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19 Apr 01 - 10:48 AM (#444371) Subject: Pogues Question From: UB Ed A Pair of Brown Eyes; neat song, getting ready to perform it. But, aside from all the booze, what's Sean getting at here? Anyone have the background? Whose eyes are brown? Ed Lots of Pogues Lyrics at http://www.pogues.com/(Look under "Discography") |
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19 Apr 01 - 11:06 AM (#444384) Subject: RE: Pogues Question From: GUEST,UB Dan I shared some of this information with Ed...but thought I would post it in case anyone else had an interest...
A great site for Pogues history is:
Back in London - where 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes' was enjoying critical fervour and mass cries of 'hit' - The Pogues worked out an accompanying video with Alex Cox and his co-director Martin Turner.
The result was not exactly standard Stiff stuff: the elusive brown eyes were seen in a paper bag and on a pool cue before being gobbled by a bull dog. Other shots clipped a dull-brained Costello, complete with chest-expander, and The Pogues causing certain controversy by spitting at a poster of Thatcher.
"I'd just seen the film 1984 and been really disappointed by it," says Cox. "There had been so many interesting parallels between Orwell's portrayal and the real 1984 and Thatcher's Britain, but the guys who made that film missed all their opportunities to comment. So 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes' gave us the chance to rant and rave about the fact that we are just Airstrip One for the Americans and their B52 bombers and their Cruise missiles, but everyone is so plugged into their television set or their Sony Walkman that they completely miss out on a global perspective."
Super Stiff, Dave Robinson persuaded Cox and Turner to shoot an alternative to the spitting sequence and, naturally enough, it was the second version which was deemed suitable
The Pogues were given an all too rare chance of plugging the single on the radio by guesting on Saturday Live. Andy Batten-Foster freely subjected himself to their caustic humour when he pointed out that Irish rebel songs were more than a yell away from punk. As Spider curled a ready lip to reply "Yeah," pause, "you're right," the airwaves couldn't contain Shane's excessive laugh. Unperturbed as only a Radio One DJ could be, Batten- Foster inquired if they were secret Irish folkies before giving them the go ahead for 'Streams Of Whiskey' and 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes'.
['And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda'] from their live set re-echoed the anti-war views of 'Brown Eyes' and so succinctly heard on MacGowan's 'Billy's Bones' 'Now Billy's out there in the desert sun and his mother cries when the morning comes/ and there's mothers cryin' all over this world for their poor dead darlin' boys and girls.
'A Pair Of Brown Eyes' was given alternative treatment by American singer/ songwriter Peter Case. He chose MacGowan's song as the final track on his critically acclaimed 'Peter Case' LP. "The bloke hasn't got a clue what he's singing about," sneers Cait. "He's done it 'cos it's a nice melody and he thinks it's cool. But he just doesn't know what he's singing, so it's like a foreign language."
O'Riordan considered their own version of 'Brown Eyes' to be the best song ever recorded. "Shane's got such a brilliant, emotive voice," she says. "If we had a different singer - even if it was someone who could write the same songs - then maybe we wouldn't come across. 'Cos Shane's voice is so bloody emotive that whatever he's singing: sentimental shit, hard shit, his own shit, shit shit - he can really put it over."
Meanwhile, Christy Moore - who had always been acknowledged, alongside The Dubliners and Clancey Brothers, as The Pogues greatest influence - began a major tour of England. Among his own gems was an interpretation of 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes'. "This," he told his audience, "is a song written by my new Hero: young MacGowan out of The Pogues."
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19 Apr 01 - 11:18 AM (#444395) Subject: RE: Pogues Question From: UB Ed Very succinct, but I would like to avoid just what happened to Peter Case. Sure its about drinking. Is it anti-war as well? Whose brown eyes? |
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19 Apr 01 - 11:26 AM (#444409) Subject: RE: Pogues Question From: GUEST,UB Dan I think he's talking about different sets of brown eyes...the brown eyes of a dead soldier lying next to him...and maybe the brown eyes of his girlfriend or wife that was waiting for the soldier back home, the brown eyes of his own girlfriend waiting for him back home...and the metaphorical eyes of God...Love, loss, fear, death, religion...all represented in different sets of eyes, the windows to the soul |
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19 Apr 01 - 12:35 PM (#444462) Subject: RE: Pogues Question From: UB Ed OK. So he's drunk in a bar and the song is a flashback. Very cool.
