I love that song. It’s been one of my very favorite songs since I first heard it on a compilation LP some 25 years ago. Thanks to lyrics sites, I since have been able to decipher the line “And I been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah” (the only town I could make out was Tucson, but I’m not from the U.S., so bear with me). But what still puzzles me somewhat are the “whites” in the refrain:
*And if you give me weed, whites and wine,
And you show me a sign,
I’ll be willin’,
To be movin’
*
I know what weed and wine are, so I suspect that “whites” is a slang term for another substance. But for what?
While we’re at it: are the reds, greens and blues in the Stones’ “Sweet Virgina” also amphetamine pills?:
*Drop your reds, drop your greens and blues.
[…]
And I hid the speed inside my shoe.
*
Now, I know that “speed” is amphetamine. Did those pills come in all colors?
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
Leaves the question what “blues” are. But I dimly remember from “Quadrophenia” (the movie) that they were some kind of benzedrines, but probably the drug lingo differed in Britain.
In the case of “Sweet Virginia,” while “Drop your reds” is a plain reference to taking barbiturates, I think that following it with “drop your greens and blues” is just wordplay, with a likely pun on blues music thrown in. (As Amateur Barbarian notes, there’s such a thing as greenies, but I’ve never heard them referred to as greens.)
