I always like to point out the double meanings of the Byrd’s Chestnut Mare. Just about everyone thinks it’s about a man riding a wild horse, but no one has picked up on the line “She’ll be just like a wife.” (In what way?) Then, going back, you’ll find:
Later she’s spooked by “a sidewinder, all coiled and ready to strike” and “jumps off the edge.” The two of them are flying. They land with a splash. That’s when he loses his hold. But “he’s going to ride her again some day.”
Larry Mudd, your being a smart ass proves little more than your ability to be a smart ass. If you’ve got a decent argument, let’s hear it. If you’re going to be smart ass, how about you confine it to about a paragraph?
Can’t slip one past you. It was the bit about LSD doing weird stuff with time, right?
“Finnegan’s Wake” is an old traditional song. Finnegans Wake (no apostrophe) was published in '39. The first LSD trip was in 1943, and by 1950 pretty much anybody who was interested could lay ahold of some, if they knew that it existed. Al Hubbard had quiet little LSD culture going here in Vancouver for a full decade before he brought the Word to Tim Leary in 1960. So neener-neener. Silly Americans and your Johnny-come-lately acidheads.
VH1 had a show on last year that gave the stories behind certain songs. The author of this song says it’s about the confusing feelings of being in love.
The first acid trip took place the very day it was synthesized, when Dr. Hofmann accidentally dosed himself in the laboratory. This was April 16, 1943, according to Hofmann’s book LSD: My Problem Child.
Hmm – I just looked up other sources on the 'net, and they agree with the 1943 trip, but still say it was first synthesized in 1938, so it’s five years between discovery and trip.
Joey Levine, who used to sing with the Ohio Express, says practically all of their Sixties bubblegum hits (“Yummy Yummy Yummy,” “Chewy Chewy.” et al.) were thinly disguised sexual metaphors. He was little more thana kid himself at the time, and his audience was mostly 12 or 13 year old girls, so you couldn’t be explicit… but LEvine says food was simply the most convenient metaphor for sex that the Ohio Express could get away with.
As for Van Halen’s “Panama,” the song itself is about a vintage car. David Lee ROth says he once read a column by a rock critic who said Van Halen was a lightweight band that never sang about anything but cars and girls… which made Roth think, “Cars? We’ve NEVER done a song about cars. So, maybe we should write one now.”
So, he wrote a song about a car… and filled it with sexual innuendo and double entendres.
I don’t think that when Robert PLant sings “squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg” that he’s actually talking about the citrus fruit.
Oh. . .and, every AC/DC song ever written. They’re entire songwriting style is based on it.
“Big Balls” would be the easiest example.
Some balls are held for charity
And some for fancy dress
But when they’re held for pleasure,
They’re the balls that I like best.
Big Gun, Heatseaker, Hard as a Rock, Beating Around the Bush, etc.
And, YES, I am making a distinction between their double entendre songs, and their single-entendre songs. . .Let Me Put My Love Into You, Cover You In Oil, You Shook Me All Night Long, etc.
I don’t need to prove that I’m a smart-ass – that’s a matter of record.
As for the argument, I apologise for its length, but I think if you’ll examine it you’ll see that it is a decent argument that the letters “LSD” can appear entirely coincidentally in a work that contains surreal imagery without authorial intent. If “LSD” appears several times in a text that makes frequent references to other intoxicants and altered states of mind, and is in fact much more analogous to a psychedelic experience than “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and yet the provenance of that text effectively rules out the possibility of of a deliberate reference to the drug, then it may be easier to accept that the L.S.D. in the title of the Beatles song really is just from Julian, with no authorial intent. Yes, it could have been shorter, but my editor knocks off after 1:00am.
Sorry, but it’s a pet peeve of mine when people say “Of course it’s about drugs… it’s weird!” without much to support the argument. I’ve heard the same assertion about MacArthur Park.
Wilson Brian Key somehow convinced an entire generation that A Bridge Over Troubled Water is about heroin. Because “silvergirl” is street slang for “syringe.” (Overlook that there has never been any record of it being used this way before he made the declaration.) And heroin is comforting, especially when things look bleak. Come on man, it’s obvious! :smack:
Re: “The Lemon Song” Plant & Page lifted that from Robert Johnson. You can pretty much count on anything remotely edible mentioned in a blues song to be sexual euphemism. Lemons, jelly-rolls, butter & egg, ham-hocks, whatever.
My favourite blues double-entendre is Junior Wells’ She Wants to Sell My Monkey, which is about a guy who’s hooked up with a business-minded girl:
What’s funny is that the poster choose to abbreviate “Sir” in the first place. . .not noticing (?) that when he removed the “i” he burden himself with an additional keystroke to put in the “.”
I thought I made that up as a song parody way back when I was in high school and it first came out.
Well I’m running a little hot tonight
I can barely see my toes from the heat comin’ off
Reach down between my legs and ease the tube out…
Fleet’s flowin’, pressure’s growin’
Right behind me? Best get clear now.
Got the feeling, bowels reelin’
Sphincter’s poppin, ain’t no stoppin’ now
