2000 Light Years from Home ~ The Rolling Stones ~ Cover w/ HB Custom Line CLC 650 SM CE Bk ~ Tribute
(c)1967 Words & Music by Mick Jagger - Keith Richards
Track 4 / Side 2 on The Rolling Stones´ longplayer "Their Satanic Majesties Request"
Guitar Arr. stagwolf [Played in Dropped D tuning, Capo 2nd fret, sounds in original key of E
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Mick Jagger wrote "2000 Light Years from Home" in his cell in Brixton Prison during the night of June 29-30, 1967. Found guilty of the illegal possession of Benzedrine, he had been sentenced to three months in jail. Naturally, he did not know that he would be released on bail the following day, and was seized by a feeling of terrible loneliness, hence these superb lyrics.
The author displays great subtlety in expressing his anxiety through metaphor. The personal situation of the Stones´ singer is cleverly transformed into that of an astronaut whose sense of isolation grows as he approaches his final destination, the star Aldabaran. Here he is, one hundred light-years from home, the six hundred, then one thousand, and finally two thousand. The scenario is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury of Arthur C. Clarke, whose short story "The Sentinel" was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) and released the following year.
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Hap-B-day, Brian Jones