Suit Of Lights

Pretty self-explanatory
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Butts
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Joined: Sun May 03, 2009 4:29 pm
Location: Leeds, UK

Suit Of Lights

Post by Butts »

Anyone have an insight into what this is about?

And they pulled him out of the cold cold ground
And they put him in a suit of lights


I've twigged the references to Nat King Cole and Merle Haggard ('Working Man's Blues')

Outside they're painting tar on somebody
It's the closest to a work of art that they will ever be


EC in dense lyrical mode or, more likely, just me being dense?
Poor Deportee
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Re: Suit Of Lights

Post by Poor Deportee »

I've always thought that song was, first, about being an artist in a world mediocrity. Only after he's dead is he appreciated - hence, the refrain. The lyric centres on a contrast between performers (who hear the 'working man's blues' and presumably want to sing them) wasting their breath, dying a thousand deaths, etc., and the mindless masses who consume gossip (the 'perforated first editions', who 'don't bother' to think, who 'keep [their] face down in the dirt,' and who know nothing more of art than tar and feathering.

There's also a really barbed concern with social class. The singer(s) want to sing the 'working man's blues.' But the target audience - the working class - is the exact opposite of the noble oppressed worker of socialist myth. This class is indifferent to struggle and wholly consumed with punitive right-wing politics ('hangman's noose') and wallowing in gossip and filth. And they tar and feather artists who sympathize with class struggle.

It's a truly bitter song, straight out of Thatcher's England. Also one of EC's very best songs in my opinion.
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
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A rope leash
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Re: Suit Of Lights

Post by A rope leash »

One of my favorites, as well...heh heh...

Excellent diagnosis, Poor Deep...
johnfoyle
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Re: Suit Of Lights

Post by johnfoyle »

From Elvis' KOA sleevenote-

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB2 ... php?t=3473

We...cut a song about work and respect called "Suit of Lights". This was inspired by watching my father, Ross, sing of experience and tenderness to an uncomprehending rabble of karaoke-trained dullards. The lessons I might have learned from my own words seemed only to have dawned on me after the event.


From Elvis' Girls Girls Girls sleevenote-

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB2 ... php?t=3590


Suit Of Lights There are small demands of respect. They are denied in this song, which I wrote for my father, Ross. He has greater professional resolve in the face of the tiny indignities that every working person shares, but is somehow overlooked and even resented when expressed by a performer. It is assumed that the risk of humiliation is the price paid for the privilege. I don't believe that is right and I am not talking about someone like myself, who has already been spoilt by your attention, coming to expect it to the extent that I sat down to write all of this but it's all "Work." The same pig-faced lout or drunken bore who is very large in the dark of the crowd, would be horrified if you were to simply trip him up on his way to work. Here endeth the lesson. By the way, we forgive nothing.
Neil.
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Re: Suit Of Lights

Post by Neil. »

Elvis said the song is inspired by seeing his dad singing his heart out in a working man's club, but the drunken masses just weren't listening - they were talking all the way through, etc.

It must be tough to make your living as an entertainer at the more ordinary end of the scale, having to haul your bones onto the stage, and appear cheerful and passionate when you know your audience isn't listening.

Getting on that stage every night must feel like hauling your dead carcass out of the ground, and animating it by wearing a glittering suit, in order to cover up your disillusion with a bit of sparkle. That's what I get from the chorus lyrics - "They pulled him out of the cold cold ground, and they put him in a suit of lights."

(As you probably know, the 'suit of lights' is what the Spanish call the incredibly gaudy suit that matadors wear.)

"Outside they're painting tar on somebody - it's the closest to a work of art that they will ever be." - as the other fella suggested, it's gotta be referring to the way that the trashy tabloid readers love to vicitimise certain people - to shame them with public exposures of what should be private, and ridicule them for all to see - to tar and feather them, in old-fashioned parlance. That kind of painting - painting tar - is the closest thing they'll ever come to being an artist.

It's also one of my very favourite Elvis songs - the way that the chorus is so melancholy, yet triumphant at the same time, really moves me! And, like many of Elvis's best songs, the main hook has that magical quality of seeming ancient and fresh at the same time.
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wordnat
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Re: Suit Of Lights

Post by wordnat »

An absolute masterpiece -- possibly EC's best....
Butts
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Location: Leeds, UK

Re: Suit Of Lights

Post by Butts »

Poor Deportee wrote:I've always thought that song was, first, about being an artist in a world mediocrity. Only after he's dead is he appreciated - hence, the refrain. The lyric centres on a contrast between performers (who hear the 'working man's blues' and presumably want to sing them) wasting their breath, dying a thousand deaths, etc., and the mindless masses who consume gossip (the 'perforated first editions', who 'don't bother' to think, who 'keep [their] face down in the dirt,' and who know nothing more of art than tar and feathering.

There's also a really barbed concern with social class. The singer(s) want to sing the 'working man's blues.' But the target audience - the working class - is the exact opposite of the noble oppressed worker of socialist myth. This class is indifferent to struggle and wholly consumed with punitive right-wing politics ('hangman's noose') and wallowing in gossip and filth. And they tar and feather artists who sympathize with class struggle.
Thanks everyone.

It makes sense does that. It wouldn't have been out of place on 'Spike'.
cyoung
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Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:08 pm

Re: Suit Of Lights

Post by cyoung »

everybody's sayong real comments. I get too emotional and when I read the lines, I can't enternalize the reall meaning of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ9sCBuVoQA
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