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Hadda Be Playin' On The Jukebox Lyrics
It had to be flashin' like the daily double
It had to be playin' on TV
It had to be loud mouthed on the comedy hour
It had to be announced over loud speakers
The CIA and the Mafia are in cahoots
It had to be said in old ladies' