A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

Whitechapel is one of the songs I’m most proud of on the Monolith album, because it’s the fruition of years of work. When conceiving the “Doom Metal” album, I knew I wanted a big epic about Jack the Ripper, and I pictured it being in movements, one for each night of his killings, somewhat connected with similar riffs being done in different moods/time signatures/etc. I wrote some lyrics for the first two movements, Polly and Annie, and a riff or two back in like 1998 or 1999, but they were rather pompous and not very good. I would take the song out and tinker with it very rarely over the next few years, but it really never progressed anywhere except for that one riff - which became the octave-sliding thing at the beginning.

Then, one night when I finally reassessed the Doom Metal album and it mutated to Monolith…, I knew this song had to get done. I was feeling particularly miserable at the time as well (I might have been sick), and I was frustrated that the song never got anywhere - and I realized it was because the lyrics were so tame for what were supposedly horrific crimes. So I took the Polly verse and gave it a big working-over - this just after my parents had returned from London and gotten me a nice gift, Phillip Sugden’s excellent book on Jack the Ripper. I immersed myself in the details of the crimes and tried to create in my mind the general mindset people must have had at the time, that fear of someone so brutal and bold (and taunting - even though most of the taunting was hoaxing, that attitude has nevertheless become part of the collective conception of Jack).

When I got that Polly Verse done, I was happy. Then I conceived the main movements - a short intro, Polly, a change to a more somber one for Dark Annie, a more frantic one for the double event, then a long, sparse interlude between that one and the final, most vicious murder.

INTRODUCTION

Eight little whores, with no hope of heaven,
Gladstone may save one, then there'll be seven.
Seven little whores beggin for a shilling,
One stays in Henage Court, then there's a killing.
Six little whores, glad to be alive,
One sidles up to Jack, then there are five.
Four and whore rhyme aright,
So do three and me,
I'll set the town alight
Ere there are two.
Two little whores, shivering with fright,
Seek a cosy doorway in the middle of the night.
Jack's knife flashes, then there's but one,
And the last one's the ripest for Jack's idea of fun.

These lyrics aren’t by me - they are a poem from one of the hoax letters. The scansion fit the music and it does somewhat set the mood for what Jack would go on to do…

POLLY

The bitch was in the street
Selling herself, for doss and a drink
Pathetic whore, pathetic life
Be a favor to end it all and make her famous
Stepped up to her side, with a slice of my razor knife
Her neck bled until dead The streets flowed with red
Stabbed the cunt gave her the fucking she always wanted
Then, to the dark I hide...

Simple, direct, but with the music I think it’s a pretty strong-impacting verse/chorus.

I remember an old exercise in one of my creative writing classes where we had to write a story from a framework - someone goes into a room, touches some stuff in the room, then lays down on a bed and closes his eyes. I made mine about a stalking serial killer, and filled it with many of these types of insights which I also noted in the Sugden book - that serial killers often objectify their victims, that it seems perfectly reasonable to them to do what they do - they have their reasons, even if they make no sense to us. So I went with the thought that these women are begging Jack for sex, but to him sex = murder.

ANNIE

The bitch was in the road, by number 29
Just begging for Jack's fucking
I stepped to her side, asked her for a ride
She said "I know a place", and led me inside

Her throat parted and spurted red, without a sound
I laid the bitch back on the cold and filthy ground
Cut out the cunt, she won't need it longer
Ripped her guts, threw them over her shoulder
Her pathetic trinkets arrayed so nicely
round her dainty little feet
That will walk the streets no more

Then, to the dark I hide...

Again, lifting details straight from history to add that little touch of authenticity. I was rather proud of the clean guitar riff that I came up with for the backbone of this, and how many of the distorted guitar flourishes are tied to riffs from the first part - plus, of course, the chorus being the same.

(And I know ‘asked her for a ride’ is probably anachronistic, but I needed a rhyme and it feels right…)

DOUBLE EVENT

Long Liz strides like she wants a fuck so bad
Jack'll be the best the bitch has ever had
Lead her down the alley, here's your twopence, bitch
Then my knife made her blood fill the dirty ditch
Laid her down, about to fuck, a sound from up ahead
"Fuck off Lipski, can't you see I'm busy here?"
He runs, I run, Lizzie got off easy
But now I've got to scour the town to find another piece...

Mitre square, quarter to one, Cathy's looking fine
A flash of blade, a gurgled grunt, she bleeds her red red wine
Leave the ears, they won't come off, the nose another story
Cut out the cunt, gut the cunt, make it extra gory
The kidney's tasty she needs it not I'll have a little snack
No need to flip her I'll just cut the bitch straight from front to back
Now a little misdirection, teach those silly pigs a lesson
"The Jews are not the men who will be blamed for nothing"

This one was fun - not only is it frantic because he killed two in the same night, he’s also rather frustrated because he almost got caught AND because he couldn’t totally indulge himself the first time, and that tension must have been maddening - probably what drove him to be so brutal to poor Catherine Eddowes. Stepping up to that swinging triplet feel enhances that, I think, and I was rather proud that I could adapt the straight-8 riffs of the chorus to the triplet feel - it’s the same, but it’s not, but it is. I was also happy to be able to work in so many details - the ‘fuck off lipski’ yelling, him trying to cut off her ears but succeeding in getting her kidney, and of course the infamous chalk-on-the-wall quote obliterated in a fit of police incompetence.

`Interlude

The clean guitar interlude is just me reciting the text of several of the most famous ‘taunting letters’ of the time. They’re not included here, but any JTR website is sure to have them - plus it’s not that hard to understand. I wish I’d been able to do a proper accent, but I think that might have been more distracting, and I thought it more important to get that sneering, taunting superiority into the tone of voice.

MARY

She is so beautiful, I want to fuck her so bad
To be the best the bitch has ever had
But I see the room where she lays her head
So nice and private, our little love nest
I follow her back, and watch her lay down
Knock out the rag, unlatch the door, and come inside
And I fucked her
and fucked her
and fucked her
and fucked her
until my love had ripped the bitch apart
spread eagled on the bed, spread about the room
tits on the dresser, guts on the floor
face on the bed, skin on the wall
But her pretty little heart
now belongs to me
it all belongs to me....

Mary, of course, was unique in very many respects: she was so long after the others; by reports of others she was young and pretty (as opposed to the older and rather homely previous victims); she was killed inside where he could be especially vicious; hers was the only crime scene actually photographed. Those two infamous photos of her body are rather chilling, and I tried to capture that in the lyrics (also the detail about the heart seems to be accurate, as it was never found…). Again, I was rather proud of the way the clean part built up into the first section of this movement, and then how it slowly morphed into something like the first verse and chorus. And, there you have it - Whitechapel.

(I don’t have much more to say than what is here with regards to the song itself, except that it’s still one I’m quite proud of from a songwriting perspective. I might want to revisit this whole late-2001 era from a more top-level perspective about the recording of the album as a whole, but one thing at a time.)