Youtube lyrics: Pepper (BHS) vs Before the Deluge (Browne)

"Pepper" by Gibby Haynes & Paul Leary, 1996 Butthole Surfers on Electric Larryland
"Before The Deluge" by Jackson Browne, 1974 on Late For the Sky

Pepper is more than a song of death. Certainly it dwells on many ways of inviting death: the paean to heroin in the chorus, risking violent sudden death (trains, bullets) and disease. However, the emphasis of the song is life. These people are living to the fullest whether you agree with their pursuits or not. Each surviving person has a brush with death that reinvigorates them. They risk dying because they risk living. More than mere experience, they throw themselves into it and are swept away while "drinking from a fountain / That was pourin' like an avalanche comin' down the mountain."

Compare the stark blood soaked tone of Pepper to Jackson Browne's "Before the Deluge." Browne casts much more of a mystical tone describing the hopes of a whole generation caught in the turmoil between idealism and reality in the face of the end-days. Their plight is their resignation to compromise but "in the end they traded their tired wings / For the resignation that living brings / And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow / For the glitter and the rouge / And in the moment they were swept before the deluge"

Pepper: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CO8vBVUaKvk
Before the Deluge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhQM41vBKvs

"Pepper" by Gibby Haynes & Paul Leary

Marky got with Sharon, Sharon got Sherice
She was sharin' Sharon's outlook on the topic of disease
Mikey had a facial scar, and Bobby was a racist
They were all in love with dyin', they were doin' it in Texas

Tommy played piano like a kid out in the rain
Then he lost his leg in Dallas, he was dancin' with a train
They were all in love with dyin', they were drinking from a fountain
That was pourin' like an avalanche comin' down the mountain

I don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows
I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look through other people's eyes

Some will die in hot pursuit in fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit while sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life and drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche comin' down the mountain

I don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows
I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look through other people's eyes

Another Mikey took a knife while arguing in traffic
Flipper died a natural death, he caught a nasty virus
Then there was the ever present football player-rapist
They were all in love with dyin', they were doin' it in Texas

Paulie caught a bullet, but it only hit his leg
Well, it should have been a better shot, and got him in the head
They were all in love with dyin', they were drinkin' from a fountain
That was pourin' like an avalanche comin' down the mountain

I don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows
I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look through other people's eyes

**********************************

"Before The Deluge"

Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts they turned to each other's heart for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in the moment they were swept before the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by
By and by...
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by
By and by...
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky