This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
In the white room with black curtains near the station
Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings
Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes
Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment
I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves
You said no strings could secure you at the station
Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows
I walked into such a sad time at the station
As I walked out, felt my own need just beginning
I'll wait in the queue when the trains come back
Lie with you where the shadows run from themselves
At the party, she was kindness in the hard crowd
Consolation for the old wound now forgotten
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings
I'll sleep in this place with the lonely crowd
Lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves
Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings
Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes
Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment
I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves
You said no strings could secure you at the station
Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows
I walked into such a sad time at the station
As I walked out, felt my own need just beginning
I'll wait in the queue when the trains come back
Lie with you where the shadows run from themselves
At the party, she was kindness in the hard crowd
Consolation for the old wound now forgotten
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings
I'll sleep in this place with the lonely crowd
Lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves
Lyrics submitted by Hunter, edited by HomerNoodleman, dgbaker, voyager1121
White Room Lyrics as written by Pete Brown Jack Bruce
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Beautiful song. Sad but upbeat and emphatic. Lyrics are simple "Beat" poetry. Lost love is all. No drugs, no Nam, no nothing. Everything is bleak. What isn't bleak around train stations? Or lost love? Silver horses are tears. Tired starlings are the parting lovers. Yellow tigers is just her unspoken look of her recall and acknowledgement of their parting. Perhaps sympathy combined with an admonishment, "get over it. I have." Of course the erstwhile Lothario cannot get over it and continues to obsess. Otherwise there'd be no story here, folks. Lost love. It's a classic theme like Longfellow's "Evangeline".
Sorry Rulle - I hit "flag" when I meant to hit "Post Reply" ! [That happens to me a lot at this site.]<br /> <br /> Your post is condensed truth - like a poem. I love it. Your words are worthy of the song itself. White Room - one of my all-time favorite songs. <br /> <br /> A crazy experience: once, back in the 90's, I wanted to call a radio station to request this song - but I couldn't get through - line was busy. I spoke to no one, my call never went through. <br /> I had barely hung up the phone when this song came over the airwaves.<br /> <br /> "Mind-Reading Psychic Radio? or GOD.
@RulleMarie/ ......great analysis.....thank you for your literary insights in breaking down this [ image-laden] lyric-poem, and clarifying its basic LOST-LOVE narrative......without a clear-headed interpretation like yours, the bonehead LSD-drug or psychedelic Vietnam war- recollection interpretations ( sometimes both, together) would dominate this discussion...........thanks again......
A lot of people think this song is about Vietnam - White room - white house and other little metaphors within the song, not to mention it was right in that time period, but i read that Jack Bruce and Pete Brown wrote this song about Brown's flat and it's surroundings and a longing for this girl. If you look at the descriptive words you'll notice that when talking about the outside world and everything in it, they use very flat descriptive words. But when they refers to the girl they use really good imagery and she seems to be the light in the poorly light white room. CLAPTON IS GOD!
Ah, a plausible explanation: "Jack Bruce and Pete Brown wrote this song about Brown's flat and it's surroundings and a longing for this girl." Exactly! The idea that, for the songwriters from that era (I lived it, BTW), the subject matter was frequently drugs, is horse scat. Good lyrics contain imagery, do they not? If someone wants to cherry pick certain images and then force them onto a "Vietnam" template, or a "cocaine addiction" template, it's incredibly easy. Pick ANY song that contains good imagery, and you'll succeed. The tendency for fans to do this with songs from the late 60s and 70s is so, SO tiresome.
where did you read this?
This was one of my favorite tunes of the year 1968. I saw Cream open their performance in Baltimore with White Room two days before Nixon was elected president in that crazy and fateful year.
Like many of the songs of that era it is full of impressionistic phrases and imagery that leave a lot to the individual listeners' imagination.
My own take was that the song was about alienation and depression and the way one's mind can shift from ecstatic epiphanies to cringing paranoia in the space of seconds.
@OlSloaner i love this song
this is an awesome song!
I will remind you that Cream was British. I s'pose this song is not about Viet Nam or the war. (Stop stretching, for gosh-golly's sake!)No soldiers shipping out. Uh, guy re: WW2, Jack Bruce and Pete Brown were born in the 40's during the war and did not ship out from a train station to WW2.<br /> <br /> Wiki Answers says: "Although the United Kingdom was not directly involved in the war in Viet Nam, the people of the country were mostly against it. Demonstrations in London, protesting the war, had hundreds of thousands of people attend them. British political leaders condemned the war."
It's about throwing away a great relationship and then regretting it forever. Silver horses and Yellow tigers, is more likely a nod to the poems of William Blake - The lamb and Tiger tiger burning bright, respectively (possibly the songs of innocence/experience too) than anything to do with War and Vietnam.
Jazz w/o the sax
When I hear this song, I get this sort of gothic/victorian imagery in my mind. It all sounds very 19th century. It's gorgeous.
it's about depression
I heard pete brown say it was about his old apartmant or something and it had a white room
Heres the real meaning I had to get it from wikipedia. "White Room", written by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown, is a single by Cream from their 1968 album Wheels of Fire.
After bassist Jack Bruce wrote the guitar pieces, Cream's lyricist, poet Pete Brown, grouped colorful four-syllable phrases, loosely organized around images of waiting in an English train station influenced by the drugs he was taking. The combination is often considered one of the shining moments in British psychedelia. "White Room" is further noted for its unusual time signature of 5/4 in the introduction and bridge, with triplets played on toms by Ginger Baker, his thunderous bass drum part also lacing the verses. Finally, "White Room" is notable for showcasing guitarist Eric Clapton's best known use of the wah-wah pedal (possibly aside from "Tales of Brave Ulysses") in the bridge and extended solo.
Along with "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Crossroads", White Room is one of Cream's most notable songs, reaching number 6 on the U.S. pop charts.
"White Room" was placed at #367 on the 2004 List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.