Post by Julie on Mar 7, 2005 17:27:12 GMT -5
Pretty Good Year
Tears on the sleeve of a man don't wanna be a boy today heard the eternal footman
bought himself a bike to race and Greg he writes letters and burns his CDs they
say you were something in those formative years hold onto nothing as fast as you
can well still pretty good year
Maybe a bright sandy beach is gonna bring you back may not so now you're off
you're gonna see America well let me tell you something about America pretty
good year some things are melting now well what's it gonna take till my baby's
alright
and Greg he writes letters with his birthday pen sometimes he's aware that
they're drawing him in Lucy was pretty your best friend agreed well still pretty
good year
I think this song is about how you can have an incredibly rough year when just about everything goes wrong and you are disappointed in so many ways. But I guess you kinda have to take a step back and say, well, that was quite an experience and now it's over and how can I use this to better myself. It's like saying sarcastically, "Well, that was a pretty good year."
Here's Tori's description of it:
"Whether it bums you out or not, the truth is, all this happened, as much as the first record did. But there are other characters involved a bit more. There are just other beings involved in this one. Like Pretty Good Year, for example, I got a letter from a guy named Greg in England. This one got to me - it missed getting to me for, like, three months. But it just got passed around to different people, and finally somebody just - I was walking through the record label in between the tour up in England, and somebody put it in my bag. They just said, "You know what, Tori? This has been sitting around here. Just take it." And I took this letter, and I opened my bag two days later, and I read it. It was a picture of - he had drawn himself. It was a pencil drawing. Greg has kind of scrawny hair and glasses, and he's very skinny and he held this great big flower. Greg is 23, lives in the north of England, and his life is over, in his mind. I found this a reoccurrence in every country that I went. In that early 20 age, with so many of the guys - more than the girls, they were a bit more, 'Ah, things are just beginning to happen.' The guys, it was finished. The best parts of their life were done. The tragedy of that for me, just seeing that over and over again, got to me so much that I wrote Pretty Good Year. You don't really know what my role is. Am I Lucy, or am I that eight bars of grunge that comes out near the end where I express, and then nothing, everything else is Greg's story? I found that kind of really fun. The emotion is coming from somebody else's story. And yet it touched me so that I could sing it."
"So this boy wrote me a letter. He's from the north of England. It's not, you know, one of them, it's not.. I guess I could tell you some letters that would like curl your toes and stuff. This is not one of those letters. But this letter inspired this next song. And he's from not quite Scotland, but in the north and it's where the working people live. Most people work their father's mine and stuff. They have a harder life than people in the south and then they kind of hate them. And anyway, it says, 'Dear Tori, my life sucks.' And he drew me this picture of himself - he's like an emaciated grunger with glasses and the drooping hair and drooping flower. He drew me a drooping flower...anyway, he's twenty. And he goes, 'look. ya know, I don't know what you girls expect of us. i mean, i can't figure it out. you know, first you want us to be a provider and then once we do that, we've gotta take like art classes on Thursday nights. and then you like, you gotta cum four times first. and then we have to like have the kiche in the oven, you know. and I don't know what you want!' and I was like, 'guys, I know it's really rough, but no pity."
-- Tori intro to song; Seattle WA 3/20/94, Rhapsody in Pink bootleg
"...in New Mexico, where I went to write, and record, this album, was that at one point I was spraying Pledge polish in a cupboard and I inhaled it and I got a lung infection which meant I couldn't speak, or sing, for three weeks. And I really thought my voice was damaged forever and had to do voice lessons on the phone, with this voice teacher to try and get the natural corisone back on the cords. I was thinking 'what if I never sing again?' Then I'd say 'if I can't sing what's the point in being alive, is this person worth anything at all?' And there were moments where the only answer to that question was 'no'. Then i'd give in to the self-pity that comes out in the song Pretty Good Year, and in the lyric 'They say you were something in those formative years'.
