“Eight Miles High” isn’t about drugs either.
McCartney has since admitted that the song was about LSD.
Right- it’s about the Byrds flying across the Atlantic Ocean for their first concert tour of England. “8 miles high” is about 40,000 feet, the cruising altitude of their plane.
The “strange gray town” they landed in was London. They landed at Heathrow on a cold rainy day (“nowhere is there warmth to be found”), where they were greeted by mobs of fans and reporters (“sidewalk scenes”) then whisked into cars (“black limousines”) that took them to their hotels.
The Byrds were both fascinated by London and utterly overwhelmed.
Cite?
First paragraph of the song’s Wikipedia page.
Here’s the blog that Wikipedia cites. The original interview was in Uncut magazine, but I can’t find that passage online for the full context.
We discussed that quote here when it first came out. As with just about every other discussion online, the believers insisted this was PROOF! and the rest of us were unconvinced that it meant more than it was a song of its times. I don’t think McCartney has repeated the claim since that one interview, but I don’t know if he’s denied it either.
Nothing whatsoever backs up the claim that Lennon forgot what he was writing because he was on LSD at the time.
I never said he forgot anything. That sounds silly to me. If I had to guess, I’d say the drawing inspired the song. When John saw the name of Julian’s drawing, he got the idea for a song about tripping because of the LSD connection in the title. Paul’s comments support that it was at least an LSD reference in the wiki quote, and also in the one you posted (“swapping psychedelic suggestions”).
I have no real proof of anything, and I’m usually the first one to protest when I hear a song is about drugs (don’t get me started on the fact that every mention of the word vein is supposed to be a heroin reference). I also think it’s ridiculous to see marijuana references in a 1959 poem about a dragon. That being said, I never bought that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds=LSD” occurred to everyone on the planet except John Lennon. He just wasn’t believable to me in the same way PP&M were.
That still leaves you to explain why he would lie about it though.
The Ogden Nash book was Custard the Dragon. I can still remember having it read to me ca. 1959.
I always suspected sly dog John Lennon was just saving the reveal for a later date that he never lived to make.
I don’t have to explain anything. I could speculate all day long, but I’m not going to spend much energy trying to defend this hill. If you want to believe him, that’s fine with me. Lennon is my single biggest music hero, but I I don’t find him to be 100% forthcoming throughput his life in the public spotlight.
I don’t want to believe him. I think it’s a wildly improbably suggestion that he didn’t consider the LSD connections in a song that evokes an acid trip that much.
That’s basically all I’m saying. I don’t know either way, and Julian’s drawing is most certainly a large part of that song.
I understood the song as a children’s song, and sad. I came to this conclusion long before asnyone ever told mer of its beering drug-rfelated.[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
I understood the song as a children’s song, and sad. I came to this conclusion long before anyone ever told me of its being drug-related.
Well, the “acronym” is actually LITSWD. (The song title is printed in all caps on both the LP cover and label; nowhere does it appear in title case, let alone using the convention that only key words are capitalized.) If Lennon had meant to write a song with the initials LSD, he would have done so. (See “Love Seems Doomed” by the Blues Magoos.) He wouldn’t have devised a title that could be teased into representing LSD by the same sort of person who thinks 28IF means Paul is dead, nor would he have made up a cock and bull story about his kid’s drawing in order to deny having done so. Come on. Lennon was brutally open about his own failings, including his drug use. He would not have gone through life refusing to admit to a trivial thing like sneaking a drug reference into a song.
I thought the song “Puff The Magic Dragon” was about the AC-47 gunships the USAF began using in Viet Nam in 1964. :rolleyes:
It is, but the sound you hear at the beginning is actually a bong rip, not a toke off a joint.
Burn, listen, believe.
Bonus points: given the number of joints smoked based on this song, how many joints per day does Bradley smoke? Yes, there is a real number (based on the song).
You know that’s a cover, right?
I had an English teacher in HS who was actually pretty hip regarding literature (not that I would have known at the time) and had us read a variety of fairly contemporary stuff from the 60’s. She suggested at that time that there was a link between Lucy and LSD. I’ve never tripped to the extent described in the song, but there are definitely things I can relate to. The kaleidoscope and tangerine/marmalade parts for certain.
I have a harder time with Puff. And maybe I’m completely stoned (hehe) but I wonder if this is a reference to Sydney Liversedge and his Sopwith Camel. I swear I’m not screwing with you if you’ll be patient a moment.
The reference to Honah Lee bothered me so I assumed it was an expansion of a shorter word. So I turned it around a few times and got honaly which I searched on. Google suggested Honley which is a place in West Yorkshire, so I checked its wiki entry.
Under famous people, the only one that looked interesting was Sydney Liveredge, a WWI fighter ace.
Now look at a Sopwith Camel. It’s GREEN. With fire breathing machine guns.
NOW look at the lyrics, esp, the last stanzas and tell me what you think.
According to the standard rules of capitalization, no it isn’t. How it is actually written on the LP is mostly irrelevant to how Lennon though when he wrote the song.