Jake Zavracky is a moderately successful music composer, and a super successful complainer. Today he unpacks the poesy of a certain Mr. Pat Monahan of that one band Train that still exists. Previously he examined Huey Lewis and the News, Men At Work, and Park Slope Brooklyn. More from Jake on this site here. Go check out his music here.
I've been interested in Train lately because I find their longevity surprising. Their debut album came out nearly 15 years ago, and about 3 years after that if they had a song on the radio I would say something like "Oh, this band is still around?" And then that kept happening for the remaining 12 years. And now it's happening again with "Drive By."
"Drive By" is nearly ubiquitous at the moment; it's in car commercials, it's on the radio, it's on TV shows. So again I have had occasion to wonder how this band is still having hits. But this time I also have to wonder what is meant by the lyrics, specifically what is meant by the slang term "drive by." Going by context, it seems Train is using it to mean the same thing as "one night stand", which as far as I know, is not an acceptable use of the phrase. I decided to do a thorough investigation by Googling "train drive by meaning". The only answer I found from this exhaustive two minutes of detective work was no, that's not a new use for the slang term but something Train lyricist Pat Monahan made up to suit his lyrical purposes. Which I think is lazy songwriting. And it doesn't make any sense.
When I was a youth, a "drive by" was a slang term used by inner city youngsters to mean they were going to drive by the residences of rival youngsters and shoot into the windows in order to kill them. As far as I know, the meaning of the term has not changed. So going by that meaning, Pat Monahan is trying to assure the object of his affections that he has no intention of driving by her house to shoot her.
How the term "drive by", given it's original meaning, could be manipulated into meaning the same thing as having a one night stand is a mystery to me. So you call up your buddy and say "Hey man, I had a drive by last night".
"What do you mean?"
"You know, a drive by, a one night stand."
"A drive by? How is that a drive by."
"Well because I drove up to her house and went in and fucked her and then came back out of her house afterward and got in my car and drove off."
"Right but if it was a drive by you would just drive by without stopping. That's what the "by" means."
"Yeah but haven't you heard that Train song?"
How the term "drive by", given it's original meaning, could be manipulated into meaning the same thing as having a one night stand is a mystery to me. So you call up your buddy and say "Hey man, I had a drive by last night".
"What do you mean?"
"You know, a drive by, a one night stand."
"A drive by? How is that a drive by."
"Well because I drove up to her house and went in and fucked her and then came back out of her house afterward and got in my car and drove off."
"Right but if it was a drive by you would just drive by without stopping. That's what the "by" means."
"Yeah but haven't you heard that Train song?"
Upon reading through the lyrics I found that the "drive by" line was only a small part of the nonsense, which starts in the very first stanza:
"On the other side of a street I knew/Stood a girl that looked like you/I guess that's deja vu"
Well let me just stop you right there, sir. That is not deja vu. That is seeing someone who resembles someone else. And "on another side of a street I knew"? Who says that? I'm not quite sure what it even means. Are you saying at one time you knew a street but now you've forgotten it, and it is the very same street on which you currently stand? It's like you phrased it that way just so it could rhyme with "deja vu", even though it's not deja vu in the first place.
It continues "But I thought this can't be true/Cause you moved to west L.A or New York or Santa Fe/Or wherever to get away from me."
Mr. Monahan doesn't know where his former lover might have moved, and in fact, given the disparate cities he cites as examples of where she may have moved, he doesn't have even the faintest idea. One thing he is somehow sure of though, is that she has moved away to a different city, after only a one night stand, to get away from him.
"Oh but that one night was more than just right/I didn't leave you cause I was all through/I was overwhelmed and frankly scared as hell because I really fell for you."
An interesting confession, that. One doesn't normally get overwhelmed and scared as hell, however, after a one night stand. Usually one feels guilty and slumps home. An overwhelmed feeling usually occurs after at least a couple months of regular dating, and then spending what one party in a budding relationship sees as too much time together. It also seems a bit far fetched that Mr. Monahan, upon sleeping with a new lover for the first time would take off without saying goodbye because he "really fell" for her. That is not the behavior of someone newly in love. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, it just seems far fetched to me.
"Oh I swear to you, I'll be there for you/This is not a drive by aye aye aye aye Just a shy guy looking for a two ply Hefty bag to hold my aye aye aye aye love When you move me everything is groovy, they don't like it sue me The way you do me...."
