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St. Jimmy (See Actual Lyrics) and Are We the Waiting? (See Actual Lyrics)
Deciphering the meaning of the lyrics to Green Day's St. Jimmy is kind of like going bowling for landmines in the desert whilst tripping on peyote. You're bound to hit a nerve somewhere, and in the meantime, things are going to get very, very, (in the words of the late great Dr. Gonzo), strange and terrible.
St. Jimmy is, after all, the point on the "American Idiot" album at which things get weird. Who is St. Jimmy? Is he someone the runaway Jesus of Suburbia meets in the city? Some sort of ultimate punk guru showing JOS what anarchy is all about?
Or is he a drug dealer, as is suggested in the next song on the "American Idiot" album, Give Me Novocain? OR is he actually some sort of metaphorical personification of the drugs that JOS is getting into now that he's on the streets? The "needle in the vein," the "teenage assassin."
Or maybe St. Jimmy is none other than Jesus of Suburbia himself? That seems to be the most likely option. In various interviews, the guys from Green Day have both confirmed AND denied this, so obviously they're no help. Thank you, boy geniuses.
On the other hand, in the Jesus of Suburbia video, the main character, presumably Jesus of Suburbia, writes 'St. Jimmy' on the 7-11 bathroom wall and signs it with a bloody handprint. If that's not a get-a-clue moment, then I don't know what is.
So Jesus and Jimmy are the same guy, fine, but what does this mean? Are they simply alter egos intended to metaphorically represent the different phases of this character's life? Or is something entirely more sinister afoot? Could it be that the radical transition from sub- to -urbia has caused some sort of schizophrenic Jekyll-and-Hyde break from reality, turning a pissed-off kid into a suicidal urban savage?
Hmmmm, unfortunately for all us scandal-mongers out there, it's probably not anything that extreme (although the allusion to St. Jimmy being the son of Edgar Allan Poe does hint at the macabre). With the recent release of "Bullet in a Bible," Green Day offered up further clues as to the meaning of St. Jimmy which we will have to unravel before deciding on the true nature of the sainted commando-king's identity.
The video for St. Jimmy actually starts with Are We the Waiting? even though Billy Joe explicitly says at the beginning of the live performance, "This song's called St. Jimmy." Obviously, Green Day wants these two songs to be understood in connection with each other.
In terms of the overarching "American Idiot" storyline, Are We the Waiting? is a tragic little anthem summing up the general feelings of everybody that is in JOS/St. Jimmy's position. He woke up from fantasy land to discover that shit was fucked, he escaped the soulless suburban deathtrap, and at first it was really exciting to be free, but then he came to the horrible realization that no matter how pissed off you are at the way the world is going, there's really not a lot you can do to change it.
This is where Are We the Waiting? plays out. In the "Bullet in a Bible" video, you can see Billy Joe getting the whole crowd to sing the chorus, and they do, with a desperate roaring, they do. This is because, duh: we are the waiting.
All this totally crazy bullshit is going on in global politics right now, and at first it was a big deal. There was all kinds of protesting going on and everybody was thinking, this can't happen. But then, of course, it just kept happening, and everybody got all scared and quiet. Fast forward to now, and we all feel like we're poised, helplessly, on the brink of some sort of inevitable apocalypse, but all we can do is wait.
Except for as the entire "American Idiot" album, and these songs in particular, point out, we don't have to just wait, we can shout our waiting out at the "starry nights" and "city lights": "And screaming, are we, we are, are we, we are, the waiting, unknown."
So by the end of this song, the main character has realized that nothing is actually going to change for him, nothing is different, and he's just one of the "unknown" broken, teeming masses. Ultimately, "The Jesus of Suburbia is a lie."
It is thusly that our would-be savior becomes the darkly ironic St. Jimmy. He refuses to be one of the waiting, and so he turns into a hardcore punk. And what is punk if not unfailing anarchy, destruction, and aggression in the face of insurmountable order, regulation, and oppression?
St. Jimmy is "That needle in the vein of the establishment," "The product of war and fear that we've been victimized." He's not the evil alter ego of JOS, but rather the free-thinking individual that JOS has become. But he's also highly unstable, "with a taste for suicidal." He's the kind of person we'd all like to be if absolutely nothing matter and we could just say "fuck everything." But when you do that you have to fight constantly against a system that has been designed to suck you back in, and it is a hard road.
That is why, throughout this song, St. Jimmy keeps repeating, "that's my name, don't wear it out." St. Jimmy is not a real name but the name of a superhero. It's both powerful and fragile, and it therefore can be worn out, burnt out, ground down like a flame that burns too brightly to last long in this shithole.
Jimmy calls himself "the patron saint of denial." This is because he knows that even as he says a big fuck you to the powers that be, he is living an illusion that can't last, and this illusion, however dissimilar, parallels the fantasy land inhabited by all those who still believe that everything is alright in America.
This interpretation is supported by a song about another Saint Jimmy called Lost in the Flood by Bruce Springsteen. In this song, a war veteran known as "Jimmy the Saint" returns from combat "like a hungry runaway / He walks through town all alone." (Ringing any bells yet?)
Jimmy the Saint tries to get back to his normal life, but he can't handle it, and "with a taste for suicidal" similar to St. Jimmy's, ends his own life in a "blaze" and a "blast." Jimmy's story ends like this:
And there's nothin' left but some blood where the body fell.
That is, nothin' left that you could sell,
just junk all across the horizon, a real highwayman's farewell.
And he said "Hey kid, you think that's oil? Man, that ain't oil, that's blood.
Springsteen wrote this song in 1973. Today, as we see on "American Idiot," the equation of blood and oil has more significance than ever. Only Billy Joe could say if he was actually thinking of this song when he wrote the lyrics to St. Jimmy and the entire "American Idiot" album, but the point of this reference is that, intentional or not, it highlights a current of shared feeling that St. Jimmy is directly tapped into.
The story of St. Jimmy also evokes the sadly long list of great punk rockers throughout history like Sid Vicious, Ian Curtis, Darby Crash, Johnny Thunders, Kurt Cobain, Bradley Nowell, and on and on and on, who died WAY before their time, having lived short but very intense lives.
In this sense, although St. Jimmy is one of the rowdiest tracks on "American Idiot," it is also one of the most depressing. Jimmy's screw you rebellion is pure punk gold. However, as we see on the rest of the album, most notably Homecoming, it remains a fact that, as in the words of Robert Frost, "Nothing gold can stay."
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