I looked at him Jealous of his dead friend's girl waiting for him at home? Does anyone other than Dan (and thanks Dan for the input; let someone else have a go) have an opinion? |
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20 Apr 01 - 12:58 AM (#445120) Subject: RE: Pogues Question From: Den I think you've missed the mark here guys. I think that what Shane is talking about is the "horrors", the effects of too much alcohol. He mentions the Juke Box with Ray and Philomena, stuff that smacks of drinking in some of the heavy Irish clubs in England (Ray Lynam and Philomena Begly) and Johnny McEvoy. He's speaking about wasted lives. People who come over from Ireland looking for a better life leaving all they know behind them and the ones who end up on the losing end, the downward slide into alcoholism. "The pair of brown eyes that waited once for me" is talking about home and the girl he left behind. "The arms and legs of other men" is about waking up on the street with others in the same predicament. Nothing to do with war. "Giving the walls a talkin" is all drunk stuff and lets face it Shane can speak from experience. Den |
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20 Apr 01 - 02:55 PM (#445518) Subject: RE: Pogues Question From: GUEST |
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20 Apr 01 - 08:18 PM (#445809) Subject: RE: Pogues Question From: McGrath of Harlow Like any good song or poem it works on different levels. But literally what I take it is happening is that this young lad is out getting drunk, and feeling lost and a long way from home, and in a pub this old fella is telling him about his war experiences. Which basically consist of getting shot to bits with his mates, and then coming home and his girl isn't waiting for him. It's essentially the Band Played Waltzing Matilda stuff. The words about arms and legs being scattered all around is a quote from a song about the Crimean War, the Kerry Recruit.
It ends with the lad staggering off, drunk and angry about the futility of it al, and he knows his girl isn't waiting for him back home either. He's recognising that he's in the same boat as the old wreck of a man, fucked up. And a poet at the same time.
Great song. And the jukebox - that's Johnny Ray and Philomena Begley playing. (And here are the words - except for a typo where the DT has sand where it should be sang.) |
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29 Apr 20 - 09:40 PM (#4049448) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Joe Offer needs more research - refresh |
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30 Apr 20 - 03:48 PM (#4049602) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: GUEST,keberoxu Nobody has mentioned Shanne Hasler, Shanne Bradley that was. This is a woman's name. Shanne Bradley played bass in The Nips, a/k/a The Nipple Erectors, the punk-era band which included Shane MacGowan and James Fearnley. Bradley and MacGowan were an item, and MacGowan has written, and sung, more about his love of her. (Check out "Song of No Name" lyrics, possibly about his tumultuous affair with Bradley). And yes, Shanne Bradley had brown eyes. |
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30 Apr 20 - 04:14 PM (#4049613) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: meself I think that McGrath once again gets about as close to it as anyone. The lyrics consist of scraps of memory of an evening when the speaker was "drunk to hell", and he may well be drunk to hell as he tries to recount them: it all comes out chaotic and confused, but with a kind of powerful emotional truth underlying it. |
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30 Apr 20 - 07:08 PM (#4049633) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: gillymor I always thought it was just about a vet with PTSD self-medicating with booze and who knows what else. It reminds of hanging out with 2 of my high school friends who had done tours in Viet Nam. We got into some extreme booze and drug-fueled behavior. I think this is one of the Pogues best songs and one of Shane's best lyrics. |
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30 Apr 20 - 08:05 PM (#4049641) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Steve Shaw It always amuses me when I read attempted, often long-winded interpretations of song words. I'm thinking for example (apart from the present example) of a couple I've recently perused here, Bright Blue Rose and Raglan Road. Just listen, enjoy, allow yourself to be sucked in and let your imagination run riot. I've had this attitude since I were a lad, listening to my otherwise impressive English teacher attempting to tell us what Wordsworth's rather convoluted "big" poems were supposed to mean (I preferred my own interpretations, which occasionally weren't especially complimentary...) The songwriters often dine out on the mysteries they've sown in their lyrics. It took decades to get Carly Simon to admit who it was who was so vain, and Don McClean, when asked what American Pie meant, said it meant he'd never have to work again... Anyhow, gillymor, for my money Shane's best song is Rainy Night In Soho. Brown Eyes is right up there, though... |
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30 Apr 20 - 08:26 PM (#4049644) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: gillymor That's a good one, Steve. Thousands are Sailing and The Body of an American are among my current favorites. |
