Peter Gabriel: Shock The Monkey Meaning
Shock The Monkey Lyrics
Shock the monkey to life
Cover me when I run
Cover me through the fire
Something knocked me out' the trees
Now I'm on my knees
Cover me, darling please
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Don't you know when you're going to...
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Aight e'rybody, let's take a look at the REAL meaning of this song, but start from looking at the last lyrical line in the song, “Shock the monkey to life.” This song is 100% about Peter's experience with making and smoking crack cocaine. Monkey, of course, refers to the intense craving effect a drug has on a person. Crack first was known to hit the streets in the US in ’80 and ’81; this song was released in 82. Additionally, when making crack, the final critical step is to ‘shock’ it whereby the crack, still in its liquid state and still in the hot water right after the cook, is doused with cold water to push any remaining air and salts out of the ball of oil, increasing its potency, while also turning it into a very hard rock of crack (https://how-to-properly-make-crack-cocaine-940.peatix.com/). It is also worthy to note that in the live version of this song, the last line lyric is, "How much am I paying you?" So, from this lens, the rest of the lyrics make much more sense and fall right in line with this theme of Peter's experience with smoking crack cocaine. Also, note in the following album in the song, Sledgehammer, he writes a lyrical line, "I kicked the habit. Shed my skin," and these lines echoed and emphasized by the background singers right after Gabriel sings them. You can't necessarily believe what he publicly declared the song to be about (jealousy) obviously because he had SO (pun intended) much on the line. 'Monkey' in this song refers to both the "primitive monkey mind" and its urges and compulsions of the crack addict as well as the addictive drug, crack, itself.
Consider the lyrics below with the interpretted context in *brackets* beneath each respective line:
Cover me when I run
*Drug run- when he is running to get the cocaine, or when he is high and speeding from the high*
Cover me through the fire
*Either when he's using a flame to cook the coke into crack or using the flame to smoke it, or both *
Something knocked me out the trees
*Trees referring to where and when he was high AF on crack*
Now I'm on my knees
*Figuratively in agony and in submission from the cravings, or literally on his knees carpet creeping hoping to find any last tiny little bits he had dropped, desperate for the rush from just one more crack hit, or both*
Cover me, don't you monkey with the monkey
*Lie for him, and don't mess with him in his monkey mind state, or mess with the monkey, crack*
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Don't you know when you're going to shock the monkey
*Make the crack or mess with him in his withdrawing, craving, animalistic state*
Fox the fox
*Have to be sly*
Rat on the rat
*If he gets caught, he'll flip and give up his coke dealer*
You can ape the ape
*A person can fool another dumb person*
I know about that
*Because he's already done so (fooled people)*
There is one thing you must be sure of
I can't take anymore
*Can't take any more of the crack experience, specifically him running out, or can't take any more of her chastising or lecture*
Darling, don't you monkey with the monkey
*Don't mess with him or the crack*
Monkey, monkey, monkey
*Him withdrawing, the crack*
Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey
*She's going to mess with him or succumb to the temptation and cook crack for herself, or cook crack for him*
Wheels keep turning
*Thinking how can he get more*
(Monkey)
Something's burning
*The cooking, the smoking, or the desire for more crack*
(Monkey)
Don't like it but I guess I'm learning
*Doesn't like the severe cravings and is learning that whoever had warned him about the cravings from smoking crack was right*
Shock!
Shock!
Shock!
Watch the monkey get hurt, monkey
Shock!
Shock!
Shock!
Watch the monkey get hurt, monkey
Cover me, when I sleep
Cover me, when I breathe
You throw your pearls before the swine
*The person who turned him onto crack telling him, "Oh, once you try this crack, you'll think snorting it is a waste moving forward, because the high is SO MUCH MORE INTENSE AND BETTER!"*
Make the monkey blind
*Peter is already a snorter coke head, and the temptation to feel what is a "snort coke buzz to the tenth power" when smoked as crack is absolutely irresistible, despite knowing the risk of deep addiction*
Cover me, don't you monkey with the monkey
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey
Too much at stake
(Monkey)
*Addiction*
Ground beneath me shake
(Monkey)
*Realizing that crack is so good that he may have an addiction*
And the news is breaking
*E.g., "Gabriel was found smoking crack," or "Gabriel checked into rehab," as reported by the media.*
Shock!
