Post by ikrPost by The REAL NaminanuPost by ikrWhat are these all about? Don't usually pay much attention to the words
themselves, but I was listening to this album the other day for the first
time in, oh, about 20 years, and the lyric jumped out at me. A metaphor
for something political? I like PC's drumming (esp the hi-hat) and the
kbd riff in the first few lines of the verse on Dodo.
Submarines.
Nuclear?
From the old "The Way They Walk", website:
http://www.twtw.demon.co.uk/faq.htm
12) What do the lyrics in the song Dodo/Lurker mean?
In November 1991 someone actually phoned in to the Larry King Radio Show
and asked Genesis:
Question: There's a song Dodo/Lurker which first appeared on Abacab, can
you tell me what that song is all about?
Tony: God, it's a long time ago, I wrote that lyric...many years ago. It
was really more a, one of those kind of lyrics that wasn't supposed to
have too specific a meaning, like individual lines have meanings in it.
Erm, I can't remember particularly what was going on in my brain there.
Larry King: Abstract.
Tony: Well it was, really was sort of stream of consciousness kind of
lyric really, I liked the sound of the words and you had this sort of
different images that came in. It was one of those songs that was
supposed to have a sort of, an image with each line that was supposed to
hit you.
As for the Lurker riddle, this is taken from the October 1997 edition of
Record Collector:
Tony: It's very interesting this, because we're now in 1997, and I wrote
the lyric to that in '82. You may say there's been a lot of discussion
about what the riddle is, but I've never actually been asked that
question in an interview. Because no one asked me it all fell a bit
flat! Now all these years on, I'm afraid to say really that there is no
real solution. You can search for your own one if you like. It was a bit
of a joke. When I was writing it I honestly didn't really have a
specific idea in mind. If you can find out what the answer is, perhaps
you can tell me!
According to Scott McMahan and the Genesis Discography, the lurker is a
submarine:
"..all the clues are there. I would bet the "two eyes looking to see
what I was" refers to a stereo periscope.
Clothes of brass: Brass is a staple of the nautical world, for its
resistance to corrosion. The use of the word conjures up more 2000
Leagues Under The Sea images than those of a nuclear powered submarine,
but nevertheless the association of brass with the sea is inescapable.
Hair of brown: When submarines surface, they have all sorts of seaweeds
and camouflage on the deck that is exposed to the sky.
Seldom need to breathe: Submarines carry their own air supply, and do
not often need to resurface.
Don't need no wings to fly: Of course not, it "flies" through the ocean.
And a heart of stone: Uranium, the stone that powers the nuclear reactor.
And a fear of fire and water: The two most deadliest things that can
happen to a submarine. Water means a hull breach, and pressure loss, and
everyone dies. Fire means all the oxygen aboard burns and everyone dies.
The final proof that the answer to the riddle is, truly, a submarine
lies in the music. The working titles for Dodo and Lurker were German I
and II. As in German U-boats, because the music itself doesn't sound
Germanic. If you listen to Dodo, Lurker, and Submarine back to back, you
will find that Lurker has some of the exact same drum lines, and Lurker
ends on the same music that Submarine begins. Like the suites of
thematically related music in A Trick Of The Tail and Wind and
Wuthering, this is yet another case of Genesis splicing and dicing a
long track of related music into separate parts scattered all over the
place."
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The third part of "Dodo/Lurker" is of course "Submarine" which was on
the B-side of the "Man on the Corner" single and the Archive #2 boxset.