| The Police – King Of Pain Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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Pain is one of the essential drivers of the living universe, particularly of life. Biology is directed by natural selection, a process which continuously culls the herd to produce something stronger. Civilization similarly utilizes ambition and greed to advance itself. Even the galaxies are creatively driven by violent collisions and collapses. If the universe has a soul, therefore, pain is an indispensable part of it. The black spot on the sun, the butterfly caught in the web, the king on his throne with his eyes torn out. As highly conscious beings, we alone(as far as we know), are aware of these things. We appreciate how pain drives the most beautiful poetry, in both words and in nature, but we lament the tragedy of suffering. The song resonates because of the powerful and simple imagery. An interesting line to analyze is "a black hat caught on a high tree top". We should remember that a poet is expressing something very abstract not because he wants to challenge us to "figure out" the meaning, because our consciousness has its limitations, and the poet himself is not fully aware of what he's "saying" with the words. These are impressions he is trying to translate into words, but such translations will always be ghostly metaphors that give us a glimpse, and that glimpse will vary depending on whose ears the words reach, or even within the poet himself each new time he repeats them. But we can take a stab at them, right? The black hat seems to represent a person, and the key word is "caught". If the writer is talking about himself, what is he caught on? or if it is humankind, what are we caught on? The black hat on the tree...a highly conscious being caught on something beautiful and natural(the tree). In what sense is this being "caught", and why is it a "black" moment? Well, the tree is blissfully unaware of death. It is unaware that in the future it will suffer and wither. It merely reaches for the sun and digs into the sweet, nutritious earth, feels the breeze run through its leaves. But the conscious being is fully aware of what the future holds both for him and for the tree. He has to live with that knowledge. In a sense, he is always the butterfly ensnared in the spider's web because he always senses the spider is coming. The blackness. And one can take this in an even more mystical direction. Imagine that the universe is indeed a created place, and we, as conscious beings, partake in that creation. We are constructed from that same creative impulse, that same desire of the universe to grow, to become more beautiful and richer, to become aware of itself and ourselves. Such creation requires destruction. It requires suffering and death. As partakers, we share in the sense of guilt over the suffering. |
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| Pink Floyd – Bike Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| There's a line in Wish You Were Here, something like "You were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom." I see the first glimpses of that. The band was starting to get some notoriety. Syd was a 21 year old kid who was becoming a rock star. And writing this song, he's just kind of taking stock. He's still close enough to childhood to have a bike on his mind. He's wearing a cloak...a cloak!...part of his new rock-star look. Yesterday he was riding a bike, today he's wearing a red and black cloak. The absurdity of it strikes him while he takes stock of who and where he is. I would imagine he's writing this song in the apartment with his girlfriend on the morning of recording. His brilliance was in putting words to musical rhyme. He starts out taking stock of his situation, then, once he hits a rhythm, he just ad libs the stuff about the mouse and the gingerbread men. I believe Vegetable Man was written this way, on the fly, looking at his watch, his clothes. As the song finishes, the last bit is about going into the recording room. It's tempting to think the first line, about a room full of musical tunes, is about his head. It's also interesting how the song turns dark and almost menacing on this last verse. Was that intentional? The music/sound effects become haunting and foreboding. Was this Syd's work or others in the band? It adds to the effect of this song feeling like a last snapshot before Syd was really absorbed into the whirlwind. | |
| Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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I can''t help wondering if got this wrong all these years, at least as far as Roger's original meaning. "Wish you were here" almost sounds taunting. We have to remember that Roger was a late-blooming alpha male. It's hard to imagine there wasn't a ton of friction and resentment between him and Syd, nothing to do with Syd's declining mental state. Syd had emerged as the front man. HE was the rock star, the pop hero. And from all accounts, Syd did let that go to his head, as it does with any lead singer. They quickly reached a point where Syd's vision was very different from Roger's, and as we would see later, Roger was always determined to have his way. As was Syd. And in the early years, Syd