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30 Apr 20 - 08:38 PM (#4049646) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Steve Shaw All good, all good! When it's summer in Siam.... |
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08 Dec 23 - 03:13 PM (#4193213) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: GUEST,Laban Surely when on the jukebox Johnny sang, it's Johnny Cash not Johnny MacEvoy? (from many evenings in 70s/80s Irish pubs, country is big over there. I first got into the music in the pubs listening to Hank Thompson, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard alongside The Rare Old Times or Carnlough Bay) |
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08 Dec 23 - 06:19 PM (#4193217) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: GUEST,Peter Laban FWIW and to avoid confusion, I had nothing to do with previous post |
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09 Dec 23 - 06:55 AM (#4193236) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Steve Shaw The Country-singing duet Ray Lynam and Philomena Begley sang a song called My Elusive Dreams and Johnny Cash sang a song called A Thing Called Love. There, that wasn't too hard, was it! |
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10 Dec 23 - 04:55 AM (#4193294) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Thompson Seems clear enough to me. It's a short story: In the first verse, the singer is drunk and meets an aged soldier trying to drink away his memories of horror. One summer evening drunk to hell I sat there nearly lifeless An old man in the corner sang Where the water lilies grow And on the jukebox Johnny sang About a thing called love And it's how are you kid and what's your name And how would you bloody know (He's sitting there drunk as a skunk, an old man in the corner is singing the song Where the Waterlilies Grow while on the jukebox, Johnny Cash is singing his song A Thing Called Love. Next two verses are the old man incoherently telling the young fellow about his war experiences, in which, as he lay catastrophically injured and surrounded by the body parts of his comrades, he clings to the image of his sweetheart at home. But when he does get back (he and his comrades each wearing a label so the military hospital can identify them if they're incoherent), his lover has abandoned him. In blood and death 'neath a screaming sky I lay down on the ground And the arms and legs of other men Were scattered all around Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed then cursed Then prayed then bled some more And the only thing that I could see Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me But when we got back, labelled parts one to three There was no pair of brown eyes waiting for me Brief break then for a chorus taken from traditional Irish and English music: And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go For a pair of brown eyes Back to the pub, where the singer and the war hero are looking at each other; the singer hates him because he wants to cling to the sickly-sweet images of popular country music - Philomena Begley and Ray Lynam's My Elusive Dreams, and to think about his own brown-eyed girl: I looked at him he looked at me All I could do was hate him While Ray and Philomena sang Of my elusive dreams I saw the streams, the rolling hills Where his brown eyes were waiting And I thought about a pair of brown eyes That waited once for me Finally, an anodyne round-up to damp down the emotion of the previous images, followed by a repeat of the chorus: So drunk to hell I left the place Sometimes crawling sometimes walking A hungry sound came across the breeze So I gave the walls a talking And I heard the sounds of long ago From the old canal And the birds were whistling in the trees Where the wind was gently laughing So a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go For a pair of brown eyes For a pair of brown eyes |
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10 Dec 23 - 05:59 AM (#4193297) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Steve Shaw The words of the song are, to me, more than good enough just to have as a stand-alone poem. A good few of Shane's songs are like that. I could have been someone Well so could anyone You took my dreams from me When I first found you I kept them with me babe I put them with my own Can't make it all alone I've built my dreams around you |
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11 Dec 23 - 12:29 PM (#4193387) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: meself Thompson: I commend you on your interpretation, which nails it, as far as I'm concerned. I was always thrown off by the line "where his brown eyes were waiting"; it had not occurred to me that "his brown eyes" could refer to his "brown-eyed girl", so to speak, as opposed to some unidentified guy with brown eyes ...! |
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12 Dec 23 - 12:55 PM (#4193443) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Thompson #Bows A beautiful example of… is it metonymy? What my mother used to refer to as "the container for the thing containe". |
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12 Dec 23 - 02:43 PM (#4193449) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: meself 'Synecdoche' to be specific (i.e., a species of metonymy, apparently). |
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13 Dec 23 - 03:35 AM (#4193476) Subject: RE: Help: A Pair of Brown Eyes (The Pogues) From: Thompson Thank you, always mix up synecdoche and metonymy. |