This song is enjoyed by many people, and although it was released a few years ago it is still getting new listeners. It was said to be one of those "instant classics" that comes along once in awhile. It is a very special song. There is, of course, a "part one", but I have yet to become well aquainted with it.

    At the website "Song Meanings.com", I was looking for some insight to these lyrics, to get some idea about the meaning. I found a comment by a poster who goes by the name of 'kronos", and I am including much of what he wrote, here. although I had to re-write what he wrote to fix spelling mistakes and to add some of my own thoughts, but basically I give kronos the credit for this insight/interpretation into these lyrics.

Introduction:
   "Road to Hell"  is basically a song telling you that the life your trapped in is the road to hell an you cant get out.

    Marriage, morgage, commitment and how you will never be able to be free once you commit to these things that society tells you. We hear about them as a teen, and the message is reinforced all through our adult lives so that we will feel that, as good parents, we have to pass these values and expectations onto our kids.

     Chris Rea is saying that the message is that "this is how you should live your life", but he says that the wise dont fall into this. It is not necessarily a case of Rea feeling superior to anyone, or that he thinks of himself as one of the wise, but it is just that as a musician, he is almost automatically exempt from the "normal" trap, and that gives him an opportunity to see the bigger picture from the outside, and also to pontificate, to give a word to the wise.

    In fact, I believe that we should expect of, and depend on, our gifted composer-musicians [who write lyrics] to help us see our lives for what they are, because they live a bit of a different life than most of us do, free of the need to be normal workers. By the way, I myself am a "failed musician", having played professionally for awhile, but never quite found my groove and eventually had to give up performing [partly because of illness] ; now I just tinker with composing and doing re-makes of songs I like such as this one, which I am working on now on my home computer studio.


Okay, here we go - the actual lyrics are in "quote marks and italics", and then the explanation/interpretation below each section of lyric, by kronos and myself:

 "Standing by the river
   But the water doesn't flow"
   - waiting for your dreams but they just wont come, you are not your own person.

 "It boils with every poison you can think of " 
 - the negativity of the modern life which holds you down; all the pitfalls and traps such as debt and maintaining the status quo, materialism, stress, illness, and an unhappy marriage, for example.

"And I'm underneath the streetlight
The delight of joy I know,
Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows"
- the brainwash and the fear the media and society puts into you, the reason why you wont risk anything or change anything you do.

"And the perverted fear of violence
Chokes the smile on every face
 And common sense is ringing out the bell "
  - Obviously he is saying that nobody smiles because we are all so full of fear. "Common sense" might mean two things - a "collective feeling" that our world is in trouble, and the "rational thinking" that says it is now time to hit the alarm because we have gone too far, we are doomed if we stay on this path.


"This ain't no technological breakdown,
Oh-no, this is the road to hell."
  - we hear corporate spokespeople, and the mainstream media say that the reason for this or that problem is that there was simply a technological problem, that it will be fixed shortly [we just heard Obama say that global warming can be addressed with a technological solution],  but Chris Rea tells us it isn't so, no, we are not going to be able to fix this stupid way of life, and there is no way out now, we are on the road to hell.

kronos adds:
  "the road to hell"  the western society, where people think they are free but they are bound


"And as the roads jam up with credit
And there's nothing you can do
It's all just pieces of paper flying away from you"
  - The path through life now includes mortgage, debt, jobs, purchases - all the things that people do as they conform the way society tells them to,
 -  its out of your reach the debts mortgages car repayments and so on, on and on, you are now a part of the western way of life, which is as uncaring as the machine, you cannot bargain or reason with the system.
 - it really is just bits of paper that hold our value in this modern world, and it can easily disappear. Chris wrote this before the "credit crisis" hit, it was allways true anyhow but now we see the evidence of the fleeting nature of our paper value.


"Look out world, take a good look
 What comes down here
"You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well"
 krono's words: - if you are wise at a young age you will not get married or fall into debt just to have the happy couple syndrome, but instead find ways to be happy without getting into these traps, and by being be your own person
 Karlin - Open up our eyes!! but I am not sure about "what comes down here" - is that a referance to the devil? he did NOT say what GOES down here. And the third line means what kronos said - we have to learn to avoid the trappings of the mainstream before we get caught up in it.

"This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway "
 - the normal and accepted modern lifestyle does not live up to it's billing, players don't often get the success they are aiming for, and even if they do they just have bigger debts and greater worries and less happiness. Rea uses the catchphrase "upwardly mobile" to ridicule those who sell out to the system, who would describe themselves as "upwardly mobile".

  "this is the road to hell" - I am sure you get it by now... this lifestyle is not just a big lie, it is killing us and the planet, and it will be a slow and tortuous death.

kronos adds:
Pink Floyd wrote a similar song called "Welcome to the Machine" ;

Karlin:
I am sure there are a few other songs along this line too. A good poet can write words that are not overly specific, so that they can mean something to everyone's life, maybe in slightly different ways, like the classic "Stairway to Heaven" lyrics do.

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