#the result wasn't particularly successful‚ and afaik this first single from the album didn't even chart here in the uk

[mariocki]

Infinite list of favourite lyrics: 222/?

John Cale - Dying on the Vine (1985)

"Who could sleep through all that noisy chatter?

The troops, the celebrations in the sun.

The authorities say my papers are all in order

And if I wasn't such a coward

I would run.

I'll see you when all the shooting's over;

Meet me on the other side of town.

Yes, you can bring all your friends along for protection,

It's always nice to have them hanging around.

I was thinking about my mother,

I was thinking about what's mine.

I was living my life like a Hollywood,

But I was dying, dying on the vine."

#favourite lyrics #john cale #dying on the vine #larry sloman #1985 #artificial intelligence #coming at a time of intense productivity (recording three albums in a little over a year‚ as well as producing work by former bandmate Nico #and others) as well as professional frustration‚ as his sparse experimental work failed to gain a popular audience‚ Artificial Intelligence #was a sort of last stab at commercial releasing for Cale; returning to a more accessible pop sound characterised by drum machines and synth #overlays‚ Cale worked with a cowriter‚ Sloman‚ to produce typically avant garde music within a more radio friendly framework #the result wasn't particularly successful‚ and afaik this first single from the album didn't even chart here in the uk #a pity‚ because I'd count it among his very best works (and I'm not alone; the song has had a slow reappraisal and is now generally #considered one of his finest of this era). a despondent‚ gloomy study of one man's annihilation‚ draped in several layers of allegory; #the vine can be read as a fairly literal metaphor (fruit left too long without harvest spoiling)‚ or as a reference to his then home on the #intersection between hollywood blvd and vine street in LA‚ a then rundown area rife with drug abuse and criminal activity; or as a nod to #Cale's struggles with alcoholism in this period (as well as a cocaine habit; his daughter was born soon after the release of this album‚ as #a result of which he retreated from the music business for a while and kicked his addictions). #some have pointed to the quoted verse‚ apparently about an authoritarian state‚ as being inspired by Cale's love of the literature of #Graham Greene‚ and there are some other parallels earlier in the song; mostly tho this is about a moment of crisis‚ of Cale at rock bottom #surveying where he was at in his life at that point and realising he needs to change (just as possible to read the authoritarian state as #every day life‚ with the troops regular people living their noisy lives around him and Cale's temptation to 'run' as a metaphor for suicide #who knows. whatever he's saying‚ there's an awful‚ beautiful melancholy to the near lilt in his voice as he ponders 'I was thinking #about my mother..' an incredible work from an under appreciated artist who‚ happily‚ beat his demons and stayed sober