Here Today... Gone To Hell!

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I love this song. It?s one of my favourites :)

How a body took the body
Gave that boy a gun

This one... a) it's what I hear, and b) it's a reference to the novel......   works for me!

I still think it might be a nod to an old Scottish traditional named "Comin' Thro' the Rye", which was eventually given lyrics by Robert Burns.? This song was mentioned in the novel? when Holden and Phoebe discuss Holden's dream of being a "catcher in the rye" for all the innocent children.? It's based around his misinterpretation of the lyrics.

Part of the lyrics are as follows:

Gin a body meet a body
Comin' thro' the rye
Gin a body kiss a body
Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body
Comin' frae the town
Gin a body kiss a body
Need a body frown?

I love how the first verse has a totally different melody to the second verse and that there are two choruses with the catcher in the rye part and the na na na part. I love Axl's clean, emotional vocal. I lov the unexpected synth breakdown and May's guitar solo. The last verse that goes a minute and a half, the one quote above, is extra special, there's somthing about the melody and hurt in the vocals, especially when he sings 'you were the instrument, you were the one' and 'you took our innocence beyond.....'. I love the nod to the Beatles melodically and with the na na na part.

Having listened to the other leaks literally hundreds of time, I'd only listened to Catcher maybe 5 times until the other day, mainly because the quality is so bad it ruins it. I can only imagine the final version being really special.

Within the leaks alone there is such an incredible melting pot of styles and Axl uses so many textures of his voice it's unbelievable.

 

Just for the record, I had to read Catcher in the Rye for my AP English class this year. I got a bit excited about it (I normally hate reading) because of the Guns song, so I actually read the whole thing instead of Sparking it. It easily turned out to be the greatest book I've ever read, and I identified with Holden Caulfield so much that it was scary. The hilarious sarcastic tone and all the cynicism... nothing beats it  :hihi:

listening to it now great song : ok:

I believe it's

How a body
Took a body

There's a relation to John Lennon and Mark Chapman as well.

I actually think that out opf all the leaks we've had so far, it's definately the weakest one out of them all

But yeah, the final verse is pretty cool- but that's it really

So has anyone got a decent idea of what it's about? I don't see how it all relates to Chapman, but then Axl seems to be making a point of writing something Beatle/Lennonesque. The googled lyrics above blatantly aren't all right but even so I can't figure the song out at all.

"The weakest"?!!! :rant:

 :no:This song is so beautiful it makes me want to cry. I find this song one of the most beautiful and complex song Axl Rose has ever written.
 Please dont mistake me for an ignoramus who bandys the word "complex" because Axl once referred to his new material as "complex" - the way that word was hijacked and abused on the boards when describing the leaks really upset me.

What I love and find enchanting is how ambiguous this song is.

Whats this song about?

Is it Axl speaking of his pains over the years, his struggle to overcome his own demons?
Is it about Mark Chapman and John Lennon?
Is it based on the novel?
Is it about me? Because I can relate to every word!

Analize this song and you can relate it to anyone of those things, or a combination of them and that is the true mark of a truly brilliant piece of song writing.

This is the song that really gives me hope for the music that Axl has been working on over the years.

Better, IRS, CD are great, awsome!!! For me they are the equivalent of Jungle, Paradise City, Sweet Child.

But Catcher in the Rye has the lasting appeal and potential for continual new apprieciation that songs like Coma, Breakdown, Locomotive have now.
They were not the songs that grabbed the attention like the big hits did, but like drinking fine wine, they take time to aquire the taste that enables you to really appreiciate what the maker wanted to create and for you to experience.


Anyway, time for old Gandalf to get back to his whisky :peace:

 On an ordinary day
Not in an ordinary way
All at once this song I heard
No longer would it play for anybody
Or anyone
That needed comfort from somebody
Needed comfort from someone who cared
To be
Not like you
Unlike me
And then the voices went away
From me
So many set the wheels in motion
Haunts our memories
You were the instrument
You were the one
How a body took the body
Gave that boy a gun
Took our innocence
Beyond our stares
Some type of moment
There we got it
All alone with her today



http://www.gnrsource.com/songinfo/cd/catcher.htm

Smoke Weed And You Will Know ;)

You need to sink into in my friend, at the moment I am relating it to mental illness, something close to my heart- and also I believe close to Axls(Dont flame me for my enlightened assumption : ok:)

But as I suggested in my post above I believe it can be related to a number of things.

Don't you just love the tone in how he sings "But every time I see them makes me wish I had a gun..."

I dont know why, its just so sad and heartfelt, and the way he says it :peace: - its just perfect.

That song is just unreal, quite hard to not get sucked into it. Maybe the most compelling GN'R song and lyrics ever along with Sweet Child O' Mine? I think the song is about mind control and things "planted" into your soul as a child?

