Attack Of The Grey Lantern 隐藏的故事

多年前找到的一篇，某fans写的..

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Attack Of The Grey Lantern - exposed! Well this is a possible and slightly farfetched explaination about all the hidden meaning of the album, and how all the lyrics tie in together, effectively telling a story.



Mavis - the real story!
(Well, my interpretation of it anyway)
Once upon a time, in a small village near Liverpool, lived an old vicar named Albert. However, Albert was a very bad vicar, and by night, to make his otherwise dull life a bit more interesting, he would travel to the seedy lights of Liverpool to strip.
Sadly, after a while, all the immorality and corruption he was seeing by night meant that he was swiftly becoming discontented with being a vicar, and started losing his faith. He felt isolated (as the whole of Wide Open Space suggests), but didn't know what to do about it.
This is the basis for 'The Chad Who Loved Me', which is the vicar voicing all his thoughts on the matter - "Do I feel holy, or nothing at all?", and justifying his thoughts to anyone who cares, saying "You can't deny that your shit just tastes as sweet as mine", saying that he can't be criticised, because no-one else is any better.
In Mansun's Only Love Song', we get a glimpse into his life as he sees himself during the day - a vicar in appearance, but his mind is far away, dreaming of the exciting world of being a stripper - "Mavis looking sexy through her dress it shines, standing in the vestry she recites her lines" are how he views himself at that time - just reciting lines like an actor, not really meaning it, as his mind was on being Mavis, his stripper alter-ego, who really is "all things to no men" in the clubs. But this day time life becomes a bore for him, and he quickly gets depressed. He's lost the very basis on which his world stood, and sinks deeply into a depression, just wishing that he could be a normal member of the public like his innocent congregation, as mentioned in 'You, Who Do You Hate?' - the title referring to the fact that the public should hate him for his two-facedness, while really he's the last person they are likely to hate, but don't realise what's going on. He yearns deperately to be another face in the crowd - "If I ever lived again, I wish I could be you", because his current world is so messed up he doesn't know what to believe, yet stil preaches to the public - "How can I expect you to believe, when I don't even believe in me".
He loses the sparkle that he had as a vicar and had as a stripper in the early days. In fact, one of his friends he has as Mavis, who he can't meet outside the strip joints for the obvious reasons (so they have to write instead of meet in person), picks up on this in the first line of 'Stripper Vicar' - "Dear Mavis, I'm compelled to write this letter, in the hope that you may soon be getting better". We'll call this friend Grey Lantern from now on to save time.
He can't contain his depression as he is, and one day just "confessed to be a stripper" to Grey Lantern, who he did not recognise as being Mavis's friend. Grey Lantern gets intrigued, and slowly works out the story, taunting Mavis with this story of a messed up vicar he knows in the next letter, when in reality he knows he's actually writing to the vicar.
The vicar gets more and more stressed out now - not only is he unhappy being a priest, but now Albert is sure that Grey Lantern's worked out the whole story. Not only is he stressed, but he's sure he's doing an evil thing, as the catholic mentality, despite not being believed any more, is so deeply ingrained - "Mavis she knows, Mavis she knows, she's got all these things around her... she'll see you in hell".
But none the less, he loves the life in the seedy underworld. 'Taxloss' is the view of Mavis from a strip-joint goer. A taxloss is something you put your money into, which isn't taxed, and so here is the stripper. Hard as it is to draw the direct story from this song, we know that it's about an old man "touching 74" who "wears a cracking dress", which can describe no-one but our friend Albert. As a successful stripper, he gets a lot of money, basically for looking good without any mental stimulation. All the punters think he's stupid, but still pay because they get their kicks from it - "our assets are fluid". There is always a slight threat that someone will come in that recognises him from his past and reveal the true identity back home ("we'll sell you down the river"), but this threat is never realised, merely adding to the adrenaline kick that the vicar gets.
Again, we see the view of Mavis from the punter's point of view in 'Disgusting'. The song is what the average strip joint goer would think of Mavis if they knew just a bit of the past history. It points out that as a stripper, Mavis is different from the others "you're the stranger in here, with your stranger face", as there's something even less pure about her than all the others. What's worse is that while all the other strippers in the place are doing it basically for the money, wondering what they could have made of themselves otherwise, Mavis is there purely out of choice - "you show no regret like we all know that you're supposed to do". It questions whether Mavis should be doing this and be a vicar at the same time ("I hope you've changed the clothes you wear"), and says that he really shouldn't be doing it, morally - "You've been disgusting, it's so regretful". The second verse says that the vicar has had to go to these lengths to get his kicks because it would not be tolerated in the village that he lives in, but it was actually the boredom created by the village that drove him to it in the first place.
