I love this song. But on any occasion that I listen to it and smirk at these wonderful lyrics and the way they're delivered, I can't help but wonder whether or not this song has ever been thought of as being offensive to ................ "some" folks shall we say ?


I was driving home early Sunday morning through Bakersfield
Listening to gospel music on the colored radio station
And the preacher said "You know, you always have the Lord by your side"
And I was so pleased to be informed of this
That I ran 20 red lights in his honor
Thank you Jesus, thank you Lord

And I had an arrangement to meet a girl and I was kind of late
And I thought by the time I got there she'd be off
She'd be off with the nearest truck driver she could find
Much to my surprise, there she was sitting in the corner
A little bleary, worse for wear and tear
Was a girl with far away eyes

But I'll tell you

So if you're down on your luck and you can't harmonize (I know you all sympathize)
Find a girl with far away eyes
And if you're downright disgusted and life ain't worth a dime
Get a girl with far away eyes

Well

Well the preacher kept right on saying that all I had to do was
Send 10 dollars to the Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Jesus
Located somewhere in Los Angeles, California
And next week they'd say my prayer on the radio and all my dreams would come true
So I did
The next week, I got a prayer
For the girl - well, you know what kind of eyes she got

So if you're down on your luck, I know you all sympathize
Get a girl with far away eyes

no - it's a total "tongue in cheek" set of lyrics.

there are always some people that will take offense with anything. Why, I remember a time when I sent out a joke..................uuummmm, forget it.

I seem to recall that there was a bit of controversy about this song when the disc came out. Of course, there was a ton of controversy when this disc came out.

With the heat on the title track, Some Girls, the Stones took any heat away from Far Away Eyes.

No, it's funny.

Roger Waters; "You can't write rock'n'roll without offending someone."

You mean as opposed to "Some Girls", "Star Star" or "Brown Sugar"?

I'm a Christian but have never taken offense to this song. Anyone who WOULD take offense to it would not be listening to the Stones to begin with.

"Send 10 dollars to the Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Jesus
Located somewhere in Los Angeles, California
And next week they'd say my prayer on the radio and all my dreams would come true"

Those lines are priceless. How many televangelists ask for money? As if making a profit has anything to do with serving God. =)

The parody of the verses is countered by the genuine wistfulness of the chorus. And SG itself was tongue in cheek. Had Jesse Jackson not decided to get himself some easy publicity I don't think anyone would have found it offensive

so thats where the " money " thing started.... it was great live on 78 tour

Listen, I grew up with my parents & grandparents listening to Southern Baptist radio evangelists (think about the movie "The Apostle", which is great).

"Faraway Eyes" is precious on several levels--the humor is definitely there, but it is also an homage, in a weird way. It still makes me smile, and I find nothing offensive in it whatsoever.

bassplayer - exactly, there is affection, & as I said the chorus has an utterly different tone from the more satirical verses

the Stones got a lot of heat from the feminists for songs like Under My Thumb, Some Girls, and Little T&A. probably why they've been rarely played in the last 20 years

but I don't recall any big brouhaha from the bible thumpers for Faraway Eyes when it was released. I always thought it was more making fun of rednecks and country music in general. especially Mick's over-the-top mugging in the video clip

I've always loved this song since the first time I heard it as a kid. I used to wonder what Bakersfield was like,(I lived in Ohio) and what was Mick doing out there.
Chances are that he may really have been driving back to LA late one night (early one morning) through Bakersfield for some odd reason. No telling with these Rock Star types.

stonesfool Wrote:
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>
> but I don't recall any big brouhaha from the bible
> thumpers for Faraway Eyes when it was released.

Bible thumpers are a minority which are not allowed to be thin skinned.......that is reserved for others.

I wish they'd dust this off.It's awesome on Handsome Girls.

>the Stones got a lot of heat from the feminists for songs like Under My Thumb, Some >Girls, and Little T&A. probably why they've been rarely played in the last 20 years


The song "Some Girls" was all over the '98-99 tour, with Mick mumbling through the controversial line...does anyone know what he actually sang?

I heard Keith's wife won't let him play Little T&A...

I have heard audience recordings of nearly every show on the NS tour, and there is no way Mick mumbles through that line. His lyrics are very clear and in some cases he even hollers out the F word. In deference to the politically correct, however, the lyric was carefully amended to say that it's the white girls who want to get @#$%& all night long.

I've always loved Faraway Eyes. Later in my life, I got into some of Gram Parsons' early stuff with the International Submarine Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers and I was able to connect the dots.

The Stones do not often set out to be funny, but Jagger truly hit the mark on Faraway Eyes.

As far as Bakersfield, I have not been there for decades. Buck Owens plays there regularly; he may even live there.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-08-02 14:44 by Pserchia.

The true offense is that Mick and Keith don't write great lyrics like that anymore.

-- Keep on rollin'. Keep on. Keep on. Keep on. --

The nauseating thing about reactions to SG (& I know some feminists who dig the hell out of this one - & some others like UMT arent so much misogynist as exposing the nature of power in relationships, class, etc) is every line is a sendup of one group/stereotype or another, but it's the black girl one that gets all the attention. Of course it's perfectly acceptable to say the exact same thing about white girls.

i'm offened cuz he doesn't sing about Tranvestites in Some Girls!

I love that song because they obviously must have been driving up Interstates 99 or 5 at some point, and tried to listen to the radio. Because all you hear on the radio in the Valley in the middle of California is country stations and preachers (although the past few years you hear more Spanish stations).

Hell, Buck Owens owns Bakersfield. Or at least he owns some of those radio stations. Plus he owns the Crystal Palace, a big country nightclub where he plays every Friday and Saturday night. A major street in Bakersfield is also named after him, and a bronze statue of the man stands near the club.

i love the song because it has that wonderful quality in that you can't help but paint a mental picture in your mind of what's going on in the song. dylan does that alot (not that i'm comparing FAE with dylan's best work)....

I confess that one of the reasons I love the song is because I have actually worked in Bakersfield, but as a Brit it struck me as being this strange place that just didn't quite fit in with my perception of what California should be. It is a priceless song for all the reasons that people have mentioned on this thread, but for me personally there's just this other dimension as well. No disrespect intended, least of all to any natives of the fine city of Bakersfield - but I still maintain to this day that place just somehow doesn't quite belong in California. Not sure where exactly in the States it DOES belong, but not California ?

No, it's very California. It's just a different kind of California. It's where the "Okies" moved to (think "Grapes of Wrath") during the Depression, and they brought their culture with them, including their love of country music. I'm sure people from Bakersfield (and the rest of the San Joaquin Valley) think the coastal areas of California are the ones that don't belong. Though I guess if many Bakersfield-ians do seem to belong in another state, it must be Oklahoma.