Nattasha wrote:

I was thinking in Song to Self.
Maybe this song is sung by the girl.. She just knew J. had dead and she got depressed (deeply). She asks J. if he see the light.... and wants to kill herself (she loved J. very much) and then last words comes in...

Typing to Reach You wrote:

Hey Nikki, I like your storyline, it certainly fits together well.

As you and fer fer have basically said, I think Long Way Down is a song about J's hesitation and the thoughts going through his mind as he stands on the ledge of a window or a skyscraper roof etc. it's like a mental battle between his stubbornness in ending his life, and his cowardliness of not being able to quite literally take the final step. I think his parents may actually be at the scene, but I'm not sure... trying to convince him not to jump (maybe the police and everything are there too, like those typical person-trying-to-commit-suicide scenes you see on TV). I see the "they're never taking my alive" bit as a kind of childlike defiance that 'they', the police, his parents or whoever, aren't going to stop him. Yet really he knows that he's not going to go through with it, he doesn't have the guts. The tension in the song is released at the end, it gets calmer, as perhaps someone is able to take J's hand and stop him from jumping.

I don't think that it necessarily means J. Smith and Long Way Down are intermingled though (although they could be). Long Way Down could be an earlier attempt to commit suicide. The "there's a man on the street and he looks at his feet from his window" is a kinda confusing lyric, but it could mean an everyday man off the street is standing at the window of his apartment, looking downwards and daydreaming about his suicide aspiration - to jump out of that window. And not saying that I particularly think that's the correct reading, but just that it doesn't have to be connected to Long Way Down in any real way. J's death is a result of being frazzled in the bath, and that could have been ages after his suicide 'long way down' suicide attempt.

Regarding the Quite Free thing, it's true that the padded cell concept could just be more of a metaphorical thing referring to his mental state. But what if it is a more literal thing (as well), since he may have been locked up after his suicide attempt - after his mental breakdown? You would no doubt put someone suicidal in a padded cell to stop him hurting himself. Also I think the Friends lyric "and I'm glad you're better now" could refer to all this, after they let him go and he had (at least seemingly) stabilised.

BenFilbert wrote:

Like I said recently, Fran has said fans read too much into songs sometimes.