had his way. But the drug induced stupor made him vulnerable. Roger moved in, Syd resisted. The last song they attempted to record together was Have You Got It Yet, where Syd was messing with the band. That would understandably piss them off, but Roger seems like the type to remain pissed about that slight until the grave. So when Syd leaves, and the band continues to grow, finally hitting it big time with Dark Side, Roger can kind of look back triumphantly and say, "wish you were here, buddy," smirking all the while. "So you think you can tell..." That's an aggressive, hostile opening to any conversation. If I'm going to write a song about missing someone I am not going to start it like that. "Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts." When I was younger, not knowing the story, I always assumed this whole song was Roger talking about himself. The "you" is him. And that actually makes it a powerful song. But if this song is about Syd, it's actually hostile. It doesn't sound at all like a song about a friend who had a breakdown. It sounds in tone like someone might say bitterly years later to a spouse that divorced them. It's an accusation that Syd made a conscious choice to do something that perhaps betrayed what they once stood for. I'm not saying Syd did that, I'm saying Roger's tone suggests he felt that way while writing. He's accusing Syd of choosing hot ashes over trees, hot air and cold comfort. I had always thought Roger was accusing himself of selling out what he believed in in order to be a star, "lead role in a cage". But if the song is written with Syd in mind, he's accusing Syd of wanting to be the pop star. And we've seen this with so many bands over the years, Van Halen comes to mind, where the band becomes resentful of the lead singer. In the case of early Floyd, Syd was the good looking one, the flamboyant one, the star in every way. Roger seethed with envy. Syd is the one still running over the same ground when this song was written. He had become a recluse haunting his hometown of Cambridge. It doesn't sound like Roger has much sympathy. I don''t mean these to be too critical of Roger, and I am not one of those crazy people saying "Floyd is Syd". The brilliant work of Floyd came AFTER Syd, and as talented as Syd was, the band would not have had that success without morphing into something else. Roger's lyrics on these albums is brilliant, whatever he originally intended by them. |
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| Syd Barrett – Baby Lemonade Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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When I listen to the song, before even trying to catch what the meaning might be, what stand out is the desperate emotion poured into the words "please". It's the kind of emotion one have if begging for a love one to return, or to be released from a prison. Most of these post-Flyd Barret songs are delivered in monotone. This song is as well...except for the please. Roger Waters poured similar emotion into parts of the Wall, which is a big reason for its success. The emotion there lifted Waters' mediocre vocalist talent into something moving. So I would begin by trying to understand the words that followed the "please". And here it's the title words, baby lemonade. So what is a baby lemonade? It could be something that just sounds evocative. Barret seems to have always been attracted to words that convey an image or feeling, even if there is no intentional meaning put into them. However, it's curious that lemonade is pink. It makes me wonder if in their early days, when the band was new, a baby, if Barrett ever referred to it this way. A pink baby. I've never heard any reference to this. But then maybe the other band members would be embarrassed by such a desperate plea for them to take him back, one which they ignored. I think we have to be forgiving to the band. From all accounts, even family members, Barrett was far enough gone that no one could work with him. And these guys understandably wanted to make a career of this. It's always tempting to read into lyrics what we know about the circumstances. But this would have been feeding powerful emotions with Barrett. "Make your name like a ghost." The band did exactly that to him, so hard not to see that in the line. "I'm screaming, I met you this way you're nice to me like ice in the clock they sent through a washing machine come around, make it soon, so alone please, please, Baby Lemonade" Man, the pain seems so deep. Again, we have to guard against reading into things, but one wonders...a major problem the band was having with him was getting to show on time for gigs. Did they give him a watch as a gift that went through the washing machine? He met them screaming, you're nice to me like ice...It's like he's saying, "I'm flawed, but my flaws are not new, I've always been this way." He probably was not fully recognizing how far his mind had gone, and how can someone in that state of mind realize it? To him, he thought the problem was merely being late for gigs. But he's alone and wants them to come see him, but these guys were going on with their lives. It's a little cruel, but he was holding them back. |
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