Heartland

I don't think it's about drugs at all actually.

England fades away
in your eyes

"Lie back and think of England".

its about f**king on heroin, surely?

yeah, lie back and think of england, but as the heroin kicks in you slide into that foggy drug haze, it will fade from your eyes...

and all the other lyrics seem to fit that sex & drugs angle too, from my reading

Quiff Boy wrote:its about f**king on heroin, surely?

CellThree wrote:Some Sisters interview from 1984 :

AE To me that song is pure amphetamine. It's the most amphetamine sort of, song ever

I think it's safe to say that it's about amphetamine. Not heroin. Von says so.

Not to belabour the point, but at length and in context:


Interviewer:...It sounds like it's in the middle of a city or something---

Von: Uh - 44th Street...Yeah...but I shifted it a few blocks down, uh, so that I wouldn't actually get pinned down to the actual occurrence which led to that being written...

...There's so much amphetamine in that song. I mean, to me that song is pure amphetamine - it's the most amphetamine sort of song ever. It works in a completely different time scale to everything else. It's not the sort of, uh, all-out gonzo amphetamine song - although we've got a couple of those - but it's one of those sort of 'Tingle-tingle-tingle - uh, was that a minute or was that an hour?' songs...

There's a lot of cars [something unintelligible - at least to me] by my window as well, which is a very LA song. The thing which prompted the writing of Afterhours is very similar to something in LA which might have prompted the same song, so it's like LA and New York rolled into one...


So the only lasting question is: What might have happened in The Iroquois Hotel that might also have occurred in Los Angeles, circa mid-1980s? I have my suspicions...

Quiff Boy wrote:its about f**king on heroin, surely?

yeah, lie back and think of england, but as the heroin kicks in you slide into that foggy drug haze, it will fade from your eyes...

and all the other lyrics seem to fit that sex & drugs angle too, from my reading

But what could England stand here for? And what does the sex & drugs thing signify here it real terms?

IMHO, say, has always used the sex as well as the drugs thing as a metaphor.

And it worked perfectly well, since the say, medicine went down well with that incentive at least with
those who could be expected to be interested in such say, views at all.

It doesn't really matter what happened in any LA or NY hotel, since it's still happening anywhere in this world.
With as much as without drugs and/or alcohol.

... anyway, I could be quite well of mark about his motives or motivation ...

That's exactly it-the precise circumstances about which the song was written aren't nearly as important as the feeling the song evokes.

England fades away could be a reference to the more relaxed lifestyle in America at the time. I seem to remember at least one interview where there is comment that being able to do stuff beyond, say midnight, was a major rush for young fellas from the UK

Oh, and most of the lyrics are still robbed from Fear and Loathing, which in my eyes makes it speed, not horse

As me and emwk said on the first page, yes. It's speed.

Along with the extended Neverland, Afterhours is an unreleased masterpiece.
About speed.

Unreleased? It's on the Body And Soul 12"

It is about speed. Comedown for certain.

markfiend wrote:

splintered thing wrote:Along with the extended Neverland, Afterhours is an unreleased masterpiece.
About speed.

Unreleased? It's on the Body And Soul 12"

And the extended Neverland is on the Floodland remaster. (Unless you're talking about the original full length Neverland, as opposed to that cut-and-paste job, in which case it's a non-existent masterpiece.)

Well yes, ok, I meant non-album masterpiece, if you will. You probably won't...

splintered thing wrote: Well yes, ok, I meant non-album masterpiece, if you will. You probably won't...

I might if there's cake.

There's always cake at my house!

splintered thing wrote:There's always cake at my house!

I'm in

LyanvisAberrant wrote:

splintered thing wrote:There's always cake at my house!

I'm in

Yes but it's exactly a year old so the cake's rather stale and mouldy now. Help yourself.

Feed it with whisky and we'll never know where it's gone

My cakes are always a bit squiffy... a year though... where has time gone?

...I've only just got here, don't look at me

To address the question of what incident may have occurred to inspire Vonald McDonald to write the song, in an interview around Floodland time he mentioned having done methedrine in NY at about the time the incident in NY mentioned above was to take place. From what he described, it sounds like an eventful week (methedrine apparently keeping him awake for that long).

Also, perhaps interesting to note is that Thomas Edison's movie studio/giant camera was called the Black Mariah. Not saying that's what Eldorado is saying, but I will note that an early sign of amphetamine psychosis is disorganized, very tangential thinking.

Also also, the song is definitely about speed, though to be fair Eldritch misrepresents a speed comedown a bit much. In my experience, the lyrics that would portray it completely accurately would be, "[six minutes of silence]....*grunt*...[ten minutes of silence]...f**k...."

AmericanDream wrote:Vonald McDonald
[...]
Eldorado

markfiend wrote:

AmericanDream wrote:Vonald McDonald
[...]
Eldorado

That's one scary-ass clown!

But I can sense a new game beginning here: the Andrew Eldritch Nicknames Thread anyone?

spiggy small cock. Was an early variant

paint it black wrote:spiggy small cock. Was an early variant

Oh no not again!