Pop Song 482 of 500 'Red Right Hand' Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 1994

Pop Song 482 of 500 'Red Right Hand' Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 1994

The liner notes for Murder Ballads state that the phrase "red right hand" is from a line in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost that refers to divine vengeance. The opening song on the album, "Song of Joy," states of a murderer: "It seems he has done many, many more, / quotes John Milton on the walls in the victim's blood. / The police are investigating at tremendous cost. / In my house he wrote 'his red right hand'. / That, I'm told, is from Paradise Lost."

The aforementioned appearance in Paradise Lost (Book II, 170-174) is: "What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, / Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, / And plunge us in the flames; or from above / Should intermitted vengeance arm again / His red right hand to plague us?". The term itself appears to be Milton's translation of the term "rubente dextera" in Horace's Ode I.2,2-3

Co-writer Mick Harvey recalled that the song originated during the songwriting process for the band's 1994 album Let Love In. The lyrics describe "a shadowy, alluring, and manipulative figure, stalking the land and striking a combination of fear and awe everywhere he goes" who is "seemingly part deity, part demon".[6] While writing the lyrics, Cave "filled an entire notebook" with descriptions of the town the song is set in, "including maps and sketches of prominent buildings, virtually none of which made it into the lyrics."[7] Cave later said that the town and landscape depicted in the song is a "reconstructed" version of Wangaratta, his hometown. Biographer Mark Mordue notes that it is "still somewhere real enough for those lyrics to serve as a map that could guide you from one point to another with an eerie familiarity."[8]

In 2004 researcher Kim Beissel claimed that "Red Right Hand" was loosely based on the 1987 Tom Waits song "Way Down in the Hole".

Take a little walk to the edge of town and go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms, like a bird of doom as it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires in the humming wires
Hey man, you know you're never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge, past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with a red right hand
He'll wrap you in his arms, tell you that you've been a good boy
He'll rekindle all the dreams, it took you a lifetime to destroy
He'll reach deep into the hole, heal your shrinking soul
But there won't be a single thing that you can do
He's a god, he's a man, he's a ghost, he's a guru
They're whispering his name through this disappearing land
But hidden in his coat is a red right hand
You don't have no money? He'll get you some
You don't have no car? He'll get you one
You don't have no self-respect, you feel like an insect
Well don't you worry buddy 'cause here he comes
Through the ghettos and the barrio and the Bowery and the slum
A shadow is cast wherever he stands
Stacks of green paper in his red right hand
You'll see him in your nightmares, you'll see him in your dreams
He'll appear out of nowhere but he ain't what he seems
You'll see him in your head, on the TV screen
And hey buddy, I'm warning you to turn it off
He's a ghost, he's a god, he's a man, he's a guru
You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed by his red right hand