Van die zondagochtenden dat je je niet helemaal topfit voelt en de wereld je niet tegemoet lacht. Kris zélf over Sunday Morning Coming Down: “This song probably was the most directly autobiographical thing I had written. In those days I was living in a slum tenement that was torn down afterwards, but it was 25 dollars a month in a condemned building, and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” was more or less looking around me and writing about what I was doing. One time, some people broke into that place, and I had to call the police station to answer some questions about it, and the guy said, “Yeah, they really trashed the place when they went in there.” But I hadn’t noticed that it was any different. There were holes in the wall bigger than I was. It was quite a place, so “Sunday Morning Coming Down” is kind of more or less what I was living at that time. I guess it was depressing, I don’t know, but the chorus was kind of uplifting. … What I was really trying to do was to keep the feeling of loss and of sadness. For me at that time, it was the loss of my family and looking at a little kid swinging on a swing and his daddy pushing him. That was the feeling I wanted to get for the whole song. I think Sunday was the choice because the bars were closed in the morning and nobody was at work, so if you were alone, it was the most alone time…”
Well I woke up Sunday morning
with no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
and the beer I had for breakfast
wasn’t bad so I had one more for dessert
then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes
and found my cleanest dirty shirt
and I shaved (washed) my face and combed my hair
and stumbled down the stairs to meet the day
I’d smoked so much the night before,
my mouth was like an ashtray I’d been licking
(I’d smoked my brain the night before on cigarettes and songs
that I’ve been pickin’)
but I lit my first and watched a small kid
cussin’ at a can that he was kicking
then I crossed the empty street
and caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken,
and it took me back to somethin’
that I’d lost somehow somewhere along the way
On the Sunday morning sidewalks
wishing Lord that I was stoned
‘cause there’s something in a Sunday
that makes a body feel alone
and there’s nothin’ short of dyin’
half as lonesome as the sound
on the sleepin’ city sidewalks
Sunday mornin’ comin’ down
In the park I saw a daddy
with a laughing little girl who he was swingin’
and I stopped beside a Sunday school
and listened to the song that they were singin’
then I headed back for home and
somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’
and it echoed through the canyons like
the disappearing dreams of yesterday.
Sunday Morning coming down
