Dance of the Seven Veils

[burndownthesuburbs]

Does anyone know what this song is about. I read somewhere that it's about Salome and John the Baptist. Is that true? It's a pretty sweet biblical song if that's the case.

[harkrider]

The prevailing theory says it IS based on Salome.  Jeremy Engle crafted a lengthy post to this effect a few months back on the LPF.  Like so many great posts from 2006, it was erased.  Otherwise I'd refer you.  I think the title of the thread was "Most underrated song," and he made a case for Dance of the Seven Veils, citing the Salome stuff.

My opinion is mixed.  You got the name Johnny.  You got a silver platter and a head.  Other than that, I'm not sure what references it makes to Salome.  Well, there is also the dancing.  I read Oscar Wilde's version of Salome many years ago, and I recall that Salome dances to please the king (Herod, I think), in order to persuade him to grant her a wish.  The wish turns out to be the head of John the Baptist.  The play was originally written in French, and poorly translated by Wilde's lover (yes, the same one whose father sent him to Reading Gaol).  Anyhow, the play kind of sucks, lacking Wilde's flair for english, and reads more like a summary.  Anyhow, my knowledge of Salome's story is somewhat limited because I've only read that one play on the subject.

Regardless,  it's probably true that Liz intended to reference Salome with some of those images.  But I don't know that the song tells the Salome story.  Sure, the guy loses his head.  Sure the girl (in the song) wants him dead.  But I read her "murderous" desire as more a lovers quarrel.  It sounds to me like she and Johnny Boy live the seedy life of drug peddlers, feeding their own addictions.  It also sounds to me like the girl is seeing all kinds of weird shit, notably the whole section involving the  "little cunt in spring," whom you can "rend by the hour," whatever THAT means.

Jeremy also pointed out (in his lost post) that she says "I know all about the other Pilgrim thing" -- right before the "entertainers bring May flowers" line.

May flowers
Mayflower
Pilgrims
May = Spring
Cunt rending

I just can't tie those things together.  She's all over the place, James Joyce style, invoking words, flipping the meanings, then following another path altogether.  My guess is that she was extremely stoned at the time.  I'd like to hear her own "rendition" of this most curious song.

[shmoopy]

I only ask because I'm a real cunt in spring
You can rent me by the hour
I know all about the ugly pilgrim thing
Entertainers bring may flowers

[harkrider]

I don't hear the  T in rent.  When I first heard the song, I thought it had to be RENT, because of the "by the hour" context.  But then it started sounding more like rend, which means to break, also fitting the song. 

Either way, or even both, she sounds like she's willing to sell / sacrifice herself in lieu of her man selling something else, and getting himself killed.  The Seven Veils title, I think, refers to the seductive dance where more and more of the dancer is revealed, veil by veil.  So maybe she's willing to drop those final veils, become an honest prostitute, and pay their debts.

[Denneval]

from Jeremy Engle...

It's hard to pick just one underrated Liz song. First, there's so much disagreement across the fanbase as to how much of her recorded output is worth considering as 'artful' -- not that art has any value in the 21st Century, but for the sake of this discussion let's pretend it does. There are many people who believe that a statue should be erected for whitechocolatespaceegg (or at least a tea drunk in its honor). And then, if you consulted the record books, you'd think she only wrote two or three perfect (or notable) songs for Guyville (they being "Fuck & Run", "Flower", and "Divorce Song"), when really there are 18 perfect songs there, all in a row. Which of them deserves more attention? Me, I want to go with either "Carnivore" -- because, really, very few people seem to even be aware of its existence, let alone have a true appreciation for its droll imagery/metaphors and groovy, up-tempo 60s-rock stylings -- or "Dance of the Seven Veils." Not that "Veils" doesn't get its due .... on occasion .... but really, when you think about how utterly brilliant the song is, and how little has been said about it, it's like... "Whaaaaaa....?!" Usually someone just wants to know if the song really is about John the Baptist or is that just a stupid rumor going around on AOL Instant Messenger? I don't remember anyone ever talking about how perfectly it all fits together, with the last words of the last lines of each verse rhyming with each other ("lead", "head", "dead"). Or its literary qualities -- not just in that it references Biblical/Wildean characters, but how, er, literary the whole thing is (put it this way: which tune has a better shot at being bound in leather by the Library of Congress, "Dance of the Seven Veils" or "Red Light Fever"?). Or how hilarious -- and yeah, okay, shocking -- her use of the word 'cunt' is on the refrain. A friend of mine once said regarding the media's focus on Liz's potty-mouth, "Yeah, well... Not very many people use the word 'cunt' on their albums. Especially on their debut albums..... In reference to themselves." And what a refrain! I still don't quite know what she means by "the ugly pilgrim thing", or how it is exactly that entertainers bring Mayflowers. Man, this thing is loaded, no pun intended. The only other song on Guyville that even compares with this one's rigid, perfect form is "Soap Star Joe". Think about it.

