*Jagger said in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone:
“Well, it’s a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense. The thing about Vietnam was that it wasn’t like World War II, and it wasn’t like Korea, and it wasn’t like the Gulf War. It was a real nasty war, and people didn’t like it. People objected, and people didn’t want to fight it…” As for the song itself, he concluded, “That’s a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It’s apocalypse; the whole record’s like that.”[3]
Similarly, on NPR in 2012:
“It was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit…When it was recorded, early '69 or something, it was a time of war and tension, so that’s reflected in this tune. It’s still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week [during Hurricane Sandy]. It’s been used a lot to evoke natural disaster.”[4]*
Just like 25 or 6 to 4 isn’t about LSD, unless you really want it to be.
Just like we landed on the moon, unless you really really want to believe we didn’t.
Individuals can convince themselves anything is true despite the preponderance of evidence against their belief. So go on, keep insisting the birth certificate is false, and that the towers were a controlled explosion. And in another 3-4 years another spookeebitch will wander by and use that one other person out of dozens believes the falsehoods as proof that they are true.
Maybe instead of “It’s Taking Longer Than We Thought” should change to “It’s a Losing Battle”.
No it isn’t…unless somebody already put it in your mind that it says that, and you listen really, really hard and have a vivid imagination. You can listen to it on this page.
What in the world ever became of sweet Jane?
She lost her sparkle, you know she isn’t the same
Livin’ on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine,
All a friend can say is “Ain’t it a shame?”
Grateful Dead - Truckin
It’s about vitamin abuse I think. And global warming.
It was “common knowledge” that Puff the Magic Dragon was about drugs. (It was about a young boy’s imagination.)
It was “common knowledge” that the Vietnam War was being fought so that the U.S. could grab all the off-shore oil from Vietnam. (No such oil has ever been found.)
It was “common knowledge” that rubbing butter on burns was a good thing. (Butter exacerbates the wound.)
It was “common knowledge” that Posh was short for “Port Out, Starboard Home.” (It was never true.)
Common knowledge is rather notoriously wrong very much of the time. That should be common knowledge.
(6 to 4 was never a common shift schedule. Offices do not open at 6:00 and labor jobs starting at 6:00 run to either 2:30 (8 hours) or to 4:30 (10 hours). Lunch ran one half hour and I have never encountered a nine and a half hour day in any job.)