Good grief. Let's review what's apparently happened so far: Mr. Monahan sees someone that appears to be a woman he had a one night stand with on a street that he once knew but that he currently can't remember even though he's standing on it. He knows it can't be her, because he knows she's decided to completely uproot and disrupt her entire life and move away to possibly an entirely different region all in an effort to get away from Mr. Monahan, after having a only a one night stand with him.
From the information we've been given so far, Mr. Monahan and this woman haven't communicated at all after their one night stand. Despite the fact that this woman has apparently moved away and he doesn't know where she is, Mr. Monahan begins making overtures to her. To do this he decides to let her know that he is simply a shy guy, who is looking for a two ply Hefty bag to hold his love. I can't see how telling her that would fail. That's just what every gal wants to hear.
When she moves him, everything is groovy. One may wonder how that is possible; how she is going about moving him with no communication or contact of any kind.
If "they" don't like it, "they" can sue him. But who are they? And what would their grounds be for a lawsuit? They don't like that Mr. Monahan feels groovy? I can't see how that would hold up in court.
And how can she "do" him if he doesn't even know where she is? He doesn't even know what street he's standing on in the city he lives in.
Maybe we can find some answers in the second verse...
No, I just looked, it's just more nonsense. I'll spare you the details. It's just more words that sort of sound like they go together but they don't.
For yet more nonsense we head over to the video.
I was surprised to learn that the video's protagonist is not, as I initially assumed, a cast member of General Hospital or some other daytime soap, but lead singer Patrick Monahan.
One interesting thing that happened as I was watching the video with the sound off and Samuel Barber's "Agnus Dei" playing instead is that those two things go surprisingly well together.
The video is partially a manipulative flag-waving tribute to the automobile and partially what could be the plot for a Lifetime original movie. It has 45 million views on YouTube. The story created in the video goes like this: Train, apparently on their time off from touring and seeing each other's faces everyday for something like two and a half straight years, take a trip together to wine country to jam in a field. While there, lead singer Pat Monahan goes to a wine tasting hosted by the woman we assume is the subject of the song. He woos this woman by taking her for a ride in his brightly colored hot rod, and as the flirtation between them builds, we cut to them lying in bed together, presumably post coitus, presumably at her place. Mr. Monahan decides to sneak out, and she wakes up to find the bed empty.
Mr. Monahan then goes to a car show back in San Francisco, and realizing his mistake, tries repeatedly to phone her. When she doesn't answer, he decides to drive back up, for some reason taking the rest of the members of Train, who also have brightly colored hot rods. When they arrive they circle the drive in slow motion. The woman, who stands on the balcony hosting another wine tasting, turns to see Mr. Monahan and his bandmates circling the drive in their hot rods, and wears a look of surprise. She watches Mr. Monahan and his bandmates continue to circle around her drive something like 11 times, and despite her best efforts, she is disarmed. What woman would be able to resist a car driving around in a continuous circle? Mr. Monahan is again making overtures to her, and saying something about looking for a two ply Hefty bag for his love. She thinks she can be that two ply Hefty bag, and in the next scene she is back in his car.
Sadly this terrible video does nothing to help us better understand the lyrics. Making Mr. Monahan the star of the video was a mistake. With very few exceptions, lead singers should not also be the actors in the storylines of videos. Then again, I hate videos almost no matter what. So I'm not a good person to ask. And nobody asked me. So it all works out.
Mr. Monahan looks about how you'd expect, maybe a little older. I'm sure he's a really nice guy in real life. This song is currently number 26 on the Hot 100, and it peaked at number 10. Mr. Monahan is a rock star.
This is what Mr. Monahan, a current rock star looks like:
Here is what I looked like in 2001, when I was even more of an asshole than I am now:
Here in New York, "Drive By" has been used by Tri-State Ford Dealers in an ad which incorporates New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter executing various impressive baseball moves. Upon seeing the ad, most people probably aren't thinking about the lyrical content of the song playing in the background. And it's not surprising that it was used because ostensibly it seems custom made for a car commercial. But the song itself has nothing to do with cars, and even less to do with baseball. It seems to have been chosen simply because it has the word "drive" in it. But how is "this is not a drive by" an appeal to potential Ford buyers?
Actually I have a hard time believing it's appealing to anyone.
--JAKE ZAVRACKY
--JAKE ZAVRACKY
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1 comment:
yeah, Train's success is very interesting, because it was never an "explosive" hit case, but it has numerous #1 over the years, consistently for more than a decade. Right before Drive By, there was Hey Soul Sister, which I think was an even bigger hit. These guys work hard!
English is not my first language, so I thought drive by was an expression that I just didn't know! Funny that it doesn't really mean anything!
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