You supplied the cites yourself: the published sheet music, the promo video…you just declared them wrong. So I can only cite the song itself. Got it right here on the trusty iPod, checked it once again before posting. Yep, John is saying T-H-I-N-K. Which makes a hell of a lot more sense in context than “sic.” (Which, being an abbreviation, isn’t something you would say out loud anyway.)
FWIW:
Google hits for “with you but your soul think”: 98
For “with you but your soul sic” (with or without brackets): 0
There is no way to make “th” that prominent in a mix, and there is no “n” sound anywhere in the word. When the word “think” is pronounced “ssssic!”, then I’ll agree with you. Until then, I must cite logic and precedent as my argument.
I think logic and precedent are both against you in this one. “Sic” makes very little sense in the context of that lyric, and every other source, some of them authoritative, says the lyric is “think.”
I have indicated what [sic] is used for. It makes all kinds of sense in that context. He quoted his wife, who mangled the language. It’s been 37 years and I am still waiting for someone to offer any kind of sensical reason why he might have said “think.” So far, nothing.
Yes. Quite frequently. A hell of a lot more often than I hear ‘sic’ at the end of a sentence - especially one the speaker agrees with.
Yes. Perfect sense. It’s an instruction ‘think about what I just said’.
Yes. Two reasons, in fact. First, because he considers the line self-evident once you think about it. (Which it is. While John might have denied you have a soul to take with you, it’s pretty clear that you don’t get to take anything else!) And because he wants people to think about the concept, and realise the logical consequences - you can’t take it with you, so there’s no harm in spreading it around to the people that need it.
‘Sic’, however, a) does not make any sense whatsoever in this context, and b) as Biffy said, isn’t something that you would say aloud.
It’s not the most elegant grammar ever, but it’s neither mangled, nor outside John (or Paul’s, or George’s, or Ringo’s) spoken idiom, or the grammar that they’ve used in their other songs. It is, in fact, unlikely to be a direct quote from Yoko, at all. It’s an error made by a native English speaker - particularly one from a working class background, like John and Paul - not an error made by a Japanese speaker learning English.
This is what this topic devolves into in every forum where I have ever seen it discussed. There is clearly no “n” sound in his exclamation. How anyone is hearing one there is beyond my ken.
I am not the first person to have brought this up. Everywhere I have ever seen it discussed, it comes down to an impasse between people who refuse to accept any other possibility than the one they “know” is right, and then it devolves further into personal insults. Therefore, we are going to agree to disagree, and I will relinquish this thread to the owner and the original topic.
(I was hoping you’d talk about Tommy here, as I wrote a long final paper for a rock history class on that album, which delved deeply into this very topic.)
Actually, that’s no joke; “This is a bust” was the original line on the album. Trust me. Go listen to it again. That’s actually an anti-authority message; the teen rebellion (“We’re not gonna take it!”) was in response to Tommy’s heavy-handed rules society, one of the inflammatory parts of which was his insistence on abstinence from alcohol and drugs. (Notice the lines before the dope part: “Hey you gettin’ drunk, so sorry…”) Tommy was the bad guy in that song because he’d come full circle to become nearly as oppressive as his abusive family and the society that didn’t understand him, although it can be argued that Townshend was also not a big fan of the teenagers, who rejected spirituality in favor of creature comforts. (This is a major theme of the album; other great examples of people willfully ignoring a greater understanding/truth in favor of temporary satisfaction or convenience include “1921”, “Christmas” and “Sally Simpson”.)
A great example of a good anti-drug message on the same album, though, is The Acid Queen. Although Spiro Agnew cited it as an example of the music industry encouraging drug use, Pete Townshend has said that it was in his mind very anti-drug; anti-LSD in particular. The context of the album is that Townshend was experimenting with spirituality at the time while simultaneously rejecting LSD. The Acid Queen was the embodiment of Townshend’s frustration at what he saw as a bunch of spiritual posers trying to take a quick and easy route to faux enlightenment through LSD rather than working hard towards true self-understanding like Townshend did. (IIRC Tommy is dedicated to “Avatar”, or Meher Baba, Townshend’s spiritual role model at the time. Baba O’Reilly (the “teenage wasteland” song) was less formally dedicated to Meher Baba as well, and the background music of the song was made by feeding the biographical details of Baba’s life into a synthesizer.)
