Origins
The song, according to Stevens, was inspired in part, by the tailor, Henry Matthews, who made suits for Stevens. He thought up the story of the worker that became the main character in the song.
Another theory is that he noticed a shop-front in Trinity Street, Cambridge, called 'Matthew and Son.' It was an up-market shop that sold grocery provisions, cheeses, coffee and household china. It was on the site that Heffer's Bookshop occupied as of early August of 2012.
Stevens later commented, "I had a girlfriend, and she was working for this big firm, and I didn't like the way that she had to spend so much of her time working. The riff seemed to fit the words, Matthew and Son. There was a bit of social comment there about people being slaves to other people."
Read more about this topic: Matthew And Son
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
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“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
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Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
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