Transatlantic Near Death Experience

When dark forms are stirring
In the sediments in your brain
And your wild days are long gone
Never to return again

When your ghosts are all in training
For the forthcoming showdown with you
When you’re alone in the dark
When you have to, when you’re blue

When she looks straight through you
With those steely grey eyes
With her black hood and scythe
And a mouth so wide
Excuse my ignorance
Is this another transatlantic near death experience ?

Caroline says for what it’s worth
This won’t hurt
I can guarantee
A brand new experience
Life it’ll make no sense

So if your feel her beautiful shadow cross your skin
And you can taste the words on the tip of her tongue
Ask her "is your surname Kevorkian by any chance ?"
Say hello to your pop
And while you’re up ask the captain
To either turn it round or stop

Caroline says for what it’s worth
This won’t hurt
Come hear the angels sing
Screw the government
Every last one of them’s bent
And the cops kiss my shiny ring
Yeah, that’s what I sing

So if you see her sometime ask her to recall
The eye of the hurricane
Try and make some sense of it all

Our night of obituaries
Chewin' our nails
Even the past was tense
On another transatlantic near death experience

Caroline says for what it’s worth
This won’t hurt
Your future’s bright
Flaming orange to be precise
Just another one of those days
When nothing don’t ever seem to go right

Your pants are too tight
And your shoes pinch
And everyone looks at you
In a funny kind of way
You know the kind of day
And some poor sod just died
In a distant land
Shifting sand
That’s life
That’s death
But at least it wasn’t me
Yeah, I can be thankful for small mercies
Before we scurry away in our
Shiny black little hearses

Lyrics by:
Squire

Available on:
Time Changes Everything (5.56)

Details:
Like 15 Days, Transatlantic Near Death Experience is also a take on a Dylan track. On this occasion, it's 'Visions of Johanna', from the album 'Blonde on Blonde'.

The song and its title is surely a reference to Squire's cycling accident in America, on 2nd June 1995, when he broke his collarbone.* The music has a distinct American feel in its 'country' usage of the slide.

There are allusions to the Ten Storey Love Song video in the song Time Changes Everything and I think there are allusions to the first Love Spreads video in the lines "With her black hood and scythe and a mouth so wide" from TNDE. In the first Love Spreads video, John is in a chicken suit, Ian dressed as 'Death' and Mani is in a devil suit. At the very start of the video, Ian (in a black hooded outfit) in the background walks across the camera's viewpoint and Mani walks towards the camera. Once Mani gets to the camera, he opens his mouth wide and quickly goes out of shot. It could equally be referring to the scene near the end of the video where Mani is on a cart (being pulled along by Ian) with his mouth wide open, screaming with laughter.

Jack Kevorkian (1928 - ), referenced on this song, is a controversial retired American pathologist. He is most noted for publicly championing a terminal patient's "right to die" and claims to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end, famously stating "dying is not a crime." Imprisoned in 1999, he is currently serving out a 10 to 25 year prison sentence for second-degree murder in the 1998 poisoning of Thomas Youk, 52, of Oakland County, Michigan.

The song ends with shouting over the music a la 'Hey Bulldog' by The Beatles.

* This accident forced The Stone Roses to cancel all planned appearances, including June 1995's Glastonbury. Michael Eavis' recollection of that year's events in 2003 (see below) are a little hazy; the Roses' non-appearance was due entirely to a man falling off his bike three weeks previous, rather than any foresight on behalf of a festival organiser:

"I got Oasis in '95," says Michael, laughing again. "All my advisers said let's have Stone Roses this year, we'll have Oasis next year. I said 'No, Oasis, this year because it's going to be too late next year'." (Michael Eavis speaking to The Guardian, 11th June 2003)

Similarly, in an interview in 2006, Eavis's recollections of the Roses' 1995 Pilton performance are inaccurate:

They are going back to the village fete that they used to do before the Pilton Party. It is good to go back to that occasionally. We have 4000 tickets for the Pilton Party and it sells out in a flash. We’ve had so many good bands; Coldplay have done it twice. We’ve had the complete Stone Roses do it too. I didn’t think they were going to turn up but they did, every single one of them. It was the full Stone Roses before they split up, and was one of the last gigs they did. I hope we didn’t finish them off. It was one of the best Pilton Party gigs we’ve ever done. I’m trying to persuade them to get back together again but I don’t think there’s a hope in hells chance of doing that. (Michael Eavis speaking to eFestivals.co.uk, Monday 18th September 2006)

Firstly, The Stone Roses' line-up at Pilton in 1995 cannot be regarded as the 'complete' line up. Reni had quit the band by this stage and two new faces - Robbie Maddix and Nigel Ipinson - had been drafted in. The 'complete Stone Roses' were Squire, Brown, Mani and Reni - not the outfit that took to the Pilton stage on 1st September 1995. Secondly, this was not "one of the last gigs they did." The band made dozens of subsequent appearances, as this gigography will confirm. In contrast, the Pilton appearance was actually their first appearance on British soil after the hiatus, preceding their UK Second Coming tour.

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