| The Beatles – Strawberry Fields Forever Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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"Strawberry Fields is a place in Central Park.Directly across from the Dakota. where John Lennon lived. " That's a memorial named after the song. The place John Lennon is singing about was a Salvation Army orphanage, near John's childhood home. The Strawberry Fields of the song represent those of his imagination, though, not just the real place. Generally, the song is about using the imagination to escape boredom and the negative things in life. |
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| The Beatles – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| It's based on a passage in "Through the Looking Glass.", which John found to resemble an LSD trip. I doubt the title was a deliberate reference to the drug, though- you can find various photos of Julian Lennon's picture which inspired it, around the internet. | |
| The Byrds – Eight Miles High Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| It's about a plane flight, from America to England for a tour, I believe. It was a fairly early psychedelic song, but not the first. The underground psychedelic movement began around 1965. | |
| Leonard Cohen – One of Us Cannot Be Wrong Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes and I guess he just never got warm. I always took those lines as sarcasm. She cheated on the "eskimo", and cohen is bitterly commenting that the wind took her clothes. |
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| The Beatles – Carry That Weight Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| Keep in mind that the song was written with the realisation in Paul's mind that The Beatles were coming to an end. It might be referring to their having to adapt to "normal" life after being a Beatle- for the rest of their lives they would all carry the weight of having been a part of a 1960s pop group, and it might have made them seem anticlimactic. | |
| The Beatles – I Am the Walrus Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| While a lot of the song is gibberish to terrorise people who read too deeply into his lyrics, at least small sections of the song have coherant meanings. The "Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun..." could be a criticism of late 1960s society, as people waited around doing nothing thinking they were changing the world and when this was eventually realised they just made do with a flawed society. This is also true of the line "Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come." | |
| The Beatles – A Day in the Life Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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The song is about perceptions, based on the hippie notion that the only way to change the world is by changing ourselves. Look at all the references to experience and perception- we are told the car driver (Tara Browne) blew his mind out, rather than his brain- death, in Lennon's state of mind when he wrote this song, was simply an end of perceptions. This continues in the rest of the song- reading the news, the narrator has the ability to make a car crash funny or sad, to make the Second World War something to deeply understand ("read the book"), and give holes in a road a significance equal to that of Tara Browne's death or simply ignore them. The song works on two levels- the literal interpretation; someone so caught up in the mindless events of their daily routine that holes in a road, a war and a death are completely meaningless to them. On a deeper level- the message seems to be that we take from life what we choose- we can be caught up in our boring daily routine, or we can give new meanings to things, as John Lennon was at the time due to his drug use. In short. and as Ian Mcdonald put it, Lennon is trying to say that life is a dream and as the dreamers we have the ability to make it beautiful or dreary. |
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| Pink Floyd – Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I - V) Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Sorry to double post, but about the title... I think it was left unpunctuated deliberately to leave it ambiguous- whether it is "Shine on you crazy diamond", refering to something that will shine on the diamond (presumably Barrett) or "Shine on, you crazy diamond", urging Syd to keep going despite his mental illness. |
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| Pink Floyd – Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I - V) Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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The steel breeze represents a wind forcing people through a certain path of life. I always thought reaching for the secret too soon was a reference to different generations of hippies. In the 1960s they used drugs to change their perceptions and gain new experiences, but when the dangers of psychedelic drugs were realised, through cases like Syd's, people turned to the harder and more long term enlightenment of new age religions. |
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| Pink Floyd – See Emily Play Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| Emily is a child as a misfit in society. I think it's a more positive song than people assume. For me, the line "float on a river for ever and ever" seems to be Syd Barrett telling the girl not to grow up too fast (or at all). | |
| Pink Floyd – Breathe Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| Aside from the fact that Wizard of Oz is about an hour longer than Dark Side of the Moon, it's reasonable to assume the two are synchronised... Not really. | |
| Pink Floyd – Brain Damage Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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The members of the band have said the album in general, and this song in particular was about Syd Barrett. "The lunatic is on the grass remembering games and daisy chains and laughs got to keep the loonies on the path" The first verse seems to be about the suppression of childhood dreams as people grow up, and the treatment of people who fail to do this by society (ie being labelled insane). To see how this is relevant to Syd Barrett, just find a lyrics sheet for pretty much any song on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. From the songs on that album, and his solo works, Syd seemed obsessed with childhood dreams and fairytales; one theory behind the causes of his mental illness is that it was related to a feeling that he had of an unfulfilled childhood. Just looking at the lyrics of Matilda Mother "Oh Mother, tell me more. Why'd you have to leave me there hanging in my infant air, waiting?" It seems that Syd was suffering from a feeling that he had been robbed of his childhood. How much of this was down to LSD and how much was due to his personality is impossible to tell, though, as many users of the drug longed for their childhood (ie John Lennon; see Strawberry Fields Forever lyrics) I belive the Dark Side of the Moon is a place comparable to Dylan's Desolation Row, or maybe just a metaphor for a "mad house", or even death. And if the dam breaks open many years too soon and if there is no room upon the hill and if your head explodes with dark forbodings too I'll see you on the dark side of the moon This also relates to suppressing thoughts and feelings that don't fit in with society, while "you shout and no one seems to hear" is simply stating that anyone who society is incapable of understanding is locked up with the key thrown away. |
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