Soo…what’s it mean? Nonsense words or foreign language? The Vida makes me think “life” in romance languages, but the whole thing also looks something like Hindi (or another Indian tongue), eastern things being in vogue when the song was relaesed. Anybody have the Straight Dope ®.
Thanks,
Scott
It’s a slurred, drunken pronunciation of “In the Garden of Eden.”
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
pl pretty much covered it.
To add in my 2¢, I heard once in an old interview with the band members that they had actually recorded “In the Garden of Eden. . . .”
However, they either recorded it too fast or played it back too slow, and it came out sounding sorta like “in a gadda da vida. . .”
They liked it though, so when they redid the recording, they changed the words around to those that we’re more familiar with.
That’s not to say that that’s what actually happened. Strange things happen to your (former band members’) memory when you ingest mind-altering chemicals. But that story was told in an interview.
OK, maybe that was a little more than 2¢.
I heard that when Doug Ingle first demo’ed the song to Ron Bushy and Lee Dorman, they asked him the name. He was slightly drunk and had a cold so they couldn’t understand him. Bushy wrote down what he heard, which was a garble of phoenetic sounds. The next day they were looking at what Bushy had written and decided that they liked it better because it had a sort of mock Latin-esque quality about it.
Wait a minute, this sounds like rock and/or roll. -Rev. Lovejoy-
Ya’ll never met my friend Ellis?
Ellis Dee?
Thanks everyone!
Scott
FWIW, I think the “drunken slur” is a lot more credible than the “wrong recording speed” story.
I think they sanitized what really happened for that radio interview I heard over 20 years ago.