Chords for Joe Jackson talking about Heaven & Hell

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ There were a couple of different thoughts I had about anger and one was the idea of it being a childish sin
I mean it starts off with this sort of attitude piano and then
Wrong notes and then someone just dashing the keyboard with their fists like kids do
so it's very much about that so childish temper tantrum and
_ At the same time this idea of I'm right and I've got a right _ _
[N] Which very often I think that a lot of people who support
Causes even though they may be good causes
Are secretly doing so because they're just mad at the world generally
You know they just generally are angry and they find some something to channel it through
Because rock and roll is very good at expressing anger.
I mean it has a rather limited emotional range
I think in a lot of ways, but it's very good at anger
so I wanted two drummers just thrashing away like maniacs like gladiators you're competing with each other and
In addition to that in the middle of the song the scene sort of changes
and we're suddenly in the middle of Times Square with traffic just roaring over our heads and
Everything is overwhelming
It's like the cars are angry the lights are angry the whole world is angry
And in the middle of that you have this guy playing these plastic buckets on the street
We all kinds of horrible things may be going wrong in the world
But you get really angry because you can't quite get the temperature right in the shower
This is sort of and it just explodes and it's completely irrational _ _ _ _
Yeah, and envy was another one that I initially had a problem with I I didn't identify with it all that much
I don't feel like I'm an envious person, but but when I got into it more I realized that
being envied is actually a real problem, too.
You know it's very very damaging to people and
_ _ _ I had this idea of sisters then envy between sisters partly based on the old story of Cinderella
I mean a lot of these fairy tales are quite scary actually
When someone envies you that there's nothing you can do I mean you [G] there's nothing you can do that's ever [Ab] right to have a good enough
[Eb] you know anything you say is going to be
twisted or resented or or something and
_ _ _ You simply have to walk away from it.
I mean, that's what happens in the song.
I mean she starts off
Saying I'm trying all these things.
I don't mean any harm.
You know I want to be your friend
Etc etc, but nothing works.
She's just rejected all the way down the line
And in the end she says you broke the bridge on on your side, and and I'm just walking away
And that's what she can do I _ think the first two sins of gluttony and lust are always the easiest to relate to that
They're always [Bb] popular, and they're considered to be the the most human and most forgivable [A] since
_ gluttony especially I [B] I think
_ _ [Bb] It's it's actually hard to even [Eb] think of it as a sin
but like most of the other ones it becomes a sin when it's indulged into excess [B] or it it sort [F] of
becomes an obsession that
Messes up other parts of your life or or affects other people you know in Amadeus the movie that there's a guy
The the Archduke or the Emperor or something tells Mozart that there's too many notes too many notes my dear Mozart
I thought it should start off with having too many notes, and so I built this very busy fugue
Which just [Bb] becomes almost excruciatingly full of notes, and it's supposed to represent
excess _ _ _ _ _
[N] writing about avarice or greed was
Was the most difficult thing for me on this record actually it was that it was the sin that I?
least identified with because I guess I've just never really been interested in money or material things very much and
It's always been hard for me to understand
[Bb] So I couldn't find a way into it, and then what did it was that I read [N] an article in the New York Times?
about the war in Bosnia
But specifically about profiteering and people trying to make money out of this wartime situation
It's a scenario where every person has been reduced to whatever they have to sell or to trade
So that's what they become in a way.
I mean this person is a can of oil you know another person is three eggs
Another person is a pack of cigarettes
You know it's just all reduced to a very basic material level and all those voices are just sort of
People that are caught in the crossfire if you like so this one is pretty grim
I mean, I think a lot of this record has a lot of humor in it this one doesn't particularly
Except in the blackest [Bb] possible sense _ _ _ _ _ this piece
Angel which [Eb] is about lust _
[Bb] _ It went through a lot of transformations
Because it started off being [Ab] from the point of view of a sort of horny young
[N] Guy who was completely confused by the whole thing and doesn't know which way to turn
and
_ I had the idea of him having you know in old cartoons you see people with a little angel on one shoulder and little devil on
The other tempting them in two different directions, and I had this idea that that's what would be going through his head
I mean in the one hand he's being tempted into total sleaze and on the other hand some kind of more spiritual
You know higher plane is calling to him as well as I got further along with it
I I thought it would be nice to have two women's voices representing this sort of virgin and whore _
Contradiction and it ended up really being just the two women's voices for the most part
Telling the story and that really sort of competing with each other _ _ _ _
piece about pride also starts with a fugue
It's a different kind of fugue whereas the one in in
Gluttony is about excess this one is about building _
Building up this it's like building up an ego.
It's
_ Feeling of sort of serene confidence is what I'm trying to build up
as the song come goes along that this feeling of serene confidence gives way to
_ What was the sort of
_ crazed
Egocentric thing that really gets distorted.
I mean with each verse
The ego gets bigger and bigger until until he ends up saying that he's God basically
And that's that's where he's screwed.
I mean that that's where the devil it's gotten by the short and curlies I
_ _ _ _ _ _ Had this idea that sloth would be a pasicalia
Which is an old variation form where you have a certain theme which quite often is a baseline [Bb] in this case
It's a 20 bar baseline that you hear at the beginning and it repeats itself over and over
And each time there are variations that go around it
So they go above it or below it the idea that it just keeps coming back to square one all the time
Never really goes anywhere and I thought that was very appropriate for [A] sloth people say well, why is sloth a sin?
What's wrong with just being a sloth in front of the TV, but we it was nothing wrong with that, but
But to me is much more insidious than that is every time you hear someone say hey, it's not my problem [G] or why bother?
You know, hey man lighten up, you know, like nothing's worth getting excited about that's very much the sin of sloth and it's
Extremely prevalent