Love the part where it goes "You decide..." there's no turnign back in the song from there, you just have to keep listening.

Great great song, one of my favourites. Hope they will play this live! The song deserves it!

Took our innocence, beyond our scabs, sometimes we only think we got it all when no one else is there.[/size]

For me the final line is:

You took our innocence beyond odd stares, sometimes we only think we've got it all when noone else is there.

I'm really enjoying this thread.

I just realised 'You took our innocence' is surely a reference to Axl and his sister being abused (or even raped as Axl says he found out through regression therapy hence his bad back and posture) by William Rose, their real father.

Way back in those RIP and Rolling Stone interviews in 91-92 Axl was talking about working through all his complex childhood traumas and it makes sense that he'd put the thought into songs.

In the 1999 RS interview he said that sometime he'd go down to the studion in the late 90's and not know what he'd be able to do. And then he'd express 'life suck' but he'd express it in a really beautiful way. That's what he does anyway on e.g. Madagascar, TWAT etc but even moreso here in Catcher.

I'd just really like to know exactly how far Chapman, the novel and what I hear as a deliberate musical nod to Lennon/The Beatles fit into it.

Wikipedia sez: Mark David Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon, was carrying the book when he was arrested immediately after the murder and referred to it in his statement to police shortly thereafter. John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book.


Also, I hear the final line as

Took our innocence
Beyond our stares
Sometimes the only thing we got at all
When no one else is there

Not hugely different from what's been said, I know, but just what I hear.



You gave that boy a gun - I doubt this is relevant, but the guy who shot Dimebag Darrell of Pantera onstage used a gun given to him by his mother. Lennon and Darrell were both killed on December 8 as well.

Well, I'm done. :D

I got "All alone with him today...

at the end, so mabye it is the John Lennon reference,
and it actually fits more... why would it be her? if it is about john lennon?

thats my interp

How is it that you don?t hear/understand the words/lyrics that are in your own language? ???

This song sounds so awesome in the beginning, but I feel it builds and builds and then never really gets to where I was hoping, if that makes sense.

Hearing them is a matter of the leak being bad quality. Understandin the ones we can hear is a matter of guesswork and interpretation. Catcher's lyrics aren't as easily interpreted as e.g. Madagascar's or The Blues'.



I understand what you mean. But there are a lot of people saying the last verse beginning 'On an ordinary day..' that goes for the last minute and a half is the most powerful part of the song. On several of the other leaks....Mad, Blues, TWAT and I.R.S, the songs build up to really high singing/screaming and huge guitar solos. Catcher does build up to something and I think it's the heightened emotion in the lyrics, melody and vocals in that last verse that have already been discussed here. There are just certain parts that really kill me, particularly 'You were the instrument..' and 'You took our innocence...'.

I think it says such a lot about Axl that he can compose so many different types and styles and sing in so many different voices. Plus, there is just nobody right now in any of the big rock groups from Axl's era who I could imagine writing a song like this. If you listen to the quality of the writing and the uniqueness of the melody and then look at the drivel that e.g. Bon Jovi just released there's just no comparison.

I think you might have got it right with "sometimes we only think we've got it all when no one else is there". That resonates well with the rest of the song ("we're not the only ones", "how it would be all alone"), and Chapman committing the murder because he was jealous of Lennon's fame.

"Beyond odd stares" makes no fucking sense though. Neither do any of the guesses that other people have proposed. I have a feeling the last word of that line will end up being completely different than what everyone thinks once a clearer leak surfaces.


I'd be careful there.... Innocence isn't just purity, or sexual inexperience. It's also naivety, and a vulnerability to being oppressed and controlled. There are negative connotations to the loss of innocence, but it is also an experience for growth. A worldview based on innocence is an illusion that denies the realities of evil and darkness in the world; that's what the book is about, the problems with trying to force an artificial understanding of what the world should be onto your actual experience of it. The loss of innocence allows you to wake up from the illusion, and grow into seeing that life is imperfect and it's not all fun and games. Kind of like when a singer promising that 'all you need is love' gets gunned down by a psychopath.

If you don't believe me, pay attention to the last verse. Chapman/Holden is the "boy" who took the song/comfort away. When Axl sings "You took our innocence", he's not directing that to Chapman/Holden because he says a line earlier that the person he's talking to "gave that boy a gun". He's talking to Lennon. In the context of the song, 'taking innocence' is an act of empowerment..... showing the world the selfish envy that led Chapman to the murder, and more importantly showing that the potential for those same dark emotions exists in us all.

Justynius, that's brilliant and very helpful. Thanks. I wish there were more intelligent posters around.

is it about john lennon ?
 my bad yes it is.

