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Originally Posted by jwys_soapbox
Not to stray off the subject too much, but does anyone have any theory about why the work is called "Law and Order"? Has Lindsey ever commented on this?
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Quite a bit actually:
Someone said, "well why did you call it
Law and Order?" And I said, "well first of all, it has nothing to do with the contemporary context in which that term is used now. It has nothing to do with the society aspect." It's more specifically, I would think, the theme of how to retain innocence. How do you keep your innocence while experiencing pain, basically. Because, I mean, everyone is born with innocence but as you get older and experience pain, you tend to close off your feelings more; you tend to become more cynical; you tend to become more self-aware, less giving. And the album, in some ways, is asking the question, "how do you keep those innocent eyes through which beauty -
real beauty - is seen?" And uh, I think it really comes down to choices. I mean, do you reject a situation or do you reject a person because you are confronted with pain, or do you accept pain as part of the whole? And learn to get through it to the other side.
Innerview with Jim Ladd, 1981
Law & Order is really just about personal codes and disciplines. You know, rock and roll has always represented a sort of escape for people, but it’s also a discipline, something you have to really
try at. My life seems to have come down to committing to a small number of things that I try to do well, and that takes a certain amount of discipline - not clean living, necessarily - but a certain amount of order and law that may not be represented in what people imagine goes on in rock and roll. So it’s about commitment and what that requires. A lot of the songs are about commitments to relationships, and that’s another thread that runs through it.
BAM Magazine, November 1981