[harkrider]

Well, that post wasn't quite so relevant to the Dance of the Seven / Salome question as I recall.  But it DOES tell us several important things, and so I am very happy to see it reposted. 

[JeremyEngle]

Yeah, what it tells us is that JeremyEngle seriously needs an editor. Yeesh!

Anyway, I have nothing further to contribute to discussion of this brilliant song, aside from maintaining that the lyric is "You can rent me by the hour." So what if you can't hear the 't'? Say it aloud -- how hard would you enunciate that 't'? Not very, unless you're... "funny". Liz was a brilliant mumbler; you just have to lock into her groove. Logically, a girl like Salome would be rented by the hour, not torn asunder.

[ant_in_alaska]

I recently read the story of John the Baptist in my bible, Matthew 14 I believe, and it just doesn't make any sense.  She must have been smoking a lot of weed.

[Johnny_Sunshine]

I say it's "rend." I think you'd hear at least a slight enunciation of the "t" sound if it were "rent", but you don't at all. Anyway...

The song always came across to me as being about a drug dealer and his pleading girlfriend, as harkrider mentioned. For me, the fact that "Never Said" immediately follows "Seven Veils" on Guyville made me think of them as being related;  "Seven Veils" is where the girlfriend pleads for her boyfriend to leave the drug world, and "Never Said" is where she gets her revenge for him not listening to her by handing him over to the authorities, with her denying that she was the one who did so.

As far as "Dance of the Seven Veils" being underrrated, I'd definitely agree. It was the first song on the album that really grabbed my attention, and continues to be a personal favorite of mine. I think it deserves as much credit as "Fuck and Run" and certainly more than "Flower."

[harkrider]

That's a great point about Never Said.  Never thought. 

[blrbmw]

Being that Liz mapped "Dance of the Seven Veils" against the Stone's "Casino Boogie" I wonder how many people look to this source for the meaning.  Liz has stated that every song on Guyville is either a response to- or a different point of view of- all of the Exile on Main Street Songs.

Here are the lyrics to Casino Boogie:

CASINO BOOGIE
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

No good, can't speak, wound up, no sleep.
Sky diver insider her, skip rope, stunt flyer.
Wounded lover, got no time on hand.
One last cycle, thrill freak Uncle Sam.
Pause for bus'ness, hope you'll understand.
Judge and jury walk out hand in hand.
Dietrich movies, close up boogies,
Kissing cunt in Cannes.

Grotesque music, million dollar sad.
Got no tactics, got no time on hand.
Left shoe shuffle, right shoe muffle,
Sinking in the sand.
Fade out freedom, steaming heat on,
Watch that hat in black.
Finger twitching, got no time on hand.


 Now, I'm sure someone smarter than me will be able to come up with a really great intellectual respone to "What is the meaing of Dance of the Seven Veils" based on the concept Liz artfully empolyed. I look forward to interpretations because I can't seems to make a very strong connection between the two songs.

[harkrider]

I'm not sure if I have enough dope to riddle a connection.  But that won't stop me from trying. 

[JeremyEngle]

Remember that the lyrics didn't always figure into the theory of her sequencing on this album. Sometimes it was merely the mood of the song (happy/sad/angsty/etc.), sometimes it was the arrangement (sparse/full band), sometimes it was just the tempo.

Says Liz: "I had little symbols, each song would be listed, and I would do the songs on Exile, the one with the little symbols next to them, there was one with a kind of asterisk, I can't remember. That was a pop song, and then a long, wavy line meant a slow song, a cross was another kind of song, a rocker was diagonal lines sort of like on Charlie Brown's shirt. The symbols went so far as to be both in terms of musical style and also content, like if it was a depressing song about sorrow or angst or something, there was an arrow pointing from the top-left down to the bottom-right."


I can't find my copy of the Stones album. Looking at those lyrics, however, I can almost get a feel for a few tenuous poetic connections, but nothing that can be properly articulated. acidmouse is probably right; let's bring out the bong.

If nothing else, both songs have the word 'cunt' in them. That isn't anything to sneeze at!

[blrbmw]

Based on what I've read it appears the lyrics certainly figured into her sequencing.

Says Liz: "And the lyrics had to be an answer or my equivalent... It either had to be the equivalent from a female point of view or it had to be an answer kind of admonishment, to let me tell you my side of the story."

So,  "Dane of the Seven Veils" is either Liz's  answer to- or equivalent of- "Casino Boogie".  Her own bizarre and cryptic side of the story.

[wooden and alone]

someone in songmeanings noted that this rolling stones song could be about the time when they spent exiled in the south of france, spending time in the casinos. and maybe liz's response has something to do with that, like the girlfriend asking her boyfriend to stop betting and gambling and shit.
liz was probably as stoned as jagger was when writing the song.