feel very sympathetic to the father character, to me. Even if it is written in that point of view. For me, that's where the sense of threat was coming from.
The most you can say is it's likely to be thoughts on a subject and with the changing of the lyrics, the nature of that subject is looking more transparent, but on the other hand, Morrissey strikes me as perfectly capable of changing lyrics on the night because of things tabloids had said, in a contrary way, just to throw it in their eye.
(Yes, I agree that it could be about paternity, with the revised lyric, "You're mine, and your mother she just never knew" meaning that the child's mother didn't know who the father was, but the father was sure the child was his. And that could be a positive reading, allowing the song to be loving after all.)
Last edited:
mauve21
Long time participant
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..."
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..."
CrystalGeezer
My secret's my enzyme.
Impossible to forget the line that consistently turns on the waterworks for me. I'm a mess by the end of the song. Everytime.
It is a fascinating lyric in its construction, one of the most difficult to deal with and marked by some highly unusual elements for a Morrissey lyric. Inevitably, it revolves around whether or not it alludes to sexual child abuse.
That issue, as far as I can see, has a crucial impact on everything in the lyric, and really comes down to these lines:
I once had a child and it saved my life
And I never even asked his name (Peel session version: I never even gave a name)
I just looked into his wondrous eyes, and said "never, never, never again"
But all too soon I did return, just like a moth to a flame
I'd like to suggest two different possible readings of this.
1) Obviously, this could be "had" in a sexual sense, the victim presumably being someone unfamiliar and the act being followed by remorse and determination not to repeat the act only to find that he was unable not to.
2) It could however also be "had" in the more conventional sense, ie, the I-person fathered a child, at one time. If so, it is presumably not the same child that he is addressing in the lyric. In this case, it would be strange that he never even asked his child's name, and you would have to assume that his conviction not to repeat it refers to an intention not to have any more children - or, a conviction not to look his child in the eyes again. In either case, without being able to follow through on that intention.
This, on a literal reading, seems like a more strained reading than the first. However, there is a rather obvious theme that suggests itself as a possible key to such a reading: Namely parental - and more specifically, paternal - emotional neglect. There's a biographic link, ie, Morrissey's strained, painful and distant relationship to his own father. The theme recurs also elsewhere in his lyrics, for instance (presumably) in "You should have been nice to me" and "Papa Jack".
On such a reading, never asking the child's name (or alternatively, not giving your own) combined with looking into his eyes and deciding never to do so again might refer simply to an inability and unwillingness to connect, to know your son and let him know you. At the same time, "saved my life" and "returning like a moth to a flame" marks an inability to simply walk away. The dysfunctional father: Can't connect, can't walk away.
One point in this reading's favor is that it is much more efficient in making sense of the lyric as a whole than the first reading is. With #1, there is an elemental contradiction between the effusive and at times almost selfless tenderness of the rest of the lyric. This of course could be poetic device - the startling revelation in the quoted lines throwing the whole lyric off the cozy pedestal it has snuggled into up until that point and turning everything off-colour with a single word, while appropriating the language of family affection and parental care for its precise opposite, showing these opposites as present within the same figure. Artistically speaking, very Morrisseyesque and powerful. But somehow, I don't quite manage to believe in it. It seems too contrived, somehow. But it was only when I paid really close attention to the last lines of the lyric that I became really sceptical to the validity of that reading:
and your mother she just never knew
as long as there's love
I did my best for her
These lines in my opinion clearly strengthen the second reading, in that it alludes to a broken parental relationship, which reinforces the implied context of the second reading's defective father/child relationship. Relative to the the first reading, the last two lines are fairly meaningless and out of context (which, I hasten to add, does not mean they are impossible).
There is one further passage which needs mention:
So, rattle my bones all over the stones
I'm only a beggar-man whom nobody owns
Oh see how words as old as sin fit me like a glove
Other than the breathtaking power and poetic allusiveness of the last line (implying as it does that the power of naming is positively old-testamently in its impact) the second line is highly suggestive because it implies a state of non-belonging and (literal or emotional) poverty.
So where does that leave us if, on the basis of the second reading, you attempt to reconstruct the story the lyric implies about its narrator?
This is someone who expresses an enormous tenderness and protectiveness towards his three-year old son - a complete commitment (Which incidentally has no real parallell in Morrissey's other lyrics because it seems almost selfless. Other "commitment" lyrics such as Hand in Glove or There is a Light are, by contrast, extremely centred in the narrator's own immediate urges and needs.). He has however another, older son with whom he never was able to establish a satisfactory relationship due to his own limitations. Nor was he able to just fully walk away, hence his present status as "a beggar-man whom nobody owns", drawn between failures past and commitments future. The enigmatic last three lines might be addressed either "out of context" to his older son, in that case shedding some light on the reasons why he was unable to commit also to his child. Or, it might be "in context", in which case it might refer to the mother of his youngest son being unaware of the fact he had a son from a previous relationship while signalling that the child's mother is now gone (dead or otherwise) and that this relationship too was unsuccesful - perhaps, in part, because he was bringing along a legacy of shame and failure that he never openly acknowledged? Being determined now to grab his last chance of a meaningful human relationship?
This, then, would be an implied story of emotional and communicative inadequacy, human tragedy and self-loathing combined with a "faith in love still devout".
