(taken from "Go Tell The Mountain")
It's cloudy in the west, it looks like rain
My eyes are black holes and i'm burning away
You slaughtered your loving man
Killed him in his sleep
The blood and crying of your murder
Simply stains your sheets
Now, you're a ghost on the highway
Your gesture's meaningless
You're lost to the living men
Trailing souls to the end
You thought winning as a woman, meant failing as a friend
It is nor an art statement, to drown a few passionate men,
You made yourself a diamond
To blind young men's eyes
You claim because they want your shine
They deserve to walk the line,
You're a ghost on the highway
Your gesture is meaningless
You're lost forever to the living men
Trailing souls to the end
(noise)
Yes, I would give you my love
So my soul would not starve
But, it could never move the honest rock
Of what you really are,
You're a ghost on the highway
you're like straw and meaningless
I hate you, but I love you
I'll carry that to the end
If I ever lie with you again, I pray I do not sleep
If I ever closed my eyes again, I'd realize what you are to me.
You are simply a liar
An animal who bluffs and steals
Until you become
A bigger creature's meal,
You're a ghost on the highway
Yoy're trash and meaningless
I hate you, but I love you
I'll carry that to the end
You're lost on the highway
The Gun Club were my introduction to the dark, passionate, obsessive world of Southern Gothic. I first found them and their frontman/writer Jeffery Lee Pierce in the winter of '89 when I met to a odd obsessive guy with a knife like intelligence named Craig Fitzsimons. How I met him is not important, but what he gave me is. The first time I heard that terrible quality taped copy of the Gun Club's "Death Party" EP, something changed. The Dark winter skies outside the window of that semidetached house clouded over and became bruised and opressive, the rain hammered down, and somewhere in the distance I could have sworn I heard thunder breaking, trying to fight for dominance over Jeffery Lee Pierce's nasal screaming.
They sang about drugs, teenage angst, heroin addiction (spliced with obsessive love, the two seemed interchangeable to Pierce), murder, guilt, sex, racism and death. Pierce really seemed to be gut wrechingly honest about the subjects he addressed, there is a feel in his work that the man really lived through the songs he wrote, he was tormented, he was a heroin addict but nowhere is there to be found a sense of "I have heard this before" nowhere did you feel that he was trying glorify or excuse himself, which you often hear in others work, especially rap. He was presenting himself to you naked, to judge.
Pierce followed me in a walkman when I first set out to explore the world. "Black Train" played night after night as I click clacked my way across Europe's plains and mountains in second class carridges, in the company of strangers. It was Pierce who taught me the jailhouse walk, Pierce who gave me solace while I slept on the streets of Paris and Amsterdam, and Pierce who showed me the way home. He gave me songs to picture faces of long gone lovers, and songs to steel my nerve against the drug dealers, hobos and criminals I came across. Now that he is dead he is sorely missed, but he still speaks to me through his records, and I would not be surprised if his spirit still haunts the opium dens, brothels and bars of New Orleans, and watches the homeless and the hookers of Las Vegas.
I will bring you sounds, discography, lyrics and photos of Jeffery Lee, and hopefully if I can do the man justice, a history. In the meantime why not buy his book, posthumously published by clicking here.
FatherCrow
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