-- Tori; Hot Press, January 1994
"mountain biking became a major event in my life for a week, the mud was so thick on the tires we got there just in time to feel the mountain thaw, the sound when these two merged was something like 'thclulpleekooh' i said on an intake of breath with no lips moving and no throat usage, i like this word and i liked the idea of the eternal footman saying 'asta' on a mountain bike"
-- Tori; Under The Pink Songbook
“Pretty Good Year is really part two of Ode To The Banana King. Ode To The Banana King is part one - as you see, Lucy reoccurs. That’s part two, Pretty Good Year. So I’ll probably write part three.” [Beat – July 14, 1994]
“On Winter, the father sang to me, ‘When you gonna make up your mind/When you gonna love you as much as I do?’ and in Pretty Good Year on the new album, I sing to the boyfriend, ‘What’s it gonna take till my baby’s alright?’ There’s no self pity in the song and yet it’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy because I can’t make him love himself. I can’t do it. No matter how much I beat it into him, I can’t do it for him. Funny how the tables have turned isn’t it?” [Creem - March 1994]
“In Pretty Good Year, I refuse to give pity. That was the main thing. Of course this was the worst year of his [Greg’s] life; it’s a tragedy, this song. Yet... it’s like the worst thing you can give somebody is support for their pity. Now the other thing in this song is it made me look at when a man doesn’t respect himself: how does that make me feel? Ok, we’re patient. Let’s be fair; we’re patient for two, maybe three weeks. And then what happens? We’re looking at the friend that’s walkin’ in the room with him. It’s ok for us to be, ‘oh, I’m laid off and I’m having a hard time and I am misunderstood and not given a chance,’ but we get embarrassed [when it’s a man]. I’ve studied this with women. If you’re an exception, then you get the gold star.” [B-Side – May/June 1994]
“I care about Greg, you know I do. But there’s no pity in the song. If I pitied him then that’s really condescending. I got this letter from this guy Greg and he thought his life was over. And he drew this picture with drooping flowers and glasses and hair to here; he was from the north of England. And he was a very good writer; I’ve found so many guys 23 years old that thought their life was already over.” [The New Review of Records – December 1994]
: Barons of Suburbia - Tori Amos
Tears on the sleeve of a man don't wanna be a boy today heard the eternal footman
bought himself a bike to race and Greg he writes letters and burns his CDs they
say you were something in those formative years hold onto nothing as fast as you
can well still pretty good year
Maybe a bright sandy beach is gonna bring you back may not so now you're off
you're gonna see America well let me tell you something about America pretty
good year some things are melting now well what's it gonna take till my baby's
alright
and Greg he writes letters with his birthday pen sometimes he's aware that
they're drawing him in Lucy was pretty your best friend agreed well still pretty
good year
I think this song is about how you can have an incredibly rough year when just about everything goes wrong and you are disappointed in so many ways. But I guess you kinda have to take a step back and say, well, that was quite an experience and now it's over and how can I use this to better myself. It's like saying sarcastically, "Well, that was a pretty good year."
Here's Tori's description of it:
"Whether it bums you out or not, the truth is, all this happened, as much as the first record did. But there are other characters involved a bit more. There are just other beings involved in this one. Like Pretty Good Year, for example, I got a letter from a guy named Greg in England. This one got to me - it missed getting to me for, like, three months. But it just got passed around to different people, and finally somebody just - I was walking through the record label in between the tour up in England, and somebody put it in my bag. They just said, "You know what, Tori? This has been sitting around here. Just take it." And I took this letter, and I opened my bag two days later, and I read it. It was a picture of - he had drawn himself. It was a pencil drawing. Greg has kind of scrawny hair and glasses, and he's very skinny and he held this great big flower. Greg is 23, lives in the north of England, and his life is over, in his mind. I found this a reoccurrence in every country that I went. In that early 20 age, with so many of the guys - more than the girls, they were a bit more, 'Ah, things are just beginning to happen.' The guys, it was finished. The best parts of their life were done. The tragedy of that for me, just seeing that over and over again, got to me so much that I wrote Pretty Good Year. You don't really know what my role is. Am I Lucy, or am I that eight bars of grunge that comes out near the end where I express, and then nothing, everything else is Greg's story? I found that kind of really fun. The emotion is coming from somebody else's story. And yet it touched me so that I could sing it."
"So this boy wrote me a letter. He's from the north of England. It's not, you know, one of them, it's not.. I guess I could tell you some letters that would like curl your toes and stuff. This is not one of those letters. But this letter inspired this next song. And he's from not quite Scotland, but in the north and it's where the working people live. Most people work their father's mine and stuff. They have a harder life than people in the south and then they kind of hate them. And anyway, it says, 'Dear Tori, my life sucks.' And he drew me this picture of himself - he's like an emaciated grunger with glasses and the drooping hair and drooping flower. He drew me a drooping flower...anyway, he's twenty. And he goes, 'look. ya know, I don't know what you girls expect of us. i mean, i can't figure it out. you know, first you want us to be a provider and then once we do that, we've gotta take like art classes on Thursday nights. and then you like, you gotta cum four times first. and then we have to like have the kiche in the oven, you know. and I don't know what you want!' and I was like, 'guys, I know it's really rough, but no pity."
-- Tori intro to song; Seattle WA 3/20/94, Rhapsody in Pink bootleg
"...in New Mexico, where I went to write, and record, this album, was that at one point I was spraying Pledge polish in a cupboard and I inhaled it and I got a lung infection which meant I couldn't speak, or sing, for three weeks. And I really thought my voice was damaged forever and had to do voice lessons on the phone, with this voice teacher to try and get the natural corisone back on the cords. I was thinking 'what if I never sing again?' Then I'd say 'if I can't sing what's the point in being alive, is this person worth anything at all?' And there were moments where the only answer to that question was 'no'. Then i'd give in to the self-pity that comes out in the song Pretty Good Year, and in the lyric 'They say you were something in those formative years'.
-- Tori; Hot Press, January 1994
"mountain biking became a major event in my life for a week, the mud was so thick on the tires we got there just in time to feel the mountain thaw, the sound when these two merged was something like 'thclulpleekooh' i said on an intake of breath with no lips moving and no throat usage, i like this word and i liked the idea of the eternal footman saying 'asta' on a mountain bike"
-- Tori; Under The Pink Songbook
“Pretty Good Year is really part two of Ode To The Banana King. Ode To The Banana King is part one - as you see, Lucy reoccurs. That’s part two, Pretty Good Year. So I’ll probably write part three.” [Beat – July 14, 1994]
“On Winter, the father sang to me, ‘When you gonna make up your mind/When you gonna love you as much as I do?’ and in Pretty Good Year on the new album, I sing to the boyfriend, ‘What’s it gonna take till my baby’s alright?’ There’s no self pity in the song and yet it’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy because I can’t make him love himself. I can’t do it. No matter how much I beat it into him, I can’t do it for him. Funny how the tables have turned isn’t it?” [Creem - March 1994]
“In Pretty Good Year, I refuse to give pity. That was the main thing. Of course this was the worst year of his [Greg’s] life; it’s a tragedy, this song. Yet... it’s like the worst thing you can give somebody is support for their pity. Now the other thing in this song is it made me look at when a man doesn’t respect himself: how does that make me feel? Ok, we’re patient. Let’s be fair; we’re patient for two, maybe three weeks. And then what happens? We’re looking at the friend that’s walkin’ in the room with him. It’s ok for us to be, ‘oh, I’m laid off and I’m having a hard time and I am misunderstood and not given a chance,’ but we get embarrassed [when it’s a man]. I’ve studied this with women. If you’re an exception, then you get the gold star.” [B-Side – May/June 1994]
“I care about Greg, you know I do. But there’s no pity in the song. If I pitied him then that’s really condescending. I got this letter from this guy Greg and he thought his life was over. And he drew this picture with drooping flowers and glasses and hair to here; he was from the north of England. And he was a very good writer; I’ve found so many guys 23 years old that thought their life was already over.” [The New Review of Records – December 1994]
: Barons of Suburbia - Tori Amos
