Living in Hell with a bar for a cell

A few summers ago I picked up a George Jones greatest hits album, “Anniversary: 10 Years of Hits,” at a gas station in Elkhart, IN.  I had never heard a George Jones song before that day, but since then I’ve been a big fan.

This 22-song collection almost serves as a biography for 10 years of the man’s life, capturing the breakdown of his marriage to Tammy Wynette and his inability to move on, which turned him into one of country music’s most legendary alcoholics. 

It starts pretty happily in 1972, three years into his marriage to Tammy. George croons his love for his wife; “The world is rough, but we can make it.” The infamous drinker even claims, “I don’t need wine to keep me warm now.”

The theme is continued on the next three tracks, “Loving You Could Never Be Better,” “A Picture of Me” and “What My Woman Can’t Do;” the first being a song about how blissful his love is, the second expressing how horrible Jones’s life would be without his wife, and the third explaining the superiority of his wife. 

With the humorous song “Nothing Ever Hurt Me,” we learn that he has lost his wife, and although it hurts a lot, it’ll be alright. On “Old King King,” he humorously compares himself to the ape, stating “Old King Kong was just a little monkey compared to my love for you,” and furthering the comparison with the fact that just like King Kong, he wouldn’t let his love go.

On “Bartender’s Blues,” we see Jones as a lonesome bartender who just needs “a honky tonk angel to hold me tight, to keep me from slipping away.”

He needs this angel but he doesn’t even know where to find her because he knows he’s “burned all my bridges, and sank all my ships;” George finally realizes that his love is gone for good. In “I’ll Just Take It Out in Love,” he lists all of these favors he has done for his woman and then tells her she doesn’t need to thank him.

“If there’s anything you owe me, darling I’ll just take it out in love.” He is trying to do anything he can to earn her love back by reminding her everything he could do for her.

By “Grand Tour” and “The Door”, any optimism of getting her back is gone; it is a look at a man who has lost it all. On the “Grand Tour” we hear sadness drip from Jones’s mouth as he gives a guided tour of his house and all the memories they once had there, singing “Straight ahead that’s the bed, where we lay and love together.” You can almost hear him cry as he sings the words.

On “The Door,” Jones lists all the horrible sounds he has heard, but states that none of them hurt him as much as the closing of the door when she left. Now that she’s gone, his life is in shambles; “These days I barely get by, I want to give up, lay down and die.”

On his big hit, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” he opens with the line, “he said I’ll love you till I die.” He then goes on to describe how much he missed her and still loved her and still hoped for her return, but ultimately he dies, and with death comes sweet relief from his feelings for her.
George loves and misses his wife so much that he sees death as the only way out. We see him fall to his lowest on “If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will).” He is so desperate to forget her that he tries to drown her memory in liquor; “Lord it’s been ten bottles, since I tried to forget her, but the memory still lingers.”

But George doesn’t care what it takes, either he will forget her, or he’ll drink himself to death trying. 

“Still Doin’ Time,” shows us that these feelings are never going away.  George is, “Living in hell with a bar for a cell,” paying for his crimes. His liquor-based plan is still in effect, “And the ocean of liquor I drank to forget her, is gonna kill me but I’ll drink ‘til then.”

The last of the 22 songs, “Same Ole’ Me,” is a nice song about a man who still feels the same way for his girl that he has since they met. The only issue is the fact that the whole album is about him trying to forget her and drowning out these feelings. He is still not over her and is still hurting inside.

All that booze couldn’t change anything. He’s still the “same ole’ me, loving the same sweet you.”