# Songs NOT about drugs **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 8, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339 "2004-01-08T01:53:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2004, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/21 "2004-01-09T04:27:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mr. Blue Sky \* > \*\*So. Not a Lennon fan, eh? \*\* Lennon fan, yeah, Snopes fan, no. heh 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2004, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/22 "2004-01-09T05:21:44Z")
That’s only good for half the Roger Moore, **kaylasdad99**. 😛 (When the subject is Lewis Carroll, [wordplay must be multileveled](http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=561511098), out of respect.) Since Carroll and Lennon have been invoked, one more quote makes a sort of Trinity collage: > [@](#): > > Young Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old Hoeland, (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and sense? would we now for annas and annas? would we for full-score eight and a liretta? for twelve blocks one bob? for four testers one groat? not for a dinar! not for jo!) dictited to of all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man? –_James Joyce_ A lot of Lennon’s psychedelic lyrics show clear Joycean influence. I often wonder what he made of this passage: > [@](#): > > With his layen loves in meeingseeing, he got the charm of his optical life when he found himself (_hic sunt lennones!_) at pointblank range blinking down the barrel of an irregular revolver of the bulldog with a purpose pattern, handled by an unknown quarreler who, supposedly, had been told off to shade and shoot shy Shem should the shit show his shiny shnout. The proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of scripture. The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud. _(Ohmoneymakesmehum… Ohmoneymakesmehum… Ohmoneymakesmehum…)_ ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/23 "2004-01-11T01:43:44Z")
> [@](#): > > Its pith is full. The way is free. Their lot is cast. So, to john for a john, johnajeams, led it be! ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/24 "2004-01-11T05:50:12Z")
“Follow Me” by Uncle Kracker. It could be about a secret lover, or it could be about heroin: > [@](#): > > You don’t know how you met me > You don’t know why, you can’t turn around and say good-bye > All you know is when I’m with you I make you free > And swim through your veins like a fish in the sea ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/25 "2004-01-11T07:29:12Z")
_You Light Up My Life_ by Debbie Boone is about her experience with meth. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/26 "2004-01-11T18:33:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ccwaterback \* > **Oh fuck, not the all-knowing Snopes cite, please God, anything but that …** How about [Wikipedia](http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_In_The_Sky_With_Diamonds) then? Or [Beetles Again](http://www.beatlesagain.com/bmyths.html)? Or [About the Beatles](http://aboutthebeatles.com/song-lucy_in_the_sky_with_diamonds.html)? The fact you hate Snopes doesn’t make them wrong about everything. But you knew that, [right](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=4343889&highlight=snopes#post4343889)? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/27 "2004-01-11T19:42:29Z")
And as in that earlier thread, his evidence for his assertion is: “I say so.” That’s why I gave up the argument. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/28 "2004-01-11T21:24:57Z")
> [@](#): > > **NoClueBoy** : _You Light Up My Life_ by Debbie Boone is about her experience with meth. Hmmm… > [@](#): > > _So many nights I sit by my window > Waiting for someone to sing me his song_ Such Debbauchery! ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/29 "2004-01-11T21:50:11Z")
Larry Mudd writes: \> As for Alice and drugs, sure, Dodgson was into the laudanum \> and all . . . Cite? Nothing I’ve ever read about Dodgson mentioned that he used landanum or any other drugs. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/30 "2004-01-11T21:59:21Z")
Doesn’t even come close to a cite, but Heinlein reerred to Dodgson’s drug problem in _The Number of the Beast_. Really. Where RAH got the idea, I know not. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/31 "2004-01-11T22:00:49Z")
f add it to my previous post ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/32 "2004-01-11T22:28:30Z")
Sending Dodgson laudanum into the Google ether gives back very little in the way of solid info. Nothing to confirm his use of any opiates, and [this from LewisCarroll.org](http://www.lewiscarroll.org/bander.html) in rebuttal: > [@](#): > > But those drug references! Man, Mr. C. must have been some crazy head! The hookah-smoking caterpillar, the endless "Eat Me"s and "Drink Me"s among the magic mushrooms. The question had to be asked: could anyone know so well and not have indulged? Laudanum was freely available at the time, and of his contemporaries, Coleridge was into opium, Baudelaire and Dumas hashish. Was this really the “unforgettable, inexorably strange smooth wandering in the mind, abundant with the stone truth”? And what did happen during those two years missing from his diary? > > I’m afraid we must leave such speculations up in the Smoky Mountains from which they emanated. A careful reading of his diaries, and the biographies of Mssrs. Collingwood and Green left it difficult to conjure up an image of the Reverend Dodgson “on the loose wig” after a hard day at Christ Church. There’s enough slippage so that it wouldn’t be impossible for Dodgson to have indulged. I’d need much better proof, though, than Heinlein said so. You could fill a book with things that Heinlein said that just aren’t so. Oh, right. He did. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/33 "2004-01-11T22:46:18Z")
Hmmm… I’ve read a few biographies and _The Annotated Alice_, but I don’t have them at hand, and I don’t know if they’re the source. I’ve read _The Number of the Beast_, too, so I suppose I could have picked it up from there, too. I think _The Number of the Beast_ might actually be a _fine_ cite, if you bend your brain just the right way. After all, the book is predicated on the peculiar ontology that the multiplicity of universal realities that we inhabit are all brought into being by the work of creative fiction. The only question is, Which Dreamed It? > [@](#): > > A space. Who are you? The cat’s mother. A time. What do you lack? The look of a queen. > > But what is that which is one going to prehend? Seeks, buzzling is brains, the feinder. ---
