Anything goes, I suppose
I should have learned my lesson
But the snake's head still grows
In my garden
Disposable light, cruel as a knife
And empty as our pockets
What if the world outside was real ?
Nighthawk, what did you do ?
Nighthawk, what did you say ?
And how can we lower the tone ?
If I'd cottoned on to that passing cloud
Hitched a ride and burned this town
Will the snake's head still grow
In my garden ?
One for the road
Follow you home
And wake to the dust in your sunbeam
Imagine the world outside is real
Nighthawk, what did you do ?
Nighthawk, what did you say ?
And how can we lower the tone ?
Nighthawk, what did you do ?
Nighthawk, what did you say ?
And how can we lower the tone ?
Lyrics by:
Squire
Available on:
Room In Brooklyn (as b-side) (3.09)
Marshall's House album (Japanese release)
Details:
This accomplished b-side is based on Hopper's most well-known work, and one of the most famous images in 20th century art, from 1942. Hopper began painting Nighthawks immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a pre-emptive military strike on the U.S. Pacific Fleet base by the Empire of Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy, on the morning of Sunday 7th December 1941. Nighthawks is an icon of American culture, reworked and parodied countless times in popular culture. Its influence is far reaching; it is, for example, credited by Ridley Scott as an influence on the design and mood of the 1982 science fiction film, Blade Runner: "I was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after."* Nighthawks reflects Hopper's cognisance of 1930s film themes and subject matter, particularly the gangster theme, and it both parallels and anticipates the stylystic development of film noir in the early 1940s. The work was inspired by a diner on a wedge-shaped corner of Greenwich Avenue in Hopper’s neighbourhood, but there are hints of other places and paintings as well. The brick buildings across the street echo those in 'Early Sunday Morning'; the juxtaposition of a brightly lit commercial interior with a dark street - its pavement marked by spiky shadows - is reminiscent of Hopper’s 1927 painting, 'Drug Store'. Fluorescent lights had just come into use in the early 1940s, and the all-night diner emits an eerie glow, like a beacon on the dark street corner. The viewer, drawn to the light, is shut out from the scene by a seamless wedge of glass, the entrapment of the nighthawks further enhanced by there being no indication of an entrance to the diner. The four anonymous and uncommunicative figures seem as separate and remote from the viewer as they are from one another. This night view of a deserted street corner and a harshly illuminated diner plays with interior and exterior worlds. The panoramic windows permit a nearly seamless flow between the street and cafe scenes. Less transparent are the appearances and psyches of the isolated diners, whose rigid expressions and postures can only hint at unfolding dramas.
New York set the stage for many of Hopper's most iconic paintings. Just as in New England, he shunned dominant artistic motifs, Hopper disregarded many Jazz Age subjects - soaring skyscrapers, bustling streets, and industrial machinery - favoured by American modernists. Indeed, Hopper's New York is at once instantly recognizable and strangely unfamiliar: streets are devoid of pedestrians, stores are without customers, and even automats — modern restaurants in which coin-operated, food-dispensing machines replaced waiters - lack signs of anything automatic. And though New York architecture rose to great new heights, Hopper favored instead a horizontal compositional format more closely linked to landscape traditions. He also avoided signs of the grit, noise, and commotion of urban life, imbuing his portrayals of the city with an overwhelming silence and disquieting stillness. The chorus of Nighthawks asks, "how can we lower the tone ?". The diner is given a feeling of warmth by Hopper's use of light and colour, in contrast to the dark subdued tones of the "world outside"; the nighthawks are locked in their own world - we see no entrance or exit - and thus Squire has the nighthawks imagining if "the world outside is real". Not only is no exit from the diner visible, but there is also no apparent way out of the bar area, as the three walls of the counter form a triangle which traps the attendant. However, from the diaries of Edward Hopper's wife, we learn that the artist described this work as a painting of "three characters." This leads one to conclude that the man behind the counter, though imprisoned in the triangle, is in fact free. He has a job, a home, he can come and go; he can look at the customers with a half-smile. It is the customers who are the nighthawks. They are held, exposed and vulnerable, and sit with their shoulders hunched defensively. The close proximity of the man and woman's hands leads one to believe that they are a couple, but they are a couple so lost in misery that they cannot communicate; they have nothing to give each other. The noses of these two nighthawks resemble beaks. The loneliness of the man with his back to us is accentuated by the presence of this couple. The three nighthawks (the name is Hopper's take on the term 'Night Owl', used to describe someone who stays up particularly late) of this picture, instead of being free in the sky, are instead shut in, dazed and miserable, with their heads constantly banging against the glass of the world's callousness.
The intro (particularly the bass and drums) borrows cheekily from Brown's My Star.
The end of this essay touches upon biblical usage in the first verse.
Hopper's Nighthawks also provided the inspiration for 'Nighthawks at the Diner', a 1975 live album by Tom Waits.
* Sammon, Paul M.. Future Noir: the Making of Blade Runner (New York: HarperPrism, 1996)
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