A song inspired by the news - Nirvana – Polly 1991

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A song about a lonely teenager in distress and though unstated in the lyrics, it also involved a girl who ran away from home, not just as Kurt Cobain believed from initial press reports, a girl (whose real name was never released publicly) abducted after attending a rock concert. She was actually a fourteen year old runaway who was working in Spokane as a hooker. She was picked up by a man called Gerald Arthur Friend, but he sadly wanted far more than a night of purchased sex. The poor girl found herself his prisoner for weeks, held in chains, tortured with a blow torch and repeatedly raped. She mercifully escaped from his car when Friend took her for a ride, possibly intending to kill her, and she went to the authorities who arrested Friend the next day. Incredibly he had been arrested in 1960 in near identical circumstances too. Cobain sings the song from Friend’s point of view as he sees the girl as if she is a parrot in a cage, hence the name Polly. He is trying to control and condition her with a twisted system of reward and punishment. There is one startling lapse when Cobain starts a line with ‘Polly says’ instead of ‘Polly Said’ as he accidentally slips into her point of view instead of Friend’s. The effect is of her stifled suppressed voice and personality struggling to break free before her abductor again dominates the song. The decision was taken to leave the line unedited and it works brilliantly. It’s an amazing unique creepy insight into the mind of a sick individual like Friend. It creeps me out that he shares my first name, Arthur. Youtube of the song here Arthur Chappell