Album: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Year: 1967
. . .
As you know, here at Certain Songs, we have a weakness for songs about OUTER SPACE! And “2000 Light Years From Home” is a good one, describing a lonely astronaut who is traveling further and further away–what? Oh, right. Turns out that it’s a metaphor, he really didn’t get the jump on David Bowie and Elton John after all. BOOO!
You see, the lyrics for “2000 Light Years From Home” were written from a cell in Brixton Prison after Mick was sentenced for possession of pep pills after the Redlands bust we talked about in “We Love You.” At the time, he had no idea that it was all going to turn out OK, given that he was facing three months and Keith was facing a full year. So, after breaking down in tears, Mick wrote about the fear and sadness he was feeling.
After all, it was a perfect time for a blues song! In jail, busted for drugs. What a perfect time to write a country-blues lament!
So instead he writes a sci-fi epic. As you do.
Sun turnin’ ’round with graceful motion
We’re setting off with soft explosion
Bound for a star with fiery oceans
It’s so very lonely, you’re a hundred light years from home
That said, if you want to, you can absolutely take it literally, especially given the music surrounding the lyrics, which starts with doubling-back-upon-itself bass run from Bill Wyman which settles into a pretty funky groove with Charlie while Brian Jones makes SPACE! noises with the mellotron. It’s pretty fucking awesome, especially with Charlie’s great “thawk thawk” on his snare between “years” and “from.”
Freezing red deserts turn to dark
Energy here in every part
It’s so very lonely, you’re six hundred light years from home
One of the cool things about “2000 Light Years From Home” is the sense of progression: the deeper we get into the song, the further the narrator gets from home, and the stranger SPACE! seems to become. So after 600 light years, we have Keith making weird “harrumphs” with his guitar while either Bill or Brian making spooky oscillation noises, and the voices get more and more alien-like as they get halfway to their destination.
It’s so very lonely, you’re a thousand light years from home
It’s so very lonely, you’re a thousand light years from home
I guess you could find all of the sound effects cheesy, but I kinda love them — they part of what makes “2000 Light Years From Home” so effective, to the point to when they finally get 2000 light years from home, and the song stops, you realize that this well and truly is a one-way trip.
Bell flight fourteen you now can land
See you on Aldebaran, safe on the green desert sand
It’s so very lonely, you’re two thousand light years from home
It’s so very lonely, you’re two thousand light years from home
One does wonder how much sci-fi Mick Jagger read: did he know Heinlein’s Future History series, or had he read Asimov’s “Nightfall” or did he even know who Mr. Spock was? I’m guessing “no” on all of these, but in 1992, he did star in Freejack, described in wikipedia as a “science fiction cyberpunk action film” — which I’ve never seen, but was roundly panned — so anything’s possible, I guess.
“2000 Light Years From Home” official music video
“2000 Light Years From Home” live 1990
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