St. Matthew chords by The Monkees

History: Written by Michael Nesmith, cut during his 1968 Nashville sessions but canned for more than two decades, resurrected in 1991 for Rhino Records' archival compilation Missing Links Volume 2. Meaning: "It's a song about Bob Dylan," says Nesmith. "The lyrics 'steal' and 'kneel' are a reference to Dylan's 'She Belongs to Me.' There's a line in it, 'You will start out standing, proud to steal her anything she needs / You will wind up peeking through a keyhole down upon your knees.' The 'she' is the St. Matthew that I'm referring to, as it pertains to the biblical sense of the Holy Ghost as the central character in the Dylan song. I've often thought the song was prescient about his born-again phase. I could see that he was wandering into the areas of biblical representations of the Holy Ghost, and I was convinced at the time that he did not know he was doing that. In other words, I could see where the ideas were flowing from. It was interesting to me, but I didn't ever expect anyone to understand it or try and communicate anything with it – it was just a little note that I wrote to myself in a way." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.