| Eagles – The Last Resort Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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@[rocknrolllawschool:48027] Five years have passed since my original post, and now Lahaina too has been destroyed by fire. As the prescient Mr. Henley said, "you call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye" |
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| Paul McCartney – Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| A masterpiece that has been mostly forgotten. This song is an Orwellian tale about man\'s irrepressible quest for love and joy in a dystopian future under the ever-present watch of a totalitarian state. Astounding orchestration between the piano riffs, guitar solos, horns, and foreboding synthesizer. | |
| The Allman Brothers Band – High Falls Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| This song has no words, but we can still find much meaning here through the title and the music composition. "High Falls" has a double meaning: (a) literally, a waterfall in a serene mountain setting, and (b) a disastrous setback in life after achieving great success. This song explores both themes through the lives of brothers Greg and Duane Allman. Greg's perspective is expressed through his own keyboard solos and Duane's is depicted by Dickie Betts' poignant guitar solos. Both reflect growing mastery of their instruments, producing great exhilaration, freedom and fleeting moments of bliss, followed by unspeakable sorrow, arising from Duane's death in a motorcycle crash at age 24 at the height of his fame and Greg's downward spiral into drug addiction. However, this song is not a downer, focusing instead on appreciation of those brief moments of joy and beauty as reason enough for carrying on in life. | |
| Eagles – The Last Resort Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| Does anyone else find it ironic that the town of Paradise, California was completely destroyed by recent Camp fire in northern California? | |
| The Pretenders – Back On The Chain Gang Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| A great song. However, I think that there is a sexual conotation to being "back on the chain gang" that people have not picked up on. The narrator is saying that after she broke up with her true love, her life in the singles world has deteriorated into multiple, repetitive sexual encounters with no emotional or physical satisfaction. This interpretation is reinforced by the "ooh-ah" corus. Basically, the lyrics play on the similarities between the phrases "chain gang," "gang bang" and "train". | |
| Al B. Sure! – Nite And Day Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Does anyone know who plays the guitar solo on this song? | |
| Don Henley – Sunset Grill Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I think the Sunset Grill represents hell. The old man who calls his customers by name is the devil, the auburn sky is the flames of hell, etc. The song is about how modern urban life, with its mindless hedonism, callous indifference to human suffering, and unethical pursuit of riches is leading us all to eternal damnation. Don Henley explored some of these same themes in Hotel California, but this song is even more chilling. The song suggests that we are all content to accept our doom willingly, in a sort of mass delusion, since "all our friends our here." (At least in Hotel California, the protagonist tried to escape). Henley is one of the greatest poets of our time, rivaled only by the very best work of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen. | |
| Bruce Springsteen – 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| This song shares similar themes and images with other Springsteen songs, which resonate deeply with people throughout the world. The Jersey Shore imagery works on two levels: On one level, the seedy boardwalk environment represents prolonged adolescence: The song's protagonist is ready to put the cheap thrills and casual liasons of his youth behind him. He looks back wistfully at his colorful adventures, but he yearns for a committed relationship and traditional family life as an escape from the sordid alternative that he has come to know too well. On another level, the decaying amusement park backdrop is a symbol for the decline of all urban America over the past 3 decades, a land stripped of its productive capacity, and dotted with huge relics of its once-great past, from bankrupt auto makers to shuttered defense plants and steel mills. With nothing productive to do, his characters try to amuse themselves with pinball and latin dancing, get into trouble, and search for love. While Bruce and his characters see no clear path to a better future, they route for Madam Marie, the fortune teller who presumably once predicted a bright future for him, despite police's more-likely conclusion that he was headed for a life of crime. Bruce's ability to express all these these improbable hopes, struggles and search for joy and dignity make him one of the greatest poets our times. | |
| Joni Mitchell – Song For Sharon Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I agree that this is one of the greatest pieces of poetry of the rock era, rivaled only by the very best works of Bob Dylan,Don Henley and a few others from Joni. Jaco Pastorius of Weather Report plays the haunting bass. | |
| U2 – In God's Country Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I think this song is mostly about war, and more specifically European ambivalence toward American military power. Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA", also written in the mid-1980's, shared some of its complex pro-American but anti-military themes. However, In God's Country (like many works of great art) is even more powerful in light of subsequent events, especially the two Iraq wars. Ironically, Emma Lazarus wrote the other great ode to the Statue of Liberty ("give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..."), in 1883, before the great period of European immigration. The "desert sky" references may have been originally intended to refer to the North African campaign during World War II, where American soldiers were joined by the British and European resistance fighters to rescue Europe from Nazi occupation. Many members of the European resistance were former pacifists (like U2), who were inspired to fight by the American example of hope, faith, courage and devotion to liberty, all of which are mentioned in the lyrics and are underscored by the music's bass line, which sounds something like a "Bonanza" episode, representing American cowboy swagger. The line, "Set me alight, We'll punch a hole right through the night" may refer to the initial eagerness to join the fray by shelling continental Europe, but it is even more descriptive of America's early "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq. In contrast to the bass line, Edge's harrowing guitar solos express the horific consequences of war as viscerally as Picasso's "Guernica." The song equates war with fratricide, hence the reference to Cain, and concludes that the same American ideals (represented by Liberty's torch) that fuel the passion to defend freedom also burns those who embrace it by making them killers. Given this no-win proposition, U2 ultimately declares itself to stand on the side of the Americans, the Sons of Cain. In the final irony, God's Country (America and her supporters) is a nation of the damned, "burned by the fire of love", that is, by its own noble intentions. |
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