#XTC #new wave #post-punk #progressive pop #art rock #pop rock #baroque pop #art punk #power pop #psychedelic pop rock #1980s #1990s
Andy: “This was the B-side to ‘Grass’, but radio stations started to flip it over. The lyrics really got up some people's noses, and it became a big radio hit. Whoever first flipped it probably saved us.”
Andy (on the band demo): “A lot has been written and wrangled over with this song, and, you know, it hasn't deserved it. I just tried to wrestle with the paradox of God and the last dying doubts of belief that had hung, bat like, in the dark corners of my head since childhood. I'll just say one more time this song failed to crystalize all my thoughts on the subject in under 4 minutes. Human belief is too big a beast to bring to the floor in such a short time.
“This tune had a few incarnations. It started as a kind of skiffle rag with a much bluesier melody but after several blacksmith like bending and bashing sessions (oddly, in my kitchen) it gradually morphed into its well known shape.
“On the run up to the Skylarking sessions with Todd Rundgren, we congregated at Dave's tiny terraced house, in Swindon's Stanier Street, to record a few band demos on his four track reel to reel. So, awash with much tea and ginger biscuits, we tackled this and ‘Summer's Cauldron’, trying to get something presentable for Todd. Dave found a very ‘House of the Rising Sun’ arpeggio guitar figure to ornament my rather pedestrian acoustic strumming, while Colin anchored away with the Linn drum pretending to be a future Prairie Prince. The Mellotron had been living at Dave's for a few months (where he would tend lovingly its Heath Robinsonesque guts) so we decided this would supply the strings, I'd asked for something a bit Gershwin in the middle, a pinch of ‘Summertime’, a soupçon of ‘It Ain't Necessarily So’. You know, ‘Dat Ol' Debbil Be A Coming Missy’, orchestral blues bend. I remember that Dave's front room floral wallpaper seemed to gaze down at us with almost temperance meeting scorn, as we stirred up our sinful sounds that afternoon.
“Surely, for this tune, we will burn in Hull.”
Andy (on the skiffle version): “Found this a while back laying cowering in a corner of a cassette. It's pretty much me feeling-out the tune with blah blah type lyrics. Little did I know that this piece of brain blurt would be the tip of the iceberg to so much more acceptance for XTC in the U.S. Thank you God.”
From: https://xtc.fandom.com/wiki/Dear_God
Andy is a militant atheist. It's amazing how people see what they want want to, no matter how clear the message is. The idea that he must believe in god because it's addressed to god is just silly. It's a lyrical device...take a literature course. For those who refuse to see the song for what it is and how it was meant, here is a quote from Andy about the song: "it [Dear God] failed in part, because it wasn't as caustic as I would've liked it to be. It should've been a nail in throat of the public, but instead some took it as a declaration of faith when I wanted to make it clear that I don't believe in God - and that even if there is a He or a She they have nothing to do with organized religion." Just watch the video for Dear God. Andy is attacking the massive twisted tree (religion) that people are desperately clinging to, which is exactly what he is doing in the lyrics. I really don't see how he could be any clearer. From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/103714/
