# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**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, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/41 "2004-01-12T02:43:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ccwaterback \* > **I don’t remember a happy, jovial Lennon agreeing with ANYTHING the “people” said about the Beatles or his work.** What about the whole “Paul is Dead” business? You _sure_ your hatred of Snopes isn’t clouding your judgment? ---
**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 12, 2004, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/42 "2004-01-12T03:09:10Z")
Forget it, **Jeff**. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that **ccw’s** psychology is entirely backwards, that John spent much of the early 70s denouncing his entire image with the Beatles and proclaiming his drug use to shock people. That he admitted his LSD experiences and would not had have the slightest hesitation about adding one more. It doesn’t matter that everyone who knew him and wrote about him at the time confirmed the original story. It doesn’t matter that in _The Beatles Anthology_, Paul says: > [@](#): > > We never noticed the LSD initial until it was pointed out to us later - by which point people didn’t believe us. or that John is quoted as saying: > [@](#): > > I saw Mel Tormé introducing a Lennon-McCartney show, saying how ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ was about LSD. It never was, and nobody believes me. I swear to God, or swear to Mao, or to anybody else you like, I had no idea it spelt LSD. _This_ is the _truth_: my son came home with a drawing and showed me this strange-looking woman flying around. I said ‘What is it?’ and he said, ‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds,’ and I thought, ‘That’s beautiful.’ I immediately wrote a song about it. And the song had gone out, the whole album had been published, and somebody noticed that the letters spelt out LSD. I had no idea, and of course after that I was checking all the songs to see what the letters spelt out. They didn’t spell out anything, none of the others. It wasn’t about that at all. [italics in original] It doesn’t matter because, as you can obviously tell, he was lying when he said that. Besides, Snopes says it is true and provides all these references saying the same thing over and over right up until just before Lennon died and references are stupid, aren’t they, because they say things you know aren’t true. And Snopes also says: > [@](#): > > Needless to say, this explanation was not widely accepted. Lennon’s response, as Schaumberg wrote, " . . . didn’t satisfy the wise ones of our generation. Oh no, wink wink, nudge nudge, they knew what he meant all along, snicker snicker". And that can’t be right. Can it? ---
**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, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/43 "2004-01-12T04:09:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase \* > \*\*Forget it, _Jeff_. \*\* Already have. Fighting ignorance is difficult enough, but ignorance & denial? ---
**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, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/44 "2004-01-12T04:33:25Z")
OK, you got me, LSD isn’t about LSD. And everything Snopes says is gospel truth. I guess I need to get more of my opinions from TV shows, believe what most people believe, it’s the safe way. ---
**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, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/45 "2004-01-12T04:53:19Z")
Aug. 24, 1989: Rose agrees to lifetime ban from baseball following a six-month investigation of his gambling, a deal announced by Giamatti. A five-page document signed by Rose and Giamatti has no formal findings. However, Giamatti says he believes Rose bet on baseball, while on the same day Rose denies it. [http://reds.enquirer.com/2004/01/06/red1timeline.html](http://reds.enquirer.com/2004/01/06/red1timeline.html) ---
**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, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/46 "2004-01-12T05:12:05Z")
I really don’t hate Snopes. I just think people should chew a little bit before they swallow all their shit. ---
**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, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/47 "2004-01-12T07:21:26Z")
> [@](#): > > I just think people should chew a little bit before they swallow all their shit. Our sailor king, upon this, ceasing to swallow, smiled most heartily beneath his walrus moustaches. > [@](#): > > Jute. — Yutah! > > Mutt. — Mukk’s pleasurad. > > Jute — Are you jeff? > > Mutt. — Somehards. > > Jute. — But you are not jeffmute? > > Mutt. — Noho. Only an utterer. > > Jute. — Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you? > > Mutt. — I became a stun a stummer. > > Jute. — What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause! How, Mutt? > > Mutt. — He was poached on in that eggtentical spot. Here where the liveries, Monomark. There where the missers moony, Minnikin passe. > > Jute. — Simply because as Taciturn pretells, our wrongstory-shortener, he dumptied the wholeborrow of rubbages on to soil here. > > Mutt. — Just how a puddinstone inat the brookcells by a riverpool. Goo goo g’ joob. ---
