Hey guys. Before i start-great to have the forum up and running again!!! hope you are all well!
It seems as though that Lew guy broke little Jeffy's heart. Bless him.
The song itself is great. Not how i expected at all! what did you think? One of the many things i love about Jeff is his creativity in his music. A lot of his stuff has been a little different or experimental! Which i think is great. and his voice! The vocals on Sweet Lew are great-he sounds really different.But i loved what he did with it.
I was thinking the other day about Jeff's songs. I think his amazing ability to play bass overshadows so,me of his other strengths. Hes an amazing lyricist. Listen to 'nothing asd it seems' The words are beautiful.
That's all from me for now. see ya soon! amy xxx
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"...ahhh, passive aggressive rage...makes for some good rock n roll, my brother"
and i'm a big fan of jeff's lyrics... but i don't think this song is his greatest effort in the lyrics department so far... don't get me wrong... i like it a lot but i just think he wrote far better songs... otherside is simply amazing...
but does anyone else think that sweet lew wouldn't have fit into binaural?
it seems like they recorded this as a b-side... or jeff was just messing about in the studio...
i might be wrong, but wasn't the title "sweet lew" around for a long time... maybe he just never came around recording it before the binaural sessions...
Oh! don't get me wrong i wasn't refering to 'sweet lew' when talking about his great lyrics. I think that song was just a bit of fun. It definately would not have sounded right on Binaural! (That's quite a dark album). He probably did write it years ago (nearer the time of the Lew incident in 1994) but since it wasn't anything reallly serious he probably didn't think about recording it properly until later... i guess...
Take care guys! amy
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"...ahhh, passive aggressive rage...makes for some good rock n roll, my brother"
As you can see from my name, I'm a huge fan of this song. I was really suprised because I was expecting vocals ala 'I just want something to do'. Boy, this was not what I expected! But Stone singing Gimme No Lip was a bit if a suprise too.
I was just thinking the other day when i was readng his lyrics, i think he writes THE most BEAUTIFUL songs. i thought clouds roll by the greatest then i heard other side on lost dogs,, i was just blown away by how great it was....
Man, is it ever refreshing to be around people who appreciate "Sweet Lew" for what it is. Everyone else on the Internet seems to be bashing it!
From what I recall the song's creation dates back to sometime in 1999. Jeff mentions it in a Ten Club Newsletter from that winter. Maybe the idea spanned back to shortly after he met Abdul-Jabbar (I don't know), but five years or so seems like a long time to kind of "sit on it", and at least in a literal sense of putting something to tape with the band, nothing came about until the end of 1999.
I don't think there was ever the intention to have "Sweet Lew" end up on Binaural. In a Billboard interview a couple of years ago, Jeff basically said that he expected it just to end up as a B-side. Also, I used to have a Canadian radio interview on tape (until the cassette fell apart! ) where Jeff talked about his own individual songwriting/creative process when it came to demoing the songs that he eventually brought to the band during Binaural recording sessions... He talked about working on songs every day in his little studio and that "some of them were serious, some of them were funny", so I always figured "Sweet Lew" was one of the "funny" ones. Although I do find it very charming (for lack of a better word) that even a "non-serious" Jeff song involves him putting together three or four layers of distorted vocals, a Wurlitzer, and fairly significant instrumentation. His songs never fail to make me shake my head and say "How the hell does he come up with this stuff?!"
) where Jeff talked about his own individual songwriting/creative process when it came to demoing the songs that he eventually brought to the band during Binaural recording sessions... He talked about working on songs every day in his little studio and that "some of them were serious, some of them were funny", so I always figured "Sweet Lew" was one of the "funny" ones. Although I do find it very charming (for lack of a better word) that even a "non-serious" Jeff song involves him putting together three or four layers of distorted vocals, a Wurlitzer, and fairly significant instrumentation. His songs never fail to make me shake my head and say "How the hell does he come up with this stuff?!" 
