you for a while

Music and Lyrics by: Tori Amos

Instrumentation: Vocal, Acoustic Piano (Bosendorfer), Dutch Pilots

Brief Summary: At this point the novel that is Boys for Pele begins to wrap up…she begins to open her heart up to the men again. Not necessarily in a romantic sense, but she is able to not hate them again, to feel compassion for what they must have gone through when the relationship ended, or when they are suffering another fate.

Tori’s Comments: “Not the Red Baron is the moment of compassion for all of the men on the record. It’s where I could see their planes crashing…I could see that they have a side too.”

Fan Comments/Interpretations: One of the most common fan interpretations is that Not the Red Baron was written about young people dying of AIDS (i.e. a red baron shooting people down). This interp is supplemented by the final line of the song, “The prettiest red ribbons.” And, if anyone were interested in the whole “What language? No, Dutch.” thing, a fan (missme on songmeanings.net) told the following story:

Apparently her sound engineers were talking in dutch at the time of the recording and she asked them what language they were speaking in, they told her and she motioned them to carry on talking because she wanted it on the record (you can here them in the background, they sound kind of like pilots - ‘another pilot down’), and they asked her if she wanted them to do it in English and so she goes ‘No, Dutch!’”

China2Ny’s Comments: The album would not be complete with out Not the Red Baron…for as short an unobtrusive as a song as it is, this album would not be complete without it.