LOVE the artwork but still have NO idea what Firebox the song is about or how the cover relates to it
Joey doesn't want to give it away.... so were still left in the dark about what the song is about
My impressions about this :
I'm not sure all the lyrics of this album have a special meaning - at least for some songs, the ones that were written the last, which seems to be the case for FIREBOX, or else "Drink and a smile". (It's diffferent for other ones, like "Bag of Bones" and "Not supposed to sing the blues".)
Why am I thinking this? For many reasons.
1) Sometimes, especially in rock songs, the words are just there
to underline the music and the rythm : so, the writer is searching first for the terms that have the good "sound" for the music and tempo (for example, JTempest told one day that he liked to use the terms with the sound "down" in it) and don't pay too much attention to the meaning.
Other necessity : the words must fit the notes, but remember they
must have a rime, too, so that there's a the right combination between them...
It can be compared to French "Surrealists"poetry, in a way : no real meaning, but more an evocation of something.
2) The approach of Europe lyrics are very
different from JTempest solo albums, for instance. Especially the first one, where the lyrics had been so well thought and precise, and where we can see a kind of "vital necessity" in their expression. But JTempest told somewhere that it took him 2 YEARS to achieve these lyrics (which are really among the most excellent I've seen !).
But why would he work so hard for Europe lyrics, making them as polished and rich of nuances as "A place to call home" ? We must be honest : most of the rock listeners don't really care about the lyrics. See the review about bones ? Only a few mentioned the lyrics...
3) For BOB,
there was a problem of time. Norum told to a French journalist something funny about his state of mind when EUROPE entered the recording studio. He said approximatively: "I thought : all right, we have a great studio, a great band, a great producer : now, the only thing missing is songs !"...
That's humour of course. but it shows the songs were not completely ready. Remember that JTempest had even to record the voice part later, because the lyrics were missing...
All of this shows that some lyrics have been written very quickly, like "Firebox" and "drink and a smile"( and it was probably already the case with "Doghouse"). That's why JTempest himself can't explain what is it about !
4) However, watching the current state of mind of JTempest, I would say (but maybe I'm wrong here!!!), that nowadays he likes to write double meaning songs, where we can find -vaguely or precisely- sexual reference... Then FIREBOX could be a vague evocation of something sexual : the fact that a man spends a lot of time in his life searching for sex, for example (corroborated by the symbolic images of the video, IMO)
Or else, "firebox" can be an evocation of the human body, a very sad song, then, where the human being is reduced to a combustion box.
Anyway, FIREBOX is a great song.
And DOGHOUSE is a great song too; one of my favorites.
Which proves that a rock song doesn't need very elaborated lyrics to make us happy !
... ) (maybe very deep 
... ok, but why not?) 
), his/her sexual needs become urgent after a long time.
...again! 
GEL" 
