Just Another Poor Boy
From Spanish Train and Other Stories
by Chris de Burgh
Many of us have wondered just exactly what "Just Another Poor Boy" was about.
The following quote from Chris himself (reprinted here from The Getaway Gazette, and
provided by Dave Doohan) will help explain:
"That was written in my spiritual phase. I remember somebody making a remark that if Jesus came back today - or during the 60's - then he would have been lost in among all the hippies. But he would have stood out. In Just Another Poor Boy, I'm suggesting that, as far as the people of his times were concerned, Jesus was just another bloke. You know, causing trouble - and there he was attracting all those people. The song is trying to dig a little into the myth, into whatever the story was. If you were alive in Palestine in those days and you heard about this guy...then that's what my standpoint is;just another poor boy.
Mary Magdalene was a call-girl, apparently, a lady of the night. She took care of Jesus and comforted him - but then she realised that there was something really different about him. And at night she sat beside him and he'd talk around the fire. So it's kind of from her standpoint too. Then, when Jesus was arrested, the soldiers said 'Well - who was he anyway?' And THAT'S the point;it was only AFTER, after the crucifixion, that he suddenly became this monstrous figure. The song has a lovely little ending where it suggests that this was the beginning of the whole thing. I find that kind of an interesting and exciting way of looking at it."
Reproduced from the Getaway Gazette January 1987.
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File last modified on September 11th, 1996