OK, I’m a political junkie - I see politics in places rational folk don’t.
However, this one is so blatant…
1/23/68 - the US spy ship, the USS Pueblo was seized by the North Koreans, and the crew held.
There was controversy as to why the US, with all its firepower in the area (remember Vietnam?) did not chase off the rather puny force the Koreans fielded.
She had a crew of 73, and home-ported in San Fransico
1970:
73 men sailed her (as I remeber the lyrics)
from the San Francisco bay
<snip>
No one heard them calling,
no one came at all
<snip>
mystery ship
<snip>
w can laugh our lives away
and be free once more (there was a group photo released to show that they were being well treated etc. In it every one of the 73 had his right middle finger extended. A little joke that did not go over well with their “hosts”
This is a two-parter:
Did you make the connection in 1970?
If you review the lyrics (legally, of course) - can you fit a spy ship operating in hostile waters claimed by a closed society (you think they’re wierd now - they have mellowed over the last 40 years (damn, I’m old) with the Pueblo and its experience with the N. Koreans?
*The song was inspired by the number of keys on Pinera’s Rhodes piano:
So I say, "Okay, I need a first word." And what came into my head was 73. I liked the rhythm, and I went, "73 men sailed in, from the San Francisco Bay." ... The song sort of just wrote itself from there.[1]*
Yup. I heard this (theory) back in the early '80s. Now, just because the song lyrics don’t jibe with the facts of the Pueblo doesn’t mean that it wasn’t inspired by it. I personally don’t buy it. . . but I also don’t know that I buy the “number of keys” story, either. Or that Mama Cass’s voice suddenly got better when she was hit on the head with a pipe, which she herself said.
