Joe Louis

I've climbed a mountain and I've pissed into the wind
Stood on the edge and spat over
With cheeks burned on the tip of the bone
Staggering home to a lover

Did your lazy, good for nothing soldiers cast their cynical spell ?
Are they yawning down below you, smoking mouths in the circle of hell ?

Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe Louis - how does it feel to be
Joe, Joe, Joe - open your beautiful blue eyes
Joe Louis

You are my darkness, my shelter, my knowledge, my cradle and my sense
And though you may not always trail clouds of glory
One day I hope to know what it meant

Hard to see you tower above me
Silver and grey against the blue
Instantly innocent, forever damned, enjoy your days they're precious and few*

Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe Louis - how does it feel to be
Joe, Joe, Joe - look at your beautiful - tell us what you're thinking Joe

Joe, Joe, Joe Joe Louis - how does it feel to be
Joe, Joe, Joe - open your beautiful blue eyes
Joe Louis

Take a deep breath
Open those eyes

Lyrics by:
Squire

Format:
Released October 2002:
Joe Louis (5 Force PR, 1 Track Promo CD)

Released 21st October 2002:
Joe Louis / Home Sweet Home / 15 Days (Home Demo) (North Country Records, NCCDA001, CD 1)
Joe Louis / Home Sweet Home / 15 Days (Home Demo) (North Country Records, NCCDA001, CD 1 Promo)
Joe Louis / See You On The Other Side / Miss You (Home Demo) (North Country Records, NCCDB001, UK CD 2)
Joe Louis / Home Sweet Home / (North Country Records, NC001, 7")

UK chart details:
#41

Also available on:
Time Changes Everything (4.05)

Artwork details:
The Joe Louis artwork for CD1 is from 'Joe Louis', a photograph of a 1999 work, 'Animal Skull' (animal skull, 1999); The Joe Louis artwork for CD2 is another photograph of the same piece with foliage, entitled 'Animal Skull, Foliage'. Both photographs were taken by John's partner, Sophie Upton, in 2002.

Details:
John Squire's debut solo album Time Changes Everything revisits the structure of the Roses' debut in opening with the subject matter of nascency (Adoration of the new-born Magi - I Wanna Be Adored; the premature birth of his nephew - Joe Louis). With TCE ending with settling down in life (Sophia), the album thus, just like TSR, envelops the journey of life.

The opening line of the song is a take on 'Is Your Love in Vain ?' by Bob Dylan:

Well I've been to the mountain and I've been in the wind

The lyric "Are they yawning down below you, smoking mouths in the circle of hell ?") has elements of 'Dante's Inferno', where Dante and the Roman poet Virgil make a journey through the nine circles of Hell. Found at the beginning of Dante Alighieri's (1265 - 1321) 'The Divine Comedy', this is the most detailed description of hell to date.

The Joe Louis guitar riff is a take on the very end of Driving South - listen to the guitar part on that Stone Roses track during the mobile phone being dialed.

John Squire is influenced by the works of Georgia O'Keeffe. Below is 'Pelvis with Moon' and O'keeffe's comments about the painting:

"They were most wonderful against the Blue — the Blue that will always be there as it is now after all men's destruction is finished. I have tried to paint the Bones and the Blue." (Georgia O'Keeffe, in the exhibition catalog, 1944).

Joe Louis:

Hard to see you tower above me
Silver and grey against the blue

The emphasis that O'Keeffe puts on 'the blue' is interesting. A feature of some of her paintings is a skull or bones suspended in the air set against a sharp blue sky. The line could instead be referring to Pollock - silver and grey paint splattered on a blue base. Pollock's 'Number 28' is composed of black lines over silver and blue space.

Some see 'Joe Louis' as alluding to Ian Brown as the boxer Joe Louis' nickname was 'Brown bomber'. John may see himself as the 'Ali' to Ian's 'Louis'; just like Brown and Squire, Louis and Ali didn't get on either. Ali ripped into Louis, portraying him as a complete sellout. Louis verbally attacked Ali when he changed his name and when he refused to go to Vietnam.

The video to Joe Louis follows the lead of David Bowie's 'Look Back In Anger' (1979) (itself thematically influenced by Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Gray'), with the focus on an artist in contemplation of his work. Indeed, the manner in which a sideways shot of Squire is shown at the start of the video, followed closely by a shot of the 'normal' viewpoint is reminiscent of the start of that Bowie video, with Bowie turning a canvas (showing his own face on a cherub) on its side into an upright position. Squire superimposed his own face onto a cherub on the Second Coming CD. A lyrical reference to an angel is found on Tightrope, where we learn that John's companion is an angel. Bowie, like Squire after him, had an interest in the work of Aleister Crowley; it has been suggested that his conversation with an angel on 'Golden Years' is influenced by what Crowleyans call 'The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel', which holds the belief that it is possible to have conversations with an inner voice when a pact with an Angel is struck. John Squire superimposed a childhood photo of his face (from the Second Coming booklet) on to the Love Spreads artwork; note how the angel on the Love Spreads cover has eyes that have been tinted blue, the colour of Squire's. Compare the face of the 'Love Spreads angel' to the angel on the Second Coming CD; the former - with fatter cheeks - looks like a baby, whereas the latter looks more mature, and has the same elongated face as a mature John Squire. The cherub is an angel of the second order whose gift is knowledge, usually portrayed as a winged child. Like the Love Spreads artwork, the opening of the Look Back In Anger video finds Bowie's face superimposed on a cherub, with the opening lyrics: '"You know who I am," he said. The speaker was an angel...'. This preoccupation with angels can be traced back to Jimi Hendrix (see Charles Shaar Murray's 'Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post War Pop'). Squire allowing us access to the artist in his studio continues a long tradition of artists from Velázquez, Vermeer, Courbet and Picasso, with the most famous example being The Painter in His Studio (c. 1629) by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669).

There is a strong French theme to the Joe Louis video, a feature of the Roses' debut (see Bye Bye Badman). We see a cockerel at one point, representative of the triumph of the freedom loving Gauls. The cockerel became particularly associated with France at the time of the French Revolution. Squire is constructing a guillotine in the video, a decapitation instrument used heavily during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. Note the title of the song - Joe Louis; is the inclusion of this instrument in the video a nod to the execution of King Louis XVI (1754 - 1793) in 1793 ?

"Did your lazy, good for nothing soldiers cast their cynical spell ?" may be a reference to the Reading '96 press conference and gig, where Ian and his companions shattered any claim to greatness that the Roses still had. "And though you may not always trail clouds of glory..." is derived from a famous poem by William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850). In his perception of newborn life, Wordsworth said that we "trail clouds of glory" as we come into the world, in his 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood':

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home

The stuttering bass at 3.25 before the final burst of guitar is perhaps meant to represent the moment of birth; Joe Louis is born at the end of the song when he can "take a deep breath" and "open those eyes" to the world.

* Squire appears to be intentionally vaguely pronunciating the line "enjoy your days they're precious and few" as "and Joe your days are precious and few".

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