Going to Georgia
Lyrics
The most remarkable thing about coming home to you is the feeling of being in motion again
It's the most extraordinary thing in the world[1]
I have two big hands and a heart pumping blood and a 1967 Colt .45 with a busted safety catch
The world shines as I cross the Macon county line
Going to Georgia
The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you
And that you're standing in the doorway
And you smile as[2] you ease the gun from my hand and I’m frozen with joy right where I stand
The world throws its light underneath your hair
Forty miles from Atlanta, this is nowhere
Going to Georgia
Banter
- People, if I tell you something here, promise to keep it in this room 'cause I don't want people to think I'm, like, a spoilsport or nothing, but I feel like we're friends. So if I tell you that I am sick to death of 'Going to Georgia' 'cause I've been playing it for 13 years now... and I know, I know, if you go see my boy Mick Jagger he's gonna come out and tell you how he can't get no satisfaction, even though he got enough satisfaction circa '74 and has been lying to you ever since. But I have since... I've been to Georgia several times now. I live just a half a day's drive from there now. When I wrote that song, Georgia was a distant, mythical country, you know, that someone would only go to under dire circumstances. 'Why would you even go there?' 'Cause I grew up in Southern California. We don't understand why anybody would go anyplace, you know, besides our lovely smog-ridden, terrible traffic, can't-afford-to-live-there home. 'Cause in the culture... that's a different story. (audience member requests 'Going to Georgia' again) No, I'm not going to play that goddamn song. What, are you kidding? That was the whole point of the whole story. (2005-06-18)
- I wrote this song on Christmas morning in like '93. I know, we're all old. [ed: the curator of this website was born in 1994] And to me, at the time, Georgia was a distant continent shrouded in mystery and I never figured I’d ever see it. I lived on the west coast; those of us who grew up in California aren’t really fully convinced that there’s another world beyond southern California. I remember the day in 1998 that Simon Joyner and I were on the highway and I crossed the Macon County line and I was like, 'Holy fucking shit.' (2006-08-10)
- Sometimes I feel guilty about having written so many songs in which the protagonist is a stalker. You know how many times I think, 'Wow, there's a lot of people seem to really relate to the stalker dude.' If they get something out of it, and I enjoy singing it, well then we're all even. Every once in a while, being the sort of guy who likes to worry about shit, I think 'Wow, I hope nobody really actually thinks that's a good guy.' It's not a good guy. It's a guy who if you meet him, you should put a good distance between yourself and him. He's entertaining, on paper, but you meet him in real life and he's liable to like, y'know, hurt somebody you like and then you'll be all pissed off at him. And then you might say 'John, you know, I met the guy who was in that song, and he turned out to be a total asshole.' And I want you to know that I warned you. You may sympathize with him because he feels very deeply, that's not necessarily the sign of a good person. (2008-11-09)
- I don't know, have we played this song once this tour? [Peter: Once.] Maybe once. This is a very old song. And if I remember correctly, I wrote it on either Christmas Day or the day after, and I was like man, there's something in that song. And I wrote it 4 or 5 times, 'cause I was pretty excitable in those days. And there was a version that went like this [intense strumming that only very loosely resembles Going to Georgia] but I didn't settle on that. I didn't wind up using any of the versions that I recorded and thought, maybe that song will just die. But then I did it on a radio show about a month later and that's the version that wound up on Zopilote Machine. (2009-12-01 Webster Hall)
- The thing is, about this song—the thing is, about this song, uhh, when—I mean, I'm still a young man, and I'm permanently a young man, no matter how old I start to look I'm still twenty, right? So, umm, but—but when you are a young writer, boys get this idea that to really, to really show a woman the depth and purity of your love, what you have to do is something drastic and stupid, right? And, uhh, and young writers think it would be really intense to have a guy always harm himself real bad. And then, you know, I tell these stories. And so, well, I was a young writer once, and here's a song about a guy who travels some place with a gun. (2010-03-10)
- I honestly don't want to play 'Going to Georgia' ever again. I really confronted my old catalog because I began getting more and more engaged with my feminism, and I think 'Going to Georgia' is a bullshit song. Bottom line: I know it's got a nice melody, and it's got a cool vibe, but that dude is bullshit and I don't want to be involved with him anymore. I'm not saying I'll never play it, I probably will, especially when the three of us are playing it kind of rocks, but I wish its lyrics were different, I don't know what to do with that. I don't like what's going on in that song. It seems daring and edgy to a 26-year-old dude to have a guy who goes down with a gun for unknown purposes to see somebody he claims to love, but to my present self, that guy is a fucking asshole. I don't like to celebrate things like that. I'm not ashamed of the song, the song has a vibe, I can't deny it, and I listen to Cannibal Corpse, you know. The song 'Fucked with a Knife,' there aren't multiple readings of that song. That song is a terrible, horrible song but you know, my own part in that stuff, I don't know. I have complex feelings about it. (2012-06-22)
- I had a good time playing it for many years, and then I made the mistake of listening to it. (2012-10-13)
- Audience: Going to Georgia?
JD: I hate that song. You have to give me hundreds of dollars. I'll play 'Going to Georgia,' but you have to give me cash.
Audience guy: I’ve got sixty dollars.
JD: Give me sixty dollars. This is not for charity; it’s for me… This is a song that I consider misogynistic garbage. Here’s the thing - so the thing about songs that, when you’re a young songwriter, if you’re young - I must say male songwriter - you think it’s kind of romantic if your narrator would like hurt someone to prove how desperately in love he is. That’s pathetic. I don’t know any young male songwriter who doesn’t think that’s true, but it’s pathetic, right? But, as a young male songwriter in 1993, I was good at being pathetic. [starts song] I wanna say to interrupt the narrator – the most extraordinary feeling in the whole world is to wake up in jail. That’s a really extraordinary feeling. So compared to this guy being wrapped up in his own ideas and feelings, to wake up and go, ‘Oh, I’m in jail… Wow, my feelings don’t count for shit. This is jail.' And you knock on the bars and go, ‘Hey man, like I’m a singer-songwriter. You have to let me out of here.’ And then the guy who you went to high school with goes, ‘No I don’t.’ And you say, 'But Lance,’ 'cause that’s his name 'Well, Lance, you gotta let me out of here,’ and he says, 'No, I don’t.’ (2016-11-21)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. "It's the most extraordinary feeling that there ever was" (1996-08-30)
2. "when" (1996-08-30)