**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/34 "2004-01-11T23:13:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ccwaterback \* > \*\*Mr. Lennon also claimed “Happiness is a Warm Gun” was not about drugs. Uh huh. > > “I need a fix cause I’m going down > Down to the abyss that I’ve left up town > I need a fix cause I’m going down” > > NOT ABOUT DRUGS!!! :dubious: > > “When I hold you in my arms > And I feel my finger on your trigger > I know nobody can do me no harm” > > Nope, not about drugs. \*\* I don’t know that those lyrics necessarily have to be about drug use. You can need a fix of a lot of other things bresides drugs, sex for instance. It is true that the phrase “I need a fix” is loaded with drug meanings today (and possibly in JL’s day, I’m not really sure), but it really doesn’t have to be about drugs. Or perhaps it is not primarily about drugs for Lennon. Oh, and I justr looked up the lyrics and they do not say “down to the abyss that I left up town”, they say “down to the bits that I left up town”. I think you may be reading things into the lyrics that aren’t there. I remember reading that the song _was_ written using stuff he came up with while taking drugs, but that doesn’t mean it’s about drugs any more than a term paper is about coffee. As I recall it had at least something to do with Yoko Ono (Mother Superior was one of his names for her). So really it’s about sex. And on the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds question, I tend to believe Lennon when he says the _title_ was not intended as a drug reference. These quotes, which I found at Snopes, seem fairly convincing: > [@](#): > > [Schaumburg, 1976] > > . . . there is no reason to doubt Lennon’s official explanation. The man has always been open and honest, if not always careful in what he says. He admitted to using drugs, he admitted to taking over a hundred LSD trips. Why on earth would he bother to deny one little story about the origins of a song unless it wasn’t true? > > [Schaffner, 1977] > > . . . if the Beatles weren’t pulling our legs – and the reliably candid Lennon still sticks by his original story – it would only be in keeping with the equally unusual catalysts for John’s other contributions to Sgt. Pepper: a Victorian carnival poster, a T.V. cornflakes commercial, and a Daily Mail clipping about holes in Blackburn, Lancashire . . . I don’t think the matter is settled beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I’m leaning towards the opinion that he didn’t realize the title was an acrostic for LSD until someone pointed it out to him after the album was released, as he said. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2004, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/35 "2004-01-11T23:58:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Now I ask you, does that make any sort of Pounds, Shillings, and Pence?\* Perhaps the British L-S-D currency system? ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2004, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/36 "2004-01-12T01:01:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sjc \* > \*\*I don’t think the matter is settled beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I’m leaning towards the opinion that he didn’t realize the title was an acrostic for LSD until someone pointed it out to him after the album was released, as he said. \*\* Lennon was one of the great wordsmiths of our time. Do you seriously think he wouldn’t realize Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had an LSD ring to it? I know in his later years he got to be somewhat of a softie, being nice to people and such. But in the 70s he was a contentious bore. Just about any question he was asked turned into verbal sparring match. Lennon had a HUGE chip on his shoulder. Do you think he was going to agree with ANYTHING people “assumed” about the Beatles and his songs? I don’t. Maybe, just maybe LSD wasn’t about LSD. But if it was, Lennon sure wasn’t going to let us be in on the joke. ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2004, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/37 "2004-01-12T01:11:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase \* > \*\*And as in that earlier thread, his evidence for his assertion is: “I say so.” That’s why I gave up the argument. \*\* Keep in mind Snopes uses a lot of “because I said so” too. Or they put a bit more of an arrogant slant to it by saying “it would be silly to think otherwise”. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2004, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/38 "2004-01-12T01:50:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ccwaterback \* > \*\*Maybe, just maybe LSD wasn’t about LSD. But if it was, Lennon sure wasn’t going to let us be in on the joke. \*\* Did you even bother to read any of my cites? Or do you not believe them because they agree with Snopes? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2004, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/39 "2004-01-12T01:56:10Z")
Yeses and yeses and yeses, **Ilsa**. BTW. Carroll did a little punning on LSD, too: > [@](#): > > The effect of Differentiation on a Particle is very remarkable, the first Differential being frequently of a greater value than the original Particle, and the second of less enlightenment. For example, let L=“Leader”, S=“Saturday”, and then L.S.=“Leader in the Saturday” (a particle of no assignable value.) Differentiating once, we get L.S.D., a function of great value. Similarly it will be found that, by taking a second differential, (ie: raising it to the degree D.D.,) the Enlightenment becomes rapidly less. _–Dynamics of a Parti-cle_ (1865) “Whoa! Lewis Carroll said a head is more enlightened than a Doctor of Divinity!” > [@](#): > > Flunkey Footle furloughed foul, writing off his phoney, but Conte Carme makes the melody that mints the money. _Ad majorem l.s.d.! Divi gloriam._ > > And that’s how that chap’s going to make his money and mark! What can’t be coded can be decorded if an ear aye sieze what no eye ere grieved for. [/frame] ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2004, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/40 "2004-01-12T02:31:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jeff Olsen \* > \*\*Did you even bother to read any of my cites? Or do you not believe them because they agree with Snopes? \*\* I have no doubt Lennon got the inspiration for the song from the picture. But I doubt Lennon was telling the truth about the song not having anything to do with LSD. I don’t remember a happy, jovial Lennon agreeing with ANYTHING the “people” said about the Beatles or his work. Maybe your memory of him is different? My whole point is, I wouldn’t put it past Lennon to discredit any opinion “outsiders” had about the Beatles or himself. He seemed to like giving the finger to the world. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339.md?page=3)