I always thought it was the result of taking too many drugs.
I don’t know what it means, but I do know that my college room mate played it so often that if it comes on the radio now, I will change the station. And I’m 63.
A 13-year-old zombie thread and you bring it back to say the song is about sparking a doob and dealing with The Man?
Whoa.
Wow, no students of Atlantean language and culture on the Dope? Michael Pollard got involved with the Rosicrucians back in the late 1960s and absorbed some of this stuff. You’re really not supposed to spread it around, but obviously Pollard did.
Short version: “High heeled boys” is a rough English phrase level phonetic translation of the Atlantean of haya-hiloboyz. It basically means, “shit happens”, but also “think about how shitty this is and why”.
Longer version: it’s actually a multi-level reference: the phrase haya-hiloboyz is itself just a reference to a standard Atlantean folk tale, like the phrase “crying wolf” would be to us. The story is about a man tasked with preventing the regular and devastating fires in a dry, shrubby area of Atlantis that was also the site of a gorgeous natural rock formation and the setting for a major royal temple (as was common in the ancient world, the king was also head of religious rituals). He realized the fires happened due to people starting fires at night to keep warm (with flint sparking and tinder), and basically forbade the area for overnight habitation (“no camping”, basically)… But could not forbid the biannual royal visits to the temple, which required days of preparations, and the royal entourage pulled rank and stayed there anyway, eventually causing a fire.
When the King called the unfortunate engineer to task for his failure, he replied, “There are no fires without a spark, Lord, and my vigilance has not been lacking - but even as a sand wall cannot hold back the tide, a holobana [lowborn commoner] such as I cannot control the haya (tinder spark) of a hilobona [highborn noble])” (hiloboyz being the genitive form).
So to Atlanteans, with their rigid classes and castes, this was a legitimate excuse meaning “there was nothing I could do” - but with an obvious, subversive undercurrent of “this sucks and is totally stupid, isn’t it?”, which is why it was associated with a repressed freethinking underground movement of Atlantis that survived to us in the Rosicrucuians.
Makes you think of all those lyrics in a newly respected light, yeah? Marijuana is awesome.
I’m sorry if I came off too overly sure of myself and thus abrasive, but in light if the fact that Traffic has another song “Light up or leave me alone” and in their videos show them all in the traditional rocker high heels, which by the way the elderly would sometimes refer to rockers…as a group, in lieu of a better name, as, them “high heeled boys” AND the fact that the sixties were for the most part, in its entirety, about smoking dubes and sticking it to the man (it was practically the decades mantra for Christ sake), I think its a pretty good bet!!!
The songs genius and depth is in its complex way of expressing a simple idea!! If you understand rock and roll you’ll agree that that’s something that gets done a lot by lyricists, not the other way around; expressing simple ideas in a complex manner. So gents… I confidently stand by my original post no matter who failingly tries the impossible task of trying to belittle me with words… (there’s aren’t too many humans on earth that I cannot out intellectualize!! Now if you wanna do that, bust on me for not knowing, until yesterday, that Steve Winwood was in fact the singer of Traffic!! And not knowing the genius of Traffic until recently!!
Oh and Robardin… NICE POST man… I am coincidentally reading about the Atlantian culture in a book The ancient secrete of the flower of life good stuff bra.
I think you’ll find people into every type of imaginary languages and cultures.
But sometimes high heels are just shoes.
The long synthesizer break holds up after many years of listening. Jazz for those who don’t think they like jazz.
One of my favorite songs from my younger day; a true desert island disc. Actually it is the only cut on the CD that I will listen to over and over.
I don’t know why but I’m thankful this wasn’t a shaggy dog story leading up a lame pun because that’s what I was expecting.
I think your interpretation is on the right tracks, and I’ve sometimes wondered if the lyrics were some kind of reference to David Bowie although I’m not sure if he was “THE high-heeled boy” prior to Ziggy Stardust.
Cuban heels, also known as Beatle Boots, became the style amongst rock types in the very early 60s. They were on their way out by the time of Ziggy Stardust.
The record is a lament for the present not living up to the past. Have to assume that the title reference is an old one, not the latest thing, especially one still a year away.
Yeah, suppose you’re right since the song was apparently written in Morocco I assume well before the 1971 recording date, and according to Capaldi it referred to cowboy boots, rather than the high heels of the nascent glam rock genre. However, that’s the image that I get in my head while listening to it. The music itself put the 60’s squarely behind it.
The point is that lyrics don’t have to mean anythihng. They can just be evocative without any literal meaning at all (e.g., A Whiter Shade of Pale).
Some people don’t understand this and drive themselves nuts trying to read the tea leaves when there are no tea leaves there.
Of course, it doesn’t have to mean anything. But a piece of art flies out of the artist’s hands immediately after it is given to the public. Anyone can make whatever they want of it, regardless of the initial intention. If you intend to sing a song, the original intention doesn’t matter, except to the extent that, if it is reflected with some clarity in the lyric, a clearly contrary interpretation might have your audience scratching its heads. Head-scratching is not too conducive to being moved, which is the singer’s job. With a song like “Low Spark . . .,” anything goes. But if you intend to sing it and have people appreciate it, you’d better come up with something that make sense to at least you. That all said: I like the rebellion theory, but have a hard time syncing that with a lot of the lyric. As for haunting, I have a ghostly feeling about the 2nd verse: “If you only had a minute to breath; and they granted you for one final wish; would you ask for something, like another chance . . …”
I REALLY like this explanation!
A zombie that will forever remain relevant.
Yes. It’s poetry. Words that evoke images and feelings and moods. It’s beautiful, but I’m not sure there’s more than a scrap of meaning here or there.
As always, I simply MUST recommend the Dave Mason/Jim Capaldi live version from the, “40,000 Headmen” tour. Damn, as much as I love the original, I love this one just as much. Mason’s guitar is nearly as evocative as the words.
I’ve heard of this album for decades. I’ve looked at the cover of this album for decades. And up until about a month ago, I have never heard a song off of it. Since a month has passed, my husband has played it in the car on our drives here and there, and so I have heard it more times in a month than I can count. Very nice music, soothing.