Somebody Saved Pete

[Jacksonjim@aol.com]

Although Pete often writes in an autobiographic fashion, especially since
1975, I think we're being too myopic if we presume that Pete's reference in
"Somebody Saved Me" ("I never leaned on a person like I leaned right then/And
when I finally woke up clean, my friend was dead/stone dead") was about a
real person or a singular entity.  Pete could be speaking metaphorically or
he could be creating a scenario for dramatic effect in the song.  

If he indeed was referencing somebody, I doubt it was Kit Lambert.  I don't
think Kit helped Pete go through much of his detox.  And Lambert died in
April, 1981--Pete's detox was a late 81/early 82 event.  

I think that Pete's reference may be more in terms of what he learned from
his dead friends; that was his "leaning."  He leaned on them for a real
understanding of what his lifestyle was doing to him.  He saw how Keith and
Kit (and Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones; I probably couldn't name all the
people Pete knew famous or otherwise who died of drug ODs) lived and died.
 And Pete finally woke up to what his drug use can really do.  But by the
time Pete came around, so many he knew were "stone dead."

So, there's my theory.

--Jim