"Mr Saturday Night Special" lyrics question

Cafe Society
#1

The song “Mr Saturday Night Special” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The first part of the song is this:

Two feets they come a creepin’
Like a black cat do
And two bodies are layin’ naked
Creeper think he got nothin’ to lose
So he creeps into this house, yeah
And unlocks the door
And as a man’s reaching for his trousers
Shoots him full of .38 holes

So what’s the situation here? Is this a burglar breaking into a house and then shooting the homeowner when he gets caught? Or is it a guy who catches his wife/girlfriend in bed with another man and shoots him?

#2

Maybe a Tyrone Green type deal?

Slip in through a window
Break his neck
Then his house I start to wreck
Got no reason
What the heck?
Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord

#3

His girlfriend/wife is cheating on him, it’s in the next verse. “Big Jim starts a thinkin’ somebody been cheatin’ and lyin’”

As long as she’s cheating on him and he’s lost her, he’s got nothing left to lose, might as well kill this guy. If she was everything to him and now she’s gone, what’s the worst that’s going to happen, he’ll go to jail, what does he care at this point. This line of thinking isn’t all that unique.

ETA, keep in mind the narrator is drunk when he decides to go and kill him.

#4

Is this a whoosh? Big Jim clearly shot somebody in a completely different situation. He was drinking and playing poker and then when he kept losing he decided his friend was cheating so he shot him. Nothing there about breaking into a house and shooting anybody.

#5

C-I-L-L my landlord.

#6

Jim in the next verse is unrelated. The first verse is about discovering your wife/GF with another man and killing them both.

#7

My interpretation is that the first verse is a robbery, and the next verse with Jim is unrelated.

#8

Nope; the guy “unlocks the door.” He’s sneaking back to his own house or apartment and finding his wife / girlfriend in bed with another guy (that’s why the “creeper” has “nothing to lose”). He suspected this was happening, so he went out and got a cheap pistol (with a barrel that’s blue and cold) to kill them.

#9

They just don’t make Southern rock gun control anthems like they used to, do they?

#10

It wasn’t a whoosh, it was late and I ran the two verses together. I still stand by what I said though. His girlfriend was cheating on him so he killed the guy. As long as he has nothing left to lose, what does he care if he ends up in jail.

#11

I think it’s a robbery. The creeper creeps into “this” house, not “his” house.

#12

But he also unlocks the door, so it sounds like he has the key. The lyrics “this house” vs “his house” are confusing, but the message of the song makes much more sense if it a wronged husband/BF than a robbery.

The only way it would make sense as a robbery gone bad is if they couple discovered him during the robbery. But he clearly goes into the house already thinking he has nothing to lose which makes no sense. The man reaching for his trousers seems like shorthand for being discovered in bed and trying to get out of there quickly.

Way too much analysis for a Lynyrd Skynyrd song. :slight_smile:

#13

It’s just a musical advertisement for Glocks. (*Cheap *guns = bad.)

#14

Actually, it’s a rare liberal Southern rock song. It’s essentially a plea for gun control!

#15

“Nothing to lose” also refers to the idea that when a husband killed his wife’s lover, he often got away with it. The DA would refuse to prosecute and jury would refuse to acquit, with the idea he was protecting his honor/“property.”

#16

Yeah, I know, but that depends on four lines at the end; the rest is just about being stupid, which is most Southern rock. :slight_smile:

#17

The whole point of the soings seems to be that having a gun makes it way too easy for even a basically decent person to kill someone while drunk or angry or jealous or not thinking straight.

Given that, it wouldn’t make much sense for Skynyrd to sing about a burglar shooting people. We already KNOW burglars are bad! Indeed, the existence of armed burglars is one of the reasons so many ordinary honest folks buy guns in the first place. Singing about a burglar shooting a couple in their home wouldn’t convince anyone to get rid of his own guns.

An otherwise normal, non-violent husband or boyfriend shooting two people in the heat of jealousy might.

#18

I’d argue the opposite point. The song’s message is that cheap guns are dangerous to everyone (“some ole fool come around here/wanna shoot either you or me”). Now if the situation is a jealous husband, the issue gets murky. A lot of people would argue the cause of the shooting was people cheating on their spouses not too many handguns. The answer is that you avoid getting shot by not sleeping with other people’s spouses.

But being shot by a burglar is something that can happen to anyone (and if you’re sleeping in your bed, your own guns aren’t going to help you). That does a better job of selling the message that handguns threaten everybody.

#19

They also had the “anti-drug and booze” song That Smell. These were rockers-what was WRONG with these guys? :slight_smile:

Did they have a lesser-known song about the evils of pickup trucks, too?

#20

You know, for all the joking about Freebird…it’s a brilliant song.