I feel the exact same way.
Although, we have only had the one version of it, whereas we have multiple demo's of TWAT, IRS and Better, so that could explain it......

I always thought it was...

"You took our innocence/Beyond those steps/Sometimes we only think we've got it all when no-one else is there."

The "steps" being the steps outside the Dakota building, where Lennon was shot.

After careful analysis (ie. sticking the speaker up to my ear - no headphones for me :P), I think this is right. Though what I said earlier (the only thing we got at all) could make sense

I think its pretty obvious that the song is about both - book and chapman. And that's what makes it trully beautiful to me, because Axl managed in the lyrics to refer to two things correlated and took them in one story.

I actually haven't been able to stop listening to this song lately. I am really dying to hear what a finished version will sound like cause this version is really a beautiful song.

I know what you mean.  I think it's one of the best of the new tunes.  Probably one of his best songs ever, and if the demo is anything to go by the final product will be incredible.  As far as the Chapman/Lennon association goes, I always assumed that the song dealt with it in some way just from the title alone.  Hearing it for the first time sealed it in my mind, as I think it's very Lennonesque in it's way. 

axls a very political man,

look at the name of the album for christ sakes,
chinese democracy

in nearly every song theirs is probably some hidden meaning/agenda if you look hard enough,

part of the fun really

I don't think so Redsquare.  Just my opinion, but I don't think so.  I don't think it's a sympathy, praise or denigration of Chapman...just a song, and beautifully written by the way.  I get a lot of Holden Caufield out of it.  Holden was very much an observer.  Much like the scene with the protitute (Sunny was her name?  I forget.) he was more an observer than a person of action.  It is a beautiful song.

I must say, upon re-listening the hundreds of times I have, I always picture those opening wails of Axl as something along the lines of what those who heard of Lennon's shooting sounded like.  I always picture Axl waking from a nightmare right before the opening words come out...like he's wailing/moaning in pain in his sleep, before the words come out.  The song to me is like a narration.  Pure gold.   

Yeah, I certainly don't see it as sympathy for Chapman.  I see it as kind of coming from the perspective of both Holden Caulfied and Mark David Chapman (as in Chapman saw himself as Caulfield), but that doesn't mean Axl sympathizes with their perspective.  Or let me rephrase that.  That doesn't mean he sympathizes with what Chapman did.  Obviously.  I think axl4prez put it best by saying "I don't think it's a sympathy, praise or denigration of Chapman.  Just a song, and beautifully written by the way."

If any of you guys are interested in reading more about Lennon's final days and the role "Catcher In The Rye" played in Chapman's fateful decision to murder Lennon I would recommend my friend Robert Rosen's book "Nowhere Man".  It's based in part on Lennon's diaries as is Geoffrey Giulliano's "Lost In America", but I think "Nowhere Man" is a better read.  Of course there's scores of Lennon bios out there (a good deal of which I've read) but Bob does a better job than most of explaining the whole "Catcher In The Rye"/Chapman thing. 

http://myspace.com/robertrosen27
http://robertrosen.blogspot.com

And yes, Manson was heavily influenced by the "White Album" and the various secret "messages" he read into it, including all the silly race war stuff.  This is something he later denied, saying that it was more his young followers who were heavily influenced by The Beatles.   What can't be denied though is "White Album" references like "Helter Skelter" and "Pigs" (as in the George Harrison penned "Piggies") being found scrawled in blood at both the Tate and the Labianca murder scenes.  Anyway, here's some links for further reading if anybody's interested.  I must admit, I find the whole Manson thing to be pretty interesting....

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/manson/manson.html
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/manson/mansonbeatles.html

I really think Catcher in the rye is one of the best new songs Ive heard yet. The vocals sound haunting! Kinda Ozzy-ish? That's what it reminded me of anyway.  :hihi: Love the breakdown bit too with the feedbacking guitar. And ofcourse Brian May playing on it!

CITR is easily my favorite track of all the leaks.  It's deep, inspiring, beautifully written, and just that good.  I'll be sorely disappointed if it's not on Chinese Democracy.

I don't think the song is about anything or anyone in particular. I think he more like wrote thoughts about various subjects. Especially in the poem-like last verse of the song.

Re read this whole thread, Its clearly about the John Lennon and the murderer,
Even the tone of the song is John Lennon-esc

Axl writes songs usually about 1 topic/theme, not about various subjects , imo

I read the whole topic.  I just think there's more to it than just Lennon and the murderer. Songs of course can be interpreted in a million ways. What I meant by "various subjects" is that he writes a lot about his feelings and his own personal history, and that makes all his songs, including this one, multidimensional. (I guess that was the word I was looking for.)