You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory
"You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory" is a song released in 1978 by ex-New York Dolls member Johnny Thunders. The title was taken from a line in the "Better Living Through TV" episode of the sitcom The Honeymooners, and was written for his close friend Fabienne Shine.
Considered by many his signature song, the ballad is said to be about Thunders’ heroin addiction. However, according to Nina Antonia's biography, Johnny Thunders...In Cold Blood, the song was written before he was even a member of the New York Dolls, and years before he had ever tried heroin.
Peter Perrett, from the English New Wave band The Only Ones, supplied guitar and backing vocals.
Read more about You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory: Covers, Use in Pop Culture
Famous quotes containing the words put, arms and/or memory:
“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands;
They take a serpentine course—their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank;”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Memory is like a purse,—if it be over-full that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it. Take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof.”
—Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)