As far as the drugs go, Townshend himself was a fan of marijuana and later (for two years in the 80s) cocaine. He was either strictly weed-only or drug-free during the 60s (more likely the former, although I really don’t know for sure). Keith Moon was of course a whole 'nother story. Roger Daltrey was truly angry at drugs and famously caused massive tension at one point by flushing Moon’s pills down the toilet during a tour. IIRC that one resulted in a physical altercation. Things between Moon and Daltrey were always a little tense because Moon liked drugs so much and Daltrey hated them so much. (Saddest part is that Moon died on an accidental overdose of a prescription that was supposed to help him kick his alcohol habit, and I think he’d already kicked the drugs by that point.) John Entwistle was always a cocaine lover and died of cocaine-related heart problems on tour in 2002. That only heightened Pete Townshend’s guilt over his former cocaine addiction, and Pete’s had times where he’s given Daltrey the reins over the group because he was embarrassed about it.
This was all off the top of my head so I may have messed up some biographical details.
How are these lyrics anti-drug? I’m not saying I don’t believe you, I just don’t understand that interpretation.
All of these pale in comparison to the Birthday Party’s Mutiny In Heaven.
Well I jumped! and fled this fucking heap on doctored wings
My flailing pinions, with splints and rags and crutches!
(Damn things nearly hardly flap)
Canker upon canker upon one million tiny punctures
That look like…
Long thin red ribbons draped across the arms of a li’l mortal girl
(Like a ground-plan of Hell)
Curse these smartin’ strings! These fucking ruptures!
Enough! Enough is enough!
(If this is Heaven I’m bailing out)
Nick Cave then went on to spend ten more years as a heroin addict.
The first one (The Pusher) isn’t so much anti-Drug in general, but it’s certainly against a certain class of drugs - I don’t know just which poisons the writer (Hoyt Axton) was particularly against, but the lyrics include
So, while he might not have anything against pot, or certain pill-form drugs, other drugs he thought were bad things, and the people who pushed them were downright evil.
Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Well, he played his last request
While the room smelled just like death
With an overdose hovering in the air
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the G. I. Bill
For a flag draped casket on a local heroes’ hill.
There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes,
And Jesus Christ died for nothing I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios
*
Saddest.Song.Ever
How about Cocaine by Jackson Browne:
I was talking to my doctor down at the hospital
He said, son, it says here youre twenty-seven,
But thats impossible
Cocaine-- you look like you could be forty-five
Now Im losing touch with reality and Im almost out of blow
Its such a fine line-- I hate to see it go
Cocaine, runnin all round my brain
*
Given that this guy seemed to be a 60s man, and that the song was covered by Steppenwolf in 1969, I’d wager he’s pro-grass, anti-everything-else.
IME, a lot of stoners who have no desire to try other drugs call themselves “natural only”, based on the unscientific notion that cannabis (and sometimes magic mushrooms) alone is/are “natural” and everything else is “unnatural”. The same people will happily pop bottlefuls of Tylenol when they have a hangover, though. :rolleyes:
I completely agree. The song had poor grammar at this point, and John Lennon did not want it to seem that he was ignorant or used poor speech. That is what the word sic is for- to indicate an intentional “error”.
-feppytweed, who knows that fishbicycle knows his/her stuff when it comes to The Beatles.
Sic is not an abbreviation, it’s a whole word in Latin. It means ‘thus’. I ought to know this, living in Virginia: Sic semper tyrannis.
I hear “think” there, and IIRC Lennon commented on why he said “think” at the end of the bridge in one of his interviews, I think it was published in *Lennon Remembers: The *Rolling Stone Interviews. It was to get people to think about the line he’d just sung.
He also interrupted the song rhythmically, making the word stand out more, changed the meter from 4/4 into 2/4 for just one bar with a drum fill, and then went back to the verse. I bet that was done with one or maybe two tape splices, maybe it was just meant to edit two different takes together, maybe also because he liked to startle the listeners with something unexpected.
I never paid any attention to the words of this song before, but upon relistening, I don’t hear “sic.” In fact, I really can’t make out any word, but “think” is at least plausible. Who uses “sic” in conversation or song? “Think” is much more plausable and sensical than “sic” in spoken language. And what’s the “sic” for anyway? A double negative? C’mon. Who marks that with a “sic,” anyway? Certainly John Lennon wouldn’t, and even I wouldn’t if quoting someone.