11 months ago

Redo Pop Song 185 of 500 'Lightning Crashes' Live 1993

My first attempt on Yamaha digital upright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvLhkJAAzKE

The band dedicated the song to a high school friend, Barbara Lewis, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1993.

Lead singer Ed Kowalczyk said, "I wrote 'Lightning Crashes' on an acoustic guitar in my brother's bedroom shortly before I had moved out of my parents' house and gotten my first place of my own." Kowalczyk says that the video for "Lightning Crashes" has caused misinterpretations of the song's intent.

“Lightning Crashes” was recorded and produced with Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison as part of the sessions for Live’s sophomore effort, Throwing Copper, at the famed Pachyderm Studio in Minnesota, during the summer of 1993. Around this time, Barbara Lewis, a longtime friend of the band, was killed by a drunk driver while fleeing from the police after a robbery in York. The band dedicated the song to Lewis, who was only 19 when she died.

“It was something that we hoped would honor the memory of a girl we grew up with and help her family cope with the sorrow – which it seems to have accomplished – keeping with the theme of the song,” Kowalcyzk said, in a 1995 interview in Spin magazine. Lewis was also a registered organ donor; when she died, she helped save the lives of many people, including a ten-month-old baby who received her liver.

While the clip is shot in a home environment, I envisioned it taking place in a hospital, where all these simultaneous deaths and births are going on, one family mourning the loss of a woman while a screaming baby emerges from a young mother in another room. Nobody's dying in the act of childbirth, as some viewers think. What you're seeing is actually a happy ending based on a kind of transference of life.

New York magazine described the band as "deeply mystical" and claimed that the song was, "The story of a...connection between an old lady dying and a new mother at the moment of giving birth." Just a few years before, Kowalczyk discovered the writings of Indian spiritualist Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose philosophy of living life from a place of selflessness and humility influenced the singer’s songwriting process, as well as the band’s creative philosophy. https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/live-lightning-crashes-story-behind-song

Lightning crashes
A new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door
Lightning crashes
An old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes
The confusion that was hers
Belongs now, to the baby down the hall
Oh, now feel it coming back again
Like a rolling thunder chasing the wind
Forces pulling from the center of the Earth again
I can feel it
Lightning crashes
A new mother cries
This moment she's been waiting for
The angel opens her eyes
Pale blue colored iris, presents the circle
And puts the glory out to hide, hide
Oh, now feel it comin' back again
Like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
Forces pullin' from the center of the Earth again
I can feel it
I can feel it
I can feel it coming back again
Like a rolling thunder chasing the wind
Forces pulling from the center of the Earth again
I can feel it
I can feel it coming back again
Like a rolling thunder chasing the wind
Forces pulling from the center of the Earth again
I can feel it
I can feel it coming back again
Like a rolling thunder chasing the wind
Forces pulling from the center of the Earth again
I can feel it
I can feel it
I can feel it