What were they really singing about?

“fly like an eagle.” ???
“8 miles high?”

Puff the Magic Dragon

@pdworkin yup! good one. who knew?
because when i heard that song, i thought it was a nice melody about a fairy tale creature. how cute.

@pdworkin ooh ooh and i also remember “mary jane” by rick james. great music.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds

@teh_kvlt_liberal i know! kaleidoscope eyes? way cool.

Afternoon Delight anyone?

Jackson Brown’s Rosie. Great, great song… all about masturbation!

@teh_kvlt_liberal Apparently Lucy, while quite suggestive of LSD was genuinely about a child’s drawing.

Ah I see, my bad
you learn something new everyday.

@pdworkin I just found that out recently. John Lennon’s son was friends with a little girl at school named Lucy and said something to his dad about her having diamonds in her eyes. I like to think of the LSD reason for the song, though.

Ring Around the Rosie and Catch a Tiger by a Toe. I remeber singing those songs as a little kid and now knowing the meaning behind them it is really surprising.

@Nefily What is the meaning behind them?

Ring around the rosie was about the plague I think

@pdworkin no, that would be “drawRing.” :)

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities all about “the quickie?”

Ring around the rosie pockets full of posey. Ha ha ha we all fall down. At least I thought it was implying drug use of some sort. And Catch a tiger by a toe if he hollers let him go. The word was orginally nigger instead of tiger.

@Nefily oh wow. ok.

a co-worker and i were singing old tunes the other day. is “fly like an eagle” about getting high?

You tell me what this means and we’ll both know:

Good sense, innocence, cripplin’ and kind.
Dead kings, many things I can’t define.
Oh Cajun spice, sweats and blushers your mind.
Incense and peppermints, the color of thyme.

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothing to lose.

Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns.
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around.
Look at yourself, look at yourself,
Yeah, yeah.
Look at yourself, look at yourself,
Yeah, yeah,
Yeah, yeah.

Tune-a by the cockeyed world in two.
Throw your pride to one side, It’s the least you can do.
Beatniks and politics, nothing is new.
A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view.

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothing to lose.

Good sense, innocence, crippled and kind.
Dead kings and many things I can’t define.
Oh Cajun spice, sweats and blushers your mind.
Incense and peppermints, the color of thyme.

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothing to lose.

Incense, peppermints, incense, peppermints.

Sha-la-la, sha-la-la….

@Blondesjon i say, uh marijuana or sassafras

L.O.L.A. Lola

L ucy in the
S ky with
D iamonds
is about a kid’s drawing? Really. I’m not convinced.

@man, that makes so much effin’ sense! it is so clear!

The one that baffles me most is “Smoke on the Water”. Which sounds all epic and powerful, except it’s really about a bunch of rich guys having a picnic by the lake.

For longest time I didn’t realize what Roxanne by The Police was about.

@Jeruba . . .

P residents
O f
T he
U nited
S tates of
A merica

Oh @Jeruba of little faith. Source

From the beetles

“Na nanan nananna nananan Hey Jude”

@mea05key please do expound. very catchy tune. they sing a version of that melody at white sox games. what is the fan base really chiming?

Captain Jack – Billy Joel

Lucy of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds recently died. John said it was about her, and so did Julian. Thats enough for me.

I liked the song Sugertown, but like it less now that I know it’s about an acid trip.
I like the La’s song “There She Goes”, but like it less now that I know it’s about heroin.

so weird because i was just reading these responses and Puff the magic dragon came on my shuffle…lol.

@Bluefreedom – what is Captain Jack about?

@deni. Captain Jack:

- This is based on a real person. Captain Jack was a drug dealer who lived near Joel in Oyster Bay, NY.

- Joel considers this an anti-drug song, as he sings about how their users become apathetic and lifeless.

- While many songs contain references to masturbation (check out “She Bop” or “Whip It”), this is one of the few that actually uses the word “masturbate” in the lyrics. This, along with the marijuana references, kept it off the playlists at most radio stations.

@Jack79. According to songfacts, Smoke On The Water was really about this:

This is about a fire in the Casino at Montreux, Switzerland. The band was going to record Machine Head there right after a Frank Zappa concert, but someone fired a flare gun at the ceiling which set the place on fire. The band was relocated to another hotel and recorded the album in the Rolling Stones mobile studio.

“I’m turning Japanese”. I’m sure we all know what that was about.

@Quagmire hmmmmmmmmmmm…
i remember that one.

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds had absolutely nothing to do with drugs. It’s a song about a picture that Julian drew. When John asked him about the drawing Julian told him it was Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Sorry to burst your drug bubble, guys.

ooooooooooh buuuuuubblessssssss….....far out.

@AstroChuck are you serious? no. seriously. i mean, i want to believe that, but when i hear that song i cannot help but think i am getting high on something.

Supernaut-Sabbath
Perhaps the most obvious one…

I have also heard the song “Horse With No Name” by America is about heroin.

@charliecompany34

Lennon had said repeatedly that it was just a song about Julian’s drawing, He was quite insistent about it. Some people heard the line as “The girl with colitis goes by”. Correleate that with LSD.

Peter Yarrow wrote Puff the Magic Dragon and he was quoted as saying that “when I want to write a song about marijuana, I will write a song about marijuana and Puff is not about marijuana”.

SRM

@chyna i love that song! the music is so folky and warm. but yeah, years later i figgered the rest.

@teh_kvlt_liberal . . .psst…what about sweet leaf?

All right, that’s just TOO obvious
Snowblind
Hand of doom
Fairies wear boots
And so on and forth
Are you threatening me?

i think “horse” was a street name back in the day for heroin if i’m not mistaken.

music was so creative back then. writers were so innovative. today’s music is so blatant it makes me sick.

About half of Morrissey/The Smiths’ songs have some subtle sexual and/or homosexual subtext to them.

“A rough kid who sometimes swallows nails”? c’mon…
“Hairdresser on Fire”
“I Want the One I Can’t Have” with it’s line “On the day that your mentality/decides to catch up with your biology”

granted, a lot of people who listen to this music know, but many don’t.

a lot of the younger generation listen to music and the beat. the words seem to be secondary. if and when they would take a step back (probably 10 years from now) they’ll notice the real message.

i think music of the 60s and 70s tried hard to say what it wanted to say. it took a lot of creativity so the airwaves could let it get aired on radio. today, radio is so negligent and it allows young artists to say whatever.

just an opinion. i love music of the past.

@charliecompany34-
From the famous September 1980 Playboy interview-

PLAYBOY: Where did “Lucy in the Sky” come from?

LENNON: My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” Simple.

PLAYBOY: The other images in the song weren’t drug-inspired?

LENNON: The images were from “Alice in Wonderland.” It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me—a “girl with kaleidoscope eyes” who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn’t met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be “Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Scroll up and y’all will find a link, wayyyy up there in an earlier post of mine in response to @Jeruba, to the snopes.com article on Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. It’s not really controversial any more. It wasn’t LSD.

Yoko is more destructive than LSD.

Yes, I’ve heard that story before, although not so well documented as at the Snopes link, I’ll admit.

William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, wrote: “The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.” In an essay I read many years ago (possibly the one from which this quote comes), Golding argued that our literary creations are like our children: we do the best we can with them, and then we have to let them go out into the world, where they have a life of their own. The author then no longer owns the meaning; the thing simply means whatever it means. Our purpose or inspiration in writing something and the meaning is has once written are not the same thing.

If this song immediately says “LSD” to practically everyone who hears it, who’s to say it doesn’t depict the experience of tripping, whether a child’s drawing gave rise to it or not?

@Jeruba for some reason, i feel that opinion. weird.

@Jeruba- While the spirit of the song was certainly drug-induced (hell, the entire Sgt. Pepper’s album was “liberated” by LSD) it wasn’t about it. The song was recorded in March ‘67 but John claims to have written it much earlier, before he expirimented with acid and marijuana was his drug of choice.

Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat and Tears
Oooh, or what about Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know being about Dave Coulier!?

@AstroChuck : I heard that story in the documentary, Imagine but never bought it. :)

@ubersiren, I don’t understand why you don’t believe that. Lennon talked OPENLY about heroin addiction, affairs, Beatle in-fighting, hitting Yoko, and lots of very personal stuff. If it really was about LSD, he would have said so.

@ubersiren- Well, there’s only one guy who really knows for sure and he’s not talking.

Now if you insist on a couple of drug themed Beatle songs there’s always I Got To Get You Into My Life and Daytripper. Paul has confirmed that both of those dealt with drugs.

@ubersiren They actually found and interviewed “Lucy” who is sick and may have since died, but she said Julien Lennon found out that she was sick and had been keeping in contact with her. She said in the interview that she had known for years that the song was about her. I saw the interview, but for the life of me, can’t remember what it was on or I would reference it.

She died about 3 weeks ago.

Whoa there… I was half joking. That’s what the smiley face was all about. Do I have a “kick me” sign or something? Touchy? Does the collective have PMS?

Oh yeah. There’s also Doctor Robert from the album Revolver. That song is about Doctor Robert Freymann, the famous “Speed Doctor” from New York who supplied many celebrities (including the Fab Four) with various drugs.
Plastic, man. Plastic.

@AstroChuck your answers. “intrepid.”

Beatles is my bag, dude.

What I was suggesting in my last comment, @charliecompany34 and others, is that something can take on a meaning not intended by its author and very much have that meaning even if it was not there in the original concept. Consider songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” which were old religious songs—spirituals—long before they were ever co-opted by the civil rights movement. Also consider what Judy Garland and her rainbow mean to gay pride. Consider any song that has been picked up by a movement of any sort—hell, consider “Sweet Caroline” and the Boston Red Sox—and you can see an instance of something that has been invested with symbolism, significance, or special meaning that is very real to those who espouse it and yet was definitely not there in its origin.

As for having a weird opinion, that idea doesn’t bother me in the least.

How about Little Red Corvette?

Wasn’t nothing Prince sang that no one knew what it was all about! Ask Tipper Gore.

“I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish” by The Smiths IMO was mos def about Oscar Wilde and his bf Bosie, a nobleman’s son, a relationship what got poor Oscar put in jail when Lord Douglas caught wind of it. And now 18 months’ hard labor seems… fair enoughhhh!

I’m relatively sure that Afroman’s Because I Got High has something to do with narcotics.

@AstroChuck im not too sure about afroman. i’m trying to listen for drug references but im coming up blank

Astrochuck, our Beatle maven, is absolutely right about the whole Sgt. Pepper album. Not long after it came out, a popular “thing” was to listen to the album, preferably on acid (not me) or just being stoned (me) and concentrate (as best one could) and try to “hear the heartbeat”. Some of the specifics in each song escape me but the theory was that there is what I suppose a constant bass line that continued throughout the album that resonated in tandem with someone’s heart rate.

I am pretty sure I found it, but I don’t think I could find it again. I have a Pacemaker now and I suppose I could set it to beat concurrently with the songs,,,,,,,,,,,,,

The music in the late 60’s, if not concerned with love and teenage angst, was probably drug-related. Hell, one could even read a drug scenario into something as mind-numbing as “Sugar, Sugar”, by the studio band, The Archies.

Think about what a Lovin’ Spoonful was, or a Rainy Day Woman or Crystal Blue Persuasion, Sly Stone at Woodstock, Mr.Tambourine Man, Stoned Soul Picnic and Sweet Blindness by the West Bronx Nightingale – Laura Nyro, I could keep going but won’t.

Many colleges at the time introduced courses in either Music or Literature departments devoted to evaluation of rock lyrics as poetry: Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, Arthur Lee, and others and professors would compare these “poets” to Baudelaire, Rilke and many others. Being an accountant I didn’t take any of these courses.

American musical history is replete with songs with opaque and symbolic lyrics. Think about “Jimmy Crack Corn” and other treasures from the minstrel era.

SRM