Yeah - see, I don’t see why the onus should be on me to disprove the lads theory. He should have to prove it… and it’s pretty clear he hasn’t - that totally false “pause” theory.
It’s part of the generations general way of looking at things. Unless somebody proves it’s not theirs, they believe that it is.
There have been no cites - only the same urban myth repeated by multiple people who weren’t around before the song was popular. Dig up a real cite.
Prove it’s an urban myth. You’re making the charge, therefore it’s up to you to prove your assertion.
Even here in the Good Ol’ U.S. of the A. I’d say something like:
“Hey, dudes ‘n’ dudettes. It’s a lookin’ like we done got ourselfs to… the end of the trail.”
To which the aforementioned dudettes may be counted upon to say:
“The end of the trail, seriously, chum? Y’mean the trail…end?”
“Reckons how mebbe iffen ya looks at it from a differin’ perspective, it might jes’ be the beginnin’ of the trail.”
“Har, har, har, my buddy bro. I figgers you be right, especially after we reorient ourselves through the judicious application of The One Hundred ‘N’ Eighty Degree Turn”.
“Well, pals o’ mine, I will still refer to it as the End O’ The Trail.”
“Y’know, compatriot, my head might be all full o’ zombies smokin’ maryjooweena, but I’m reck’nin’ you are indeed correct …”
And that’s how my chumage and I convo here in the “Up ‘n’ Over” (the Non-Down Under).
(Seriously, former Eagle Scout here, who had no idea what a trailhead was. But not a problem, since I’d always heard “trail, comma, head” in the lyrics)
Was my post invisible? Do people have me on ignore? I posted a cite from Colin Hay’s official website. Is that really not good enough?
http://www.colinhay.com.br/site/?page_id=79
“On a hippie trail, head full of zombie”
Also, on the alternate version there that plays on the page, Hay pretty clearly does sing it with a comma.
The original Colin Hay recording of Down Under from 1980, before it was on a Men at Work album, has a lengthy pause between trail and head.
I always thought it was “trailhead” until I saw an interview with Colin Hay, who explained some of the lyrics. I could swear he said that Zombie was some kind of cheap liquor, but I can’t find a link to the interview anywhere and I might’ve dreamed the whole thing.
In American usage. How many Australians need to tell you that this is not an Australian term before you get it? I have to think twice to recall what the term even means.
Your theory that “… trail, head …” is actually the American term “trailhead” is cute in an amateur etymological way, but wrong. Every single Australian here is telling you it is wrong, and the guy who wrote the song has been cited directly as showing you are wrong. Get over it already. Calling people out for cites then being given a perfect cite but not noticing and continuing to call for cites is a bit, well…
Ah, I see. Everything you know about Australian language you learnt from Paul Hogan. That explains everything.
I know all about American language too because I watched a John Wayne movie once.
I think I saw the same interview. I don’t remember what he said zombie meant, but the “hippie trail” refers to how backpackers and hippies traveled a certain route in India of places that were cool/supposed to visit.
If another entitled Australian can step in…
The song is about Australians backpacking around the world and everywhere they turn they see more bloody Australians. It’s a fact of life.
The hippie trails was a series of standard routes that hippie backpackers took through India (and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan and Pakistan) looking for enlightenment but ultimately just smoking a lot of dope.
According to my father (in his 40s when the song was released), “zombie” was a late-'70s term for grass. At the time of the song, it was more commonly being replaced by the term “mull”.
So the first verse is about backpacking through India in a poorly-maintained Kombivan (Volkswagen’s '60s-'70s equivalent of what Americans would call a microbus) while stoned, sleeping with a woman that the singer thought to be exotic, and finding out that she knew Australians fairly well.
The American regionalism “trailhead” appears nowhere in the song, and has no reason to.
Exactly right, and even this Yank (who didn’t understand much of the lingo) grasped THAT angle of the song perfectly.
Australians are world-famous for being world-travelers, and even though there are only about 22 million Australians total, they’re constantly running into each other thousands of miles from home.
The guys in Men at Work were swapping stories about that very phenomenon. The second verse was the first one written, as one told the others how, when he was in Belgium, he walked into a bakery to get a bite to eat, and then discovered the guy working behind the bakery counter was a fellow Aussie.
Everybody else had similar stories, and those stories worked their way into the final song.
While in no way do I want to reduce the pile-on vouching for the authenticity of “trail, head” being the lyrics I would point out that Colin Hay is actually a Scot.
I, likely as with most Australians, didn’t know what a trailhead was until I googled it. BTW what’s the end of a trail called? A trailfanny? And if you start and end a trail at the same point how which term takes precidence?
As are/were:
Can we just accept that most iconic Australian music is actually Scottish?
Absolutely … indeed, to paraphrase Sam Kekovich.
“Never be afraid of a new idea … if you see a good one, steal it.”
I see what you did there and the answer is “hell no”. You snuck “sang” in there and thought we wouldn’t notice. All Chisel’s best songs, and all their iconically Australian ones were written by Don Walker who was from Grafton, NSW, and were hits in spite of the fact that Barnsey the Scot can’t sing real good.
Fan? Moi? Why do you ask?
… and Scots don’t refer to trailheads either. The moreso in songs they co-wrote with three other Australians.
The BBC covered it at the time of the recent trials on Smashed Hits:
*The opening couplet borders, on first listen, on the incomprehensible - but it sets the tone if you decode the language.
“Travelling in a fried-out Kombi,” it begins, “on a hippy trail, head full of zombie.” Huh?
“Kombi” might be an unfamiliar word, but the Kombinationskraftwagen - aka the trusty old VW camper van - is a familiar symbol of easy-going hippiedom. The “hippy trail” is the path trod by many a dropout in the 1960s and 70s, taking free-wheeling Aussies and others on variants of the route between Istanbul and Kathmandu.
And “zombie”? David Dale at the Sydney Morning Herald says this is a “drug reference” - zombie apparently being a potent strain of marijuana (on occasion laced with angel dust).*
and much more - glowing, chunder, Barry Humphries etc.
Just so you don’t start to wonder whether you’ve been hellbanned, Anamorphic, just confirming that I clicked your link to the official Colin Hay website, confirming that I saw the lyrics posted there as “hippie trail, head full of zombie”, and that when I listened to the version of the song that plays on that page as sung by Colin Hay, Hay clearly sings “trail” and “head” as two separate words.
Uhm, seriously guys. Just click Anamorphic’s damn link.
You might have dreamed the whole thing. True. If you have a link to an earlier recording I’ll give it a listen. Otherwise I can’t take much of anything you wrote seriously.
In the BaU recording there is zero pause between trail and head and it is said exactly as if Hay intended it to be a single word.
Probably where this ridiculous story started. This cite fails on several counts.
In other words - urban myth.
I was just adding something I knew about that contributed to the conversation. You are totally wrong but I won’t bother posting again because I don’t give a shit, but I will keenly watch this thread.
I love it when someone decides that the sun rises in the west and then, despite all the contradictory evidence wastes their life arguing the point.
Or you could try looking at the songwriter’s own website, posted above.
I know what you mean about people tending to over-read drug references, but not so much when it’s talking about hippies.