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.
cheers
That issue, as far as I can see, has a crucial impact on everything in the lyric, and really comes down to these lines:
I once had a child and it saved my life
And I never even asked his name (Peel session version: I never even gave a name)
I just looked into his wondrous eyes, and said "never, never, never again"
But all too soon I did return, just like a moth to a flame
I'd like to suggest two different possible readings of this.
1) Obviously, this could be "had" in a sexual sense, the victim presumably being someone unfamiliar and the act being followed by remorse and determination not to repeat the act only to find that he was unable not to.
2) It could however also be "had" in the more conventional sense, ie, the I-person fathered a child, at one time. If so, it is presumably not the same child that he is addressing in the lyric. In this case, it would be strange that he never even asked his child's name, and you would have to assume that his conviction not to repeat it refers to an intention not to have any more children - or, a conviction not to look his child in the eyes again. In either case, without being able to follow through on that intention.
This, on a literal reading, seems like a more strained reading than the first. However, there is a rather obvious theme that suggests itself as a possible key to such a reading: Namely parental - and more specifically, paternal - emotional neglect. There's a biographic link, ie, Morrissey's strained, painful and distant relationship to his own father. The theme recurs also elsewhere in his lyrics, for instance (presumably) in "You should have been nice to me" and "Papa Jack".
On such a reading, never asking the child's name (or alternatively, not giving your own) combined with looking into his eyes and deciding never to do so again might refer simply to an inability and unwillingness to connect, to know your son and let him know you. At the same time, "saved my life" and "returning like a moth to a flame" marks an inability to simply walk away. The dysfunctional father: Can't connect, can't walk away.
One point in this reading's favor is that it is much more efficient in making sense of the lyric as a whole than the first reading is. With #1, there is an elemental contradiction between the effusive and at times almost selfless tenderness of the rest of the lyric. This of course could be poetic device - the startling revelation in the quoted lines throwing the whole lyric off the cozy pedestal it has snuggled into up until that point and turning everything off-colour with a single word, while appropriating the language of family affection and parental care for its precise opposite, showing these opposites as present within the same figure. Artistically speaking, very Morrisseyesque and powerful. But somehow, I don't quite manage to believe in it. It seems too contrived, somehow. But it was only when I paid really close attention to the last lines of the lyric that I became really sceptical to the validity of that reading:
and your mother she just never knew
as long as there's love
I did my best for her
These lines in my opinion clearly strengthen the second reading, in that it alludes to a broken parental relationship, which reinforces the implied context of the second reading's defective father/child relationship. Relative to the the first reading, the last two lines are fairly meaningless and out of context (which, I hasten to add, does not mean they are impossible).
There is one further passage which needs mention:
So, rattle my bones all over the stones
I'm only a beggar-man whom nobody owns
Oh see how words as old as sin fit me like a glove
Other than the breathtaking power and poetic allusiveness of the last line (implying as it does that the power of naming is positively old-testamently in its impact) the second line is highly suggestive because it implies a state of non-belonging and (literal or emotional) poverty.
So where does that leave us if, on the basis of the second reading, you attempt to reconstruct the story the lyric implies about its narrator?
This is someone who expresses an enormous tenderness and protectiveness towards his three-year old son - a complete commitment (Which incidentally has no real parallell in Morrissey's other lyrics because it seems almost selfless. Other "commitment" lyrics such as Hand in Glove or There is a Light are, by contrast, extremely centred in the narrator's own immediate urges and needs.). He has however another, older son with whom he never was able to establish a satisfactory relationship due to his own limitations. Nor was he able to just fully walk away, hence his present status as "a beggar-man whom nobody owns", drawn between failures past and commitments future. The enigmatic last three lines might be addressed either "out of context" to his older son, in that case shedding some light on the reasons why he was unable to commit also to his child. Or, it might be "in context", in which case it might refer to the mother of his youngest son being unaware of the fact he had a son from a previous relationship while signalling that the child's mother is now gone (dead or otherwise) and that this relationship too was unsuccesful - perhaps, in part, because he was bringing along a legacy of shame and failure that he never openly acknowledged? Being determined now to grab his last chance of a meaningful human relationship?
This, then, would be an implied story of emotional and communicative inadequacy, human tragedy and self-loathing combined with a "faith in love still devout".
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.
cheers
CrystalGeezer
My secret's my enzyme.
Well done, Qvist.
Clarksville
Variable depth
Very good.
Have you considered this in the light of "It's not your birthday any more."?
Have you considered this in the light of "It's not your birthday any more."?
CrystalGeezer
My secret's my enzyme.
Clarksville
Variable depth
I'm sorry, I'm always making you cry. You were happy with this song when you first started the thread and look what we've done.
Maybe we're in the wrong, to ever do this to any song.
Maybe we're in the wrong, to ever do this to any song.
CrystalGeezer
My secret's my enzyme.
Your observation was astute. My crying is irrelevant.
Clarksville
Variable depth
Crying is never irrelevant.
CrystalGeezer
My secret's my enzyme.
Why would it be wrong to discuss a song that prompts emotion?
Clarksville
Variable depth
No, I suppose you're right. I just don't like the idea of taking away any reading from a song. Especially a positive one. If a good song is supposed to be interpreted in many ways, maybe it should be left alone to do so.
That was the way I was thinking.
That was the way I was thinking.
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