**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, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/48 "2004-01-12T22:44:37Z")
Ok guys, we are going to agree to disagree on this one, no big deal. I remember asking a good friend of mine, who happens to be a fine musician, about “Lucy” and why Lennon always said it wasn’t about LSD. His reply was, “Why should he agree with them?”. We both laughed about it. 🙂 ---
**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 13, 2004, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/49 "2004-01-13T21:03:24Z")
The wife tells me I’m getting stronger and stronger psychiatric messages. She says the spirits are coming to me all the time now and they say that I’m an initiate. Isn’t that amazing? We won’t need all those psychics anymore because I will get all the messages. > [@](#): > > Clear the line, priority call! Sybil! Better that or this? Sybil Head this end! Better that way? Follow the baby spot. Yes. Very good now. We are again in the magnetic field. > > – Was it a high white night now? > > – Whitest night mortal ever saw. > > – Lewd’s carol! Was there rain by any chance, mistandew? > > – Plenty. If you wend farranoch. > > – What fullpried paulpoison in the spy three castles or which hatefilled smileyseller? > > – Who can say how many pseudostylic shamiana, how few or how many of the most venerated public impostures, how very many piously forged palimpsests slipped in the first place by this morbid process from his pelagiarist pen? > > – He has novel ideas I know and he’s a jarry queer fish betimes, I grant you, and cantanberous, the poisoner of his word, but lice and all and semicoloured stainedglasses, I’m enormously full of that foreigner, I’ll say I am! Got by the one goat, suckled by the same nanna, one twitch, one nature makes us oldworld kin. > > – The diasporation of all pirates and quinconcentrum of a fake like Basilius O’Cormacan MacArty? To camiflag he turned his shirt. > > **Interferons in the leonnn: _Peebles: What have you been doing for the last five years? Biblous Beadell: I’ve been baking bread and looking after the baby. Jesus, don’t I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?_** > > – Johns is a different butcher’s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen’s spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from baking. > > – I have heard anyone tell it jesterday how one should come on morrow here but it is never here that one today. Well but remind to think, you where yestoday Ys Morganas war and that it is always tomorrow in toth’s tother’s place. Amen. > > – His troubles may be over but his doubles have still to come. > > – Livpoomark lloyrge hoggs one four tuppsnoying. Big Butter Boost! Sorry! Thnkyou! Thatll beall for tody. Cal it off. Godnotch, vryboily. End a muddy crushmess! Abbreciades anew York gustoms. Kyow! Tak. Chip them, chap them, cut them up allways; Pipe in Dream Cluse. Uncovers Pub History. Rinvention of vestiges by which they drugged the buddhy. Nope, not about drugs. ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2004, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/50 "2004-01-14T01:48:37Z")
Well I don’t think we will have to debate about any of Hendrix’s songs. Or will we? ;j ---
**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 14, 2004, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339/51 "2004-01-14T03:17:28Z")
I had just such an argument with one of my english teachers, back in the day. His position was that “Crosstown Traffic” was “obviously” about a heroin addict. He cited the connotation that “traffic” has with drug-smuggling, and “tire-tracks all across your back / I can see you’ve had your fun” as an allusion to “trackmarks.” I remain unconvinced – since, if you accept those as bona fide drug references, the metaphor is hopelessly inconsistent. If the person being addressed is “traffic,” (in the illicit sense) then that would make them the drug, not the user, no? Also, if an allusion to needlemarks was intended, a songwriter of Hendrix’s calibre would not have dirtied it up by specifying _Tire_tracks and blowing the ambiguity. Beyond that, a person’s back is not a place where intravenous trackmarks are to be found, generally speaking. I think, in this case, _one_ level of metaphor is sufficient, and probably all that’s intended. The song is about some groupie skank who is viewed, like urban traffic, as a frustrating inconvenience. What do you think? Also, I let this slide by earlier: > [@](#): > > **sjc** : As I recall [_Happiness is a Warm Gun_] had at least something to do with Yoko Ono (Mother Superior was one of his names for her). So really it’s about sex. I agree, and further add that “Happiness is a Warm Gun” is a homophonic pun (ie; "A penis is warm gun,) which adds another dimension to “Mother Superior jumped the gun!” I can’t help idly wondering what our boy (possibly with a headful) made of this: > [@](#): > > — Haltstille, Lucas and Dublinn! Vulva! Vulva! Vulva! Vulva! > > — Macdougal, Atlantic City, or his onagrass that is, chuam and coughan! I would go near identifying you from your stavrotides, Jong of Maho, and the weslarias round your yokohahat. And that O’mulanchonry plucher you have … is no use to you either, Johnny my donkeyschott. Number four, fix up your spreadeagle and pull your weight! Sorry. Mother Superior’s hat is habit-forming. ('spatially after a bowler, too.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-not-about-drugs/223339.md?page=2)