Shock!
Shock!
Watch the monkey get hurt, monkey
Shock!
Shock!
Shock!
Watch the monkey get hurt, monkey
Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey to life
*Pouring cold water over the still hot cocaine oil is the last step in processing cocaine into crack. This last step is bringing "the monkey" that will be on Gabriel's back into reality and bringing this potential to life*
(Shock the monkey to life)
Shock the monkey to life, hey, hey
(Shock the monkey to life)
Shock the monkey to life
(Shock the monkey to life)
Shock the monkey to life, hey, hey
(Shock the monkey to life)
Hey, hey, hey
Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey
Shock the monkey to life -
"In actual fact, indeed, the neurotic patient presents us with a torn mind, divided by resistances. As we analyze it and remove the resistances, it grows together; the great unity which we call his ego fits into itself all the instinctual impulses which before had been split off and held apart from it."---Freud
This, I think, explains the narrative and concept of the video. Peter did not write this. It was conceived by someone else. It has to do with what Carl Jung calls Individuation--the wholeness of the Self, the integration of one's Shadow Self. In modern times, humans are torn between their reason and conscience, on the one hand, and their animal instincts, which is full of dark energies in the repressed unconscious. These polarizing forces cause anxiety and somatic illness. I believe, in the video, he is in a dream at one point. Maybe this dream supplies him with the knowledge and insight needed for transformation.
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The lyrics to this song are written in such a manner that they could have a variety of interpretations. Example: there's an old saying about having a monkey on your back, which means having an addiction. Therefore, it's possible that the song is about a drug addict going through withdrawl.
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He says it's simply a song about jealousy.
How the jealous raging over your mate can reduce you into the primal pre-sapien cortexical part of the brain that is intensely reactive and beastly.
but this could also be the state of a psychotic break with reality. The writer and director of the video, not Gabriel, references ancient tribal ritual and Shamanism. The painted face, the white suit, the ring of fire, the banging together of sticks, the rising from the water and crying out--the video is a "Vision". It's not fable or allegory. It is a "Vision". There's a difference. -
I'm working slowly but intently on this song. It uses the metaphor of 'shocking a monkey'--experiments with classical and operant conditioning in animals and, well, in humans as well--something to do with what is called in the Pysch trade 'learned helplessness' perhaps the line "don't like it but I guess I'm learning" applies to this. I always thought it meant "don't like it but I guess I'm learning (to--like it)" as we usually colloquially mean. But, I tend to think Gabriel is being crafty with us. The song certainly has something to do with the alienated, anxious aspect of modern man in high-tech advanced civilization--and something about the healing of that (in the video, Gabriel appears in white tribal face paint in a bright- lighted room making a circle of fire---and while in this state he addresses the camera and displays a transcendent self-mastery in sharp contrast to the suffering man in the dark suit, with the walls closing in on him, putting his fists to the table to stop its frenetic shaking--in these phases he exhibits a form of high anxiety--and what prolonged sublimation and repression often lead to---a break with reality--psychosis. (or, perhaps, it's about drug addiction and cocaine-induced psychosis). All this I'm juggling in my head and will be juggling about with for many more weeks until, I hope, as has happened before while in hot pursuit of, not merely an interpretation,--but the full purport and intent of a work of art--I hope for that 'flash of insight', where everything falls into place in an instant and I see it all stark and clear, as if its hidden meaning had been obvious from the beginning.(By the way, that flash of insight struck me while working on U2's ZOOTV and Bono kissing the camera during "Until The End of The World--the DVD concert--so I know insight is nothing like an educated guess). Feel free to add your own pieces to this puzzle of a song, Peter Gabriel's "Shock The Monkey."
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