Terry Waite Sez

What - if any - connection these lines: "What are those trees /Painted white jobs" have with Terry Waite I do not know, but it should be pointed out that painting the bottom part of tree trunks is a long-established technique for protecting trees, including the prevention of cracking and splitting of new bark. Googling will take anyone to a lot of information and debate on the subject.

I'm intrigued and baffled, while looking at the lyrics of this song, of the words "Silvered something". What could Mark E Smith mean by this?

Could "Mr Big" actually be "Mr Begin"? Sounds a bit like it to me...

MES quote from the pilot issue of LM magazine (given away free with Crash, December 1986), dated January 1987, p.25:

http://pitchandputtproductions.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/mark-e-smith-interview-from-1986.html

Terry Waite Sez isn't about the Terry Waite, although I do dislike him intensely; we were in this pub in Stockport and there was this drunk there called Terry Waite and I noted down all the things he was saying and used them for the song.

So it's not just the Steve Barker interview where he says this.

I think it's "Big--eh" but you may be right...

re: Martin's question about "silvered something"

I always heard this in relation to "what are those trees? Painted white jobs." In which case.. Silver birch? We're listening in to a bit of dialogue.

In Brix's autobiography, The Rise, The Fall, and the Rise, she tells us that she came up with the title of this song.

According to Brix Smith-Start's autobiography, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise:

I actually came up with the title and wrote it. I was obsessed with Terry Waite... who was on the news every day. He was in Lebanon at the time trying to secure the release of hostages. I was very caught up in his story, which had echoes of the American hostage crisis during the Iranian Revolution - an incident my stepfather Marvin, an expert on the Middle East, had been heavily involved in. it was only after we released the song that Terry Waite himself got kidnapped. I remember hearing a rumour that a member of Terry Waite's family had contacted Beggars Banquet for the lyrics to the song, in case there were some psychic clues to his whereabouts hidden in the words.

Another nugget from an interview with Brix:
http://louderthanwar.com/brix-smith-just-released-acclaimed-autobiography-depth-interview

I believe that Mark is a psychic. He’s written songs about things that came to pass later. I quite a spiritual person. I also believe that I’m a psychic. I believe that he and I connect on multi levels. I believe that everything is vibrational based. We could talk about that all day. I hear things in my head. I’m not nuts. Maybe I am nuts. (Laughs). Where does inspiration come from? You tell me. I hear in my head this song is called ‘Terry Waite Sez’. I hand the song to Mark. I tell him it HAS to be called ‘Terry Waite Sez’. At this point Terry Waite was the envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury. We record the song. He ends up getting kidnapped. The song is released. Then his family call Beggars Banquet record company. They believe there might be clues in the lyrics as to where he’s being held. That was one instance but there were many more.

So here even the title is Brix's. So if we believe Brix, Mark's claim about the drunk in a Stockport pub looks implausible - as it always did, really. However, that doesn't mean the dialogue in the song weren't taken from such a characer.

Just realised I've already noted that Brix says she came up with the title...

I already have the information in #8 in the notes.

Oops, no I don't, I just put it there tonight, via comment nummer 8....what do you know. Pretty soon we'll be citing ourselves in circles like they do...

Damn it, the page is not obeying me, every time I hit "save" it changes "Here's Brix flogging her autobiography" back to italics. This is embarrassing and lame.

I always found the line "Mr. Big" to be funny, a reference to Terry Waite's stature. He stands 6' 7". Mr. Big, indeed.

Bazhdaddy sez;

1st verse

Terry Waite sez
”Give us a ring”
Gave us a ring he did

Sounded sour

2nd verse;
One of trees

3rd verse

Terry Waite, 50 plus
Out to help provincial pus
Not the real reverend one
Who says and does
He’s flying but they won't let him in

The last verse "50 plus"/"real reverend" (was 40 something at time) suggests the other TW may be actual.

Alternative last verse from the BBC live in concert CD;

One of those trees flaccid white jobs
Silver or something
Silver or something

Terry Waite, 50 plus
Out to help provincial
The Home Office says and does

I once saw The Rev TW walking round the Castlerigg stone circle in Cumbria (as seen in the Shiftwork & Holidays vid) but alas I hadn't the nerve to start singing this to him

Silver birch is a whitish silver barked tree....I have often thought the black markings on the tree can look like eyes.have a google. I thought Mark might be singing wide-eyed tree's.

https://www.direct2artist.com/system/artworks/preview_images/000/007/768/medium/IMG_4885.JPG?1448905661

I always heard the line 'He plans but they won't let him in', as 'He's flying, but they won't let him in'.

Terry Waite was sent by the Church of England in the 1980s to various countries as a special envoy, but he wasn't always welcome. On 13 June 1986, just before The Fall recorded the track, Waite was due to travel to South Africa to investigate the arrest of church leaders. He was refused entry to South Africa less than eight hours before he was due to fly to Johannesburg airport, however, as this article explains.