question about these days lyrics
 

Hi all

can someone please explain to me what the underlined part mean?

Jimmy shoes busted both his legs, trying to learn to fly
From a second story window, he just jumped and closed his eyes
His mamma said he was crazy - he said mamma "I've got to try"
Don't you know that all my heroes died
And I guess I'd rather die than fade away

i've been wondering about that for a while, also, is this verse saying that jimmy commited suicide?

thanks

"busted both his legs" just means that he broke them. I think it's probably more figurative than about someone literally jumping out of the 2nd story window.

Jimmy Shoes is Jimmy Iovine's nickname, btw. And if that's meaningless to you, Jimmy Iovine is a producer and is on the Special Olympics committee with Jon. He's produced the A Very Special Christmas CDs and several specials including the Concert for New York after the terrorist attacks on 09-11. Jon was the first person he called when organizing the line up.

Becky

okay, thanks for the reply.
i know this sounds really stupid but the actual reason why i felt confused was beacuse for a long time, until i read your reply, i read the lyrics wrong.
i thought:
Jimmy shoes busted both his legs
was
jimmy('s) shoes busted both his legs
and i was thinking how the hell can someone's shoe break the wearer's leg. lol
well, maybe that's because i didn't know who jimmy shoes was. so thanks for that bit of information.

mis5y

Thanks. That's my dog Banjo. He's half pomeranian and half chihuahua.

Becky

never understood that, too... thx becky :wink: "shoes" should be written with a capital "S" then.. (just like Soul- with a capital S :lol: )

It is written with a capital S.

I've always seen that particular verse as a dig at the grunge bands, the depressing stuff that was coming out at that point. The fans took literally what the people were saying. Like Cobain who quoted Young in his suicide note "it's better to burn out than fade away". I don't think Jon agreed with it.

Ice

That's the same interpretation I had of that verse. Esepcially the "better to burn out than fade away" line.

I just didn't know who Jimmy Shoes was. The following line tells you how he busted his legs though.