But he can't get enough of being Mavis, anyway, despite what everyone else may think. The juxtaposition between Mavis and the religiousness is shown again in 'She Makes My Nose Bleed', with "I vowed to my God I'd give it all up, if he would bring her on down from heaven" - saying that he knows that his Mavis habit isn't a good thing, but he's addicted to the performance of it all. He's so immensely happy being Mavis that to quit would be such a let down, when he knows that he could be so exquisitely happy as Mavis. If God made it less fun for him to be a transvestite, then he'd be able to stop, but he can't. He loves the slap and tickle of it all, the adrenaline he gets from parading round in womens clothing and spanking and whatever that he can't get enough. This is similar to the idea in 'Mansun's Only Love Song', where he says "If I feel God watching me, I control the actions of his destiny", where he's saying that if God would just manifest himself somehow, and give the vicar back his faith, then he'd stick at being a vicar, but if God doesn't then he'll go and be a stripper. As such, he could dicredit the church if he was found out or confessed his story to the papers, and a story like that would bring Christianity into disrepute.
But he realises that he can't go on like this. He must drop one of his lives, and undergoes great mental anguish trying to decide which one to settle on. He automatically leans towards the more exciting, glamorous and interesting job of being a stripper, but fully realises that if he does, his world will "all come crashing down". But he knows that it's rich of him to keep on preaching, when he himself is so unsure of anything religious, and has to concede (speaking in the third person) "You've got a gob on, my desperate icon" ('icon' meaning a representative of something holy, nothing computery).
It's all so confusing for him, but he knows he must go one way or the other. This is the emotion of 'Naked Twister' - "where do we" (the vicar and Mavis) "go, who do you trust, who do we see" and so on. This mental indecision is summed up in the line "stick or twist, tell me which will it be?". Shall he stick where he is as a vicar or twist, take the gamble and go for a stripper's life. The answer is clear in 'Dark Mavis' - "vicar twists and gets away."
The only problem now is how to lose his vicar lifestyle and sever all the bonds he had with the old Albert. He hatches a cunning scheme to cover it up, because if Grey Lantern revealed the truth to everyone, he knows he would be hunted down.
One day, someone died in the local parish who looked just like the vicar. The vicar saw this as his chance to escape the meaningless life as a vicar, making sure that Grey Lantern thought he was wrong all the time. So, he buried an empty coffin, and took the body and set it up, so people believed that the vicar had died.
This worked for a while - Grey Lantern believed that the vicar's "time on earth had ended" and that he was found "gagged and bound in stockings and suspenders". Then, Grey Lantern realised it was still just a cover up, and, angry at having been duped, shouts the vicious truth out at Mavis - "you are the vicar's daughter!". Daughter as in offspring, as it is Mavis who is biologically carrying down the vicar's bloodline.
Grey Lantern however forgives Mavis now. He realises that it is what the vicar wanted, and narrates "Dark Mavis" on Albert's last day in the village. He knows that the people would forgive him too, given time, and doesn't want to lose his old pal. He practically begs Mavis not to leave, but sadly cannot - "vicar twists and gets away - his lipstick's running, his dress is stunning". "In the path of righteous man, there is rubble where I stand", showing that Albert's spirituality has died now. The next line could be "in the path of cheap slappers, oooh! new hotel!". This song is completely about Mavis's departure from this small town, so it's hard to pick out single lines to convey it's message. The song is all about how he has transcended the religious life to a material, aesthetic one, but his congregation think he has just lived out his life - "his tights are nylon, his nails by revlon, he's got high heels on, but his flock don't care now". It ends with Mavis's plea just to be left alone where he goes to strip, and not hassled - he's happy there. As he puts it, "if you should see me passing by, do not disturb me as I shine".

This is, of course, just one interpretation of it all. It does, however, tie up all the loose ends in the album, and brings it together as a whole. Paul Draper often said in interviews that the album was all about the seedy undercurrent in small-town England, and songs like "Naked Twister" or "Mansun's Only Love Song" do not really seem to be about this, out of the context of this essay. So it's possible that this was what was going through Paul Draper's mind when he wrote the album. Of course, this is all just lyrical trainspotting, and the lyrics don't mean that much, but if they had no meaning whatsoever then there'd be no point in not just saving time and picking words out of a dictionary at random. And this certainly makes for a nice story. Maybe it's true. I don't know. Ask Paul or someone.