Just to recap, this is going to be a part of an occasional series of posts I'm going to make on this blog. This'll be where I compare an early set of lyrics to a later set of lyrics for one Joy Division song. Sometimes I may compare multiple sets of lyrics of just one song to each other. When you couple in a lot of the live variations to certain songs, you can get all sorts of results.
Today's choice is kinda of an oldie-but-a-goodie... Pictures in My Mind.
"Pictures In My Mind" is best known for Peter Hook's reinvention of it for his band Peter Hook and the Light from its state as being an old, relatively unknown, quite unfinished Joy Division rehearsal song from early 1978. Lucky for us hardcore fans, he eventually put the original demos of the songs up for digital download, making the song publicly available.
There are only two old JD versions of the song, one of them incomplete. Ian's vocal clarity in them is also relatively unclear; the recording equipment really hadn't been super great at the time, unfortunately. Nonetheless, at least they exist.
The lyrics for the following two demos were NOT ones I myself discovered. They were primarily decoded by my good friend Mr. Darkman. He's already published the lyrics on JoyDiv.org in one of the forums for all to see, so I'm sure there's no harm in me reproducing them here. He presented his decoded work to Peter Hook, who rewrote the words slightly for his band's version, based off of the two demos.
As well and good as that is, I don't completely agree with some of his decoded work. For the most part, I believe he got all of it right, but some lines I think are different than what he deciphered them as being. I present my own version of the decoded words for you today, but I give full credit to Darkman, because without him I would have NO idea what the words were in the first place.
As I said, the first take is incomplete. It's just one verse.
Early 1978 Rehearsal (Take 1)
If you think that everything were mean or meant to kill
Everything I see I feel I'm walking out to this
Pictures in my mind, they take me back to right before
Ever feel these pictures in the WORLD
Here's the more complete second version:
Early 1978 Rehearsal (Take 2)
Everything's too bad, now these things have gone away
Pictures in my mind, they take me back to yesterday
Always carry the pictures, take me back to right before
Everything she did from now is better than before
In the right time, of the right
We are thankful definitely, and now it's gone away
I can see much better, hold it every single day
Always carry the pictures, take me back to right before
Pictures in my mind, they drive me around like back before
I've cried, can't you see, for us all
Everything's too bad, now the feeling's gone away
I can see much clearer now, a very special day
Always carry the pictures, take me back to right before
Everything I do from now is better than before
Take me down, me down, always down, down
Ooh...oh, yeah...
Take me down, take me down, take me down, take me down
Here's the Peter Hook and the Light version, just to give you an idea of Peter's rewriting process (I really love his version):
'Peter Hook and the Light' Version (2011)
Everything's so clear now, all the dreams have gone away
Pictures in my mind take me right back to yesterday
I always carry the pictures, take me back to right before
Everything I do from now is better than before
In the night-time, it's the right time
Take me down, down, down, down, down
In the right-time, it's the night time
Take me down, down, down, down, down, down!
I should be so thankful; now the pain has gone away
At every finished side, I watched it each and every day
Always carry the pictures, take me back to right before
The pictures in my mind, I want them more and more and more
In the night-time, it's the right time
Take me down, down, down, down, down
In the right-time, it's the night time
Take me down, down, down, down, down, down!
You will be so lonely, thinking only of yourself
Changing all the words, like this is better for your health
I'm watching all my dreams come true, getting bigger all the time
The only thing I have to do is find the missing rhyme
In the night-time, it's the right time
Take me down, down, down, down, down
In the right-time, it's the night time
Take me down, down, down, down, down
In the night-time, it's the right time
Take me down, down, down, down, down
In the right-time, it's the night time
Take me down, down, down, down, down, down!
I had planned to end this little lyric comparison, right here...until I discovered that Ian Curtis actually DID right another draft for "Pictures in My Mind"! It totally blew my mind when I first found it. I was just flipping through Deborah Curtis' book Touching From a Distance a few days ago. Under the Unseen Lyrics section in the back of the book, you can find many drafts of old, unused lyrics that Ian wrote, most of them being untitled.
One draft, simply titled "Untitled (1978)", really caught my eye. I read over it a few times, until I discovered that it was actually a draft of the song! Far more developed than the two old rehearsals, it looked like Ian had made a serious attempt at writing some lyrics to it. The date was correct and everything, and the lyrics even had some of the same element to them. Check them out:
Pictures In My Mind (Later Draft from 1978)
I can see a thousand wills just bending in the night
And all the pretty faces painted grey to match the sky
From a distance seeing friends just washed up on the shore
A picture in my mind of what's to come before the storm
In time, we don't belong in our own lifetime.
I can hear the voices lost in echoes as they build
New homes to hide the sadness that the search for more had killed
From a by road seeing friends just washed up on the shore
Picture in my mind of what's to come before the storm
In time, we don't belong in our own lifetime.
I can feel an emptiness and see heads held in shame
Trapped inside a legacy of everyone to blame
In the distance see myself just washed up on the shore
A picture in my mind of what will come before the storm
In time, we don't belong in our own lifetime.
We won't crawl and never show our faces,
We'll stand firm and never show the traces,
Of the fear we knew but always could disguise
Of this sinking feeling hid behind our eyes.
Cool, huh? Ian had really been playing with the melody. Nod your head to the beat of the old rehearsal songs and you can match. The last verse is a little different, but still. I was quite impressed and happy when I found this. But it's really sad, how the band pretty much just up and abandoned the song after those two rehearsal takes. Peter Hook is even quoted as saying they never finished the song, so likely there's not some old unused song from like the 'Unknown Pleasures' sessions, or even another rehearsal take or anything...
I wondered why Darkman hadn't shown this later set of lyrics to Peter Hook when it came time for him to remake the song, so that he could use them. So I asked Darkman about it. He told me that he didn't think they fit with the old rehearsal demos, in his opinion. I guess he preferred the old-school set, which is apparently the very first set of lyrics to the song.
I have no idea if Peter Hook knows about this later set of words from Deborah's book nowadays. If not, someone should probably tell him.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Hope you found this interesting. : )
Yep, it's very interesting. It's what I like about bootlegs in general. More often than not there about musical differences between the studio versions and the live versions (or demos): different orchestration, improvisations etc. And occasionally there can be variations in the lyrics, but not often enough. I often wonder when a band sings a 30 year old song do they still agree with what they wrote when they were 20. The rewrites tend to be in the first few months of the songs life and then afterwards they stay fixed or later on they might change a word or two (Joan of Arc listening to her iPod for exemple - is that Morrissey or Placebo who came up with that variation? That could be a subject to explore what bands do with covers) but I can't think of any examples where they add a verse or radically change the song in the same way that they might with the music (acoustic, extended, orchestra etc.)
ReplyDelete