The Song:"Strange Apparition" can be found on
The Information. A few reviews made this comparison, and I fully agree: the music sounds like the Rolling Stones. The tempo, the piano, the acoustic guitar all make an almost rollicking rock song, much like a Stones' track. Beck described it similarly, saying he "wanted it to sound like when The Beatles get out all their percussion and go bananas." The ending of the song, with it's sudden slow-down is an expert turn of songwriting.
The rhythm track of "Strange Apparition" was a few years older than the song proper. Beck intended it as two or three drumkits at one time, making a cacophany, in which Beck tried a "call-and-response field holler" over it. However, I guess it did not work out quite right, and the song was about to be thrown away. Beck was sad to see it go, and wrote this song over it real quick at the last minute. (See "Think I'm In Love" for a similar tale; there, he tried to put a rap over the music, before ending up with more of a song on it.)
What exactly did Beck write? Beck's language, as sung, is sketchy, hinting at ideas more than describing them ("all the riches and the ruins / we all know how that story ends"). But it still remains an evocative song. The first verse and chorus show a man who has had some success, but is losing it (he's on the "last legs of [the] dream" that got him there). What will remain of this crash? Just a "strange apparition."
Beck hints at what the apparition is in the next verse, when he sings of the Lord. In this verse, after the crash, he's got nothing at all. The dream has not just walked away, it has been cremated. The Lord still comes knocking. The strange apparition still haunts. There is no indication that this haunting is a bad thing; in fact, this faith/spirituality/whatever is all he has.
After the second chorus, the song slows down drastically and dramatically, mirroring the crash and devastation narrated in the lyrics. Beck asks others who are crashing from a high point (analogized to a shipwreck): did you think that you were lucky (to have that success)? You should see yourself now. I can't decide if this last line is sarcasm. I imagine not, and that he's saying when you crash, that's when you'll be lucky enough to be haunted by the apparition. (If it is sarcastic, he's pointing out the irony of the lucky finally crashing.)
A quick note on what an apparition is: it varies. Often, it refers to a supernatural ghost, but can be more generally referring to anything that appears. Combining these definitions, I think Beck is using it to refer to some sort of spiritual thing, especially in the context of the rest of the lyrics. And in the context of a really old Beck song, "
I've Seen The Land Beyond," which has the lines:
The heavenly apparition appears
And we're haunted by our minds
And the spirit comes in disguise
From these shores where we belong
Beck wrote that in the early '90s, no less. Earlier in the song, he writes "from these shores where we belong / when the Lord is strange and strong / I have seen the land beyond." Clearly the language and ideas of this old One Foot In A Grave song were a jumping point into what would, over a decade later, become "Strange Apparition."