by Alison Cummings

 "I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself" - so said writer Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967) ...Remind you of anyone? Once again, I get inside Gary’s head and try sussing out his lyrics! So far, I’ve given background to "Go ask Alice" and "I read the news today oh boy". This issue, I’ve put a few Punchline lyrics under scrutiny...

1. "I see that Thomas wants some proof" (‘There Is No God’)

So who’s Thomas? As you could probably guess, he’s Biblical - in fact, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. As Gary notes in the lyric, Thomas was always cautious and refused to believe without evidence - he wanted proof. With ‘There Is No God’ being a song about non-believers, Thomas is an effective Biblical allusion, relating to the cynics of today.

No difficult meanings here, but a short history. This line shows ‘No Respect’ to be almost an inversion of Aretha Franklin’s classic, ‘Respect’ (she sings, "R.E.S.P.E.C.T - find out what it means to me"). She demands respect. And "what it really means" to Gary, is that no one should get respect unless they deserve it. Does he think Aretha deserves it? I hope so!

 3. ‘NAKED’... YOU WANT THE TRUTH?

Here, I’m going to give my opinion of ‘Naked’ - how the song relates as a whole to other Gary lyrics. A difficult one to explain, due to the fact that it involves a few other songs! I could be way off - maybe Gary doesn’t want his lyrics grouped into themes - but when I hear ‘Naked’, I can’t help but think of three other songs at the same time! Plus, I’d just read Milton’s Paradise Lost when I got thinking about this, so it’s possible I was influenced by that, and maybe it’s not what Gary means at all! But, here’s my theory...

The ‘Naked’ Truth! (or so I think)

So this is Gary being all macho - every inch a man, and inviting us to measure it too! Exciting so far...

"Flesh n’ blood is often a white lie", he continues - sure, beauty is only skin deep, right? No problems there. But now the lines start to blur... "By the cover you misjudge the book, open your mind and take another look". At one Gary-level, this means "to see the real me you have to look deeper"; but in the light of what I’m going to say, it’s also like "I know you’re going to misjudge this song - there’s things going on deeper in my mind, so think again".

"Naked and unashamed". Is he trying to give us another full frontal? (see issue 2 of Li’l Fanzine). Maybe he is, but I see something else going on. Naked, he’s like the Biblical Adam before the Fall of mankind. It was after the Fall that Adam and Eve grew ashamed of their nudity, and covered themselves. "Naked, with no one to blame" backs me up on this: it was after the Fall that they learned how to lay blame (they blamed each other for their loss of Paradise). So, "unashamed... with no one to blame", Gary is... Adam?

You can’t deny that Gary is into the name ‘Adam’. For example, "Here comes ADAM in a baby carriage" (‘Play With Me’), and the song ‘ADAM and Atom’. And a thought came to me while I was writing this - ‘Adam and Atom’ has to mean ‘faith versus science’ (‘Adam’ symbolises faith, and ‘atom’ symbolises science - a theme of ‘There Is No God’)! All this time, I couldn’t figure out why Gary would write a song about Adam and Atom Ant... So, it seems that Gary is somewhat preoccupied with this "first man on earth", creation versus evolution thing.

"Naked ... you want the truth". Yes, it does mean ‘Gary as he really is, with all his imperfections’. But step back a few years. The Truth, as we all know, is the third side to the story. And look at the third part of the third side (‘Who Cares?’) - "Here I am, a NAKED man, nothing to hide, with empty hands". There’s obviously a Christian overtone to his nakedness, as he sings this to Jesus! Nakedness is the Truth (the truth of mankind?) - which is musically/aesthetically blatant, as he sings it with no backing (the band and the orchestra temporarily stop, therefore emphasising his words).

I think you can relate this Christian overtone back to ‘Naked’ (the key words are the same, so why shouldn’t the theme be similar)? It also links with the Adam and Eve story, which links to Gary’s own ‘Adam preoccupation’. Am I getting close here?

That’s basically all I have to say about it. I hope I wasn’t too confusing, but it’s a difficult thing to explain. Gary’s lyrics usually mean reading between the lines, but have I gone too far? Only Gary himself can answer that.

More lyric analyses