OK, we all know John Lennon denies Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about LSD. I say he lied.
How about other songs that appear to be about drugs but are not nudge-nudge wink-wink.
Stairway to Heaven.
It must be about sex, drugs, or rock and roll because any rock song is about one of those if you REALLY begin to rationalize…
"White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane
It was purposely written to sound like a drug song but actually it was entirely Lewis Carroll references.
Some folks didn’t “get it” so to speak - especially those right-wing types. Spiro Agnew listed it as one of many rock and roll songs about drugs. And no wonder Mr Agnew was so outraged (being the archetype of conservative morality). Oh yeah, he resigned the Vice Presidency in disgrace in 1973.
Er, that may be true (citation, please!), but the song does make direct drug references (one pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all).
Now “Mr. Brownstone” by Guns and Roses, that’s just a song about an annoying guy who likes to dance!
How about Puff the Magic Dragon?
White Rabbit is, in fact, an extended series of allusions to Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass. I fail to see how that’s mutually exclusive to drug references, however.
It’s not like it’s uncommon for connections like that to be drawn, with or without White Rabbit as an inspiration.
Oh fuck, not the all-knowing Snopes cite, please God, anything but that …
Lennon was kind of an arrogant wise-guy, no way he was going to let you share in his little jokes, you weren’t allowed to be on his level with him. You can believe what you want, I can believe what I want, and friggin Snopes can kiss my all-knowing ass.
“Lennon claimed; Lennon himself had no idea that the title formed the abbreviation LSD until it was pointed out to him by someone else after the album’s release.”
Yeah, old Johnny was really quite dumb. Sheesh, gimme a break.
DogsLunch
Here is one site:
http://www31.brinkster.com/headtones/ruin/zebox.htm
From that site:
the song’s lyrics drew heavily from Lewis Carroll’s stories of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Grace Slick wrote and sang these lyrics to illustrate her view that much of children’s literature, encourages us to seek out altered states of consciousness.
And if I remember the Lewis Carroll story correctly, wasn’t there a pill that said “Eat Me” (please, no sexual jokes) and a bottle that read “Drink Me”? I forget which did which but one made her smaller and another made her tall.
I’m afraid, wolf_meister, that your link actually counters your point. To be precice, this bit:
ie: Drugs.
Also, there were no pills. It was a cake and a drink. (Actually, there may have been pills later, that I’ve forgotten. Been a long while since I read the Alice books. But the drink went with a cake, and the caterpillar’s mushroom serves the same purposes later.)
And I suppose the great critics say Alice in Wonderland has no drug innuendo. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was their conclusion.
Wilson Brian Key (the fellow who single-handedly popularized a belief in widespread subliminal advertising) asserted that Simon and Hairfumple’s Bridge Over Troubled Water was about heroin.
His argument was basically that the song’s lyrics were from the point of view of someone offering consolation, and heroin can feel very consoling. Oh, and that everybody knows that “silvergirl” is slang for a hypodermic needle. Never mind that in the context of the song, “silvergirl” is the consoled, not the consoler, that there’s no record of anyone ever actually calling a needle a “silvergirl” before WBK’s scribblings were published, and only half a dozen extra-gullible folks did afterwards.
Of course, this guy suggested Ritz crackers sell as well as they do because each one has hundreds of tiny instances of the word “SEX” baked right onto the surface using special baking trays, too. He’s like the anti-Brunvand.
As for Alice and drugs, sure, Dodgson was into the laudanum and all, but I think a lot of the references appear druggier to a modern eye. To a Victorian, a hookah may be just a hookah, and a mushroom may be just a mushroom. They may also appear to be obvious drug references to folks who are used to having waterpipes and mushies about. They’ve been recontextualized.
Take the White Knight, who proudly tells Alice about how he once cleverly invented a pudding during the meat course. When she asks him about the recipe, he says “It began with blotting-paper.” “That wouldn’t be very nice!” Alice objects. “Not very nice alone, but you’ve no idea what a difference it makes, mixing it with other things!”
Now I ask you, does that make any sort of Pounds, Shillings, and Pence?*
He might as well offer to sing a song to comfort her, the debauched bastard.
- 10 points.
Lennon continued to insist that “Lucy” was not drug-related until the day he died, long after he publicly admitted his vast and varied amount of drug use. During the 70s he was so determined to blast his reputation that he would have jumped on the LSD theme if there really were one. The fact that he never did is conclusive, to my mind.
Grace Slick has often said that she wrote “White Rabbit” to show that the older generation that was currently blasting drugs how drugs were a part of their very heritage.
Now, how about the Byrds’ Eight Miles High. The lyrics make it clear that it’s about their trip (ho, ho) to London, but the thought that it was about drugs lead to a general banning that prevented the song from hitting its rightful number one in the charts.
Mr. Lennon also claimed “Happiness is a Warm Gun” was not about drugs. Uh huh.
“I need a fix cause I’m going down
Down to the abyss that I’ve left up town
I need a fix cause I’m going down”
NOT ABOUT DRUGS!!! :dubious:
“When I hold you in my arms
And I feel my finger on your trigger
I know nobody can do me no harm”
Nope, not about drugs.
Doesn’t anyone else see the walking contradiction John Lennon was? I mean he preached peace and love, but almost every interview I ever saw or read about him he always seemed on the brink of a violent tirade. I’m a huge Lennon fan, of his music that is, I never really cared for his politics though.
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I don’t know about pills, but there was a toadstool in “Alice in Wonderland” When I was a kid, I had a round puzzle from that story that depicted the caterpillar with a big hookah, looking at Alice. Oops sorry… guess that has nothing to do with songs.
I remember when all the druggies got into Merle Haggard for awhile.
White Line Fever.
A song about truck driving. Druggies had a different idea.
I’ll take those ten points, and any others you happen to have laying around, for recognizing rhyming slang for “sense.”
I’ll cool my heels while you go have a butcher’s for those points.
Uhh, Dollars And Cents by Radiohead.
So. Not a Lennon fan, eh?