| Lynyrd Skynyrd – Gimme Back My Bullets Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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From songfacts.com: "According to Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington in a 1992 Goldmine interview, this song is about the bullets Billboard charts use to signify a song is moving quickly up the chart. If a song is "#12 with a bullet," it is at #12 but will probably go higher next week. Skynyrd had not had a hit in a while and this was a message that they wanted to get back on the charts." From LYNYRD SKYNYRD: REMEMBERING THE FREEBIRDS by Gene Odom: "The song that became the album's title track, 'Gimme back My Bullets,' had nothing to do with ammunition and everything to do with recognition. 'Bullets' were symbols of success in a magazine for artists whose records were selling like hotcakes. Ronnie wanted his bullets back, but he knew they weren't something you could just ask for; they had to be earned." ************* Just to give credit, I copied the above material from a discussion on Lynyrd Skynyrd at amazon.com because it was conveniently laid out. But I've seen the same explanation at a number of sites on music, and the first quote can indeed be found at songfacts.com (iow, google it). |
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| Grateful Dead – St. Stephen Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I say that the song is about sex. Look at all the in-and-out imagery, phallic imagery, and references to getting hard and then going down (limp). 1) Saint Stephen with a rose The engorged male organ is pink; in medieval times, blushes and inflammations used to be referred to as a “rose”; confirm rosacea (a type of facial acne) 2) In and out of the garden he goes. Obvious 3) Country garden in the wind and the rain Similar to a million bad jokes about the location of the female organ between the excretory and urinary exits: “between mud and flood.” 4) Wherever he goes the people all complain. Sex is controversial. People see sex in the open and they complain. So it has to be disguised in a buch of obligue song lyrics. 5) Wishing well with a golden bell, bucket hanging clear to hell, Hell halfway twixt now and then, Stephen fill it up and lower down and lower down again. If the song were really about a bucket and a well, then the lyrics wouldn’t make sense: You don’t fill a bucket at the top and lower it; you fill it at the bottom and raise it. So instead, the well is the female organ (often maligned in medieval literature as the road to hell). Stephen fills the well up, and then he goes down (limp). 6) One man gathers what another man spills. The Bible cautions against men spilling their seed via masturbation. So the song line says that some men retain and some spill (some are abstinent adn some indulge). 7) But what would be the answer to the answer man? The biggest question in the world is, What’s the purpose of life? (“Lady finger, dipped in moonlight, writing "What for?" across the morning sky.”) Darwin and Freud answered it: To procreate. Species that are bent on procreation survive; those that aren’t don’t. So sex is its own answer, and Stephen is the “answer man”: “Sunlight splatters the dawn with answers, darkness shrugs and bids the day goodbye.” In other words, splatter your answer and be on your way. 8) Saint Stephen will remain, all he's lost he shall regain, Stephen recuperates quickly. After sex, he just needs a little time to “regain what he’s lost”, and he’s ready to go again. 9) Fortune comes a crawlin', calliope woman, spinnin' that curious sense of your own. Back to it, with a new woman delivered by Fortune. Confirm the earlier section about “Several seasons with their treasons, Wrap the babe in scarlet colors, call it your own.” The two sections make references to the fickleness and possessiveness of lust: You claim a woman as “your own” until the next morning, when you’re no longer so interested in her and already looking for the next “calliope woman,” i.e., parade of women on the merry-go-round of life. 10) And so on. Stuff like “Speeding arrow, sharp and narrow” and “washed by the suds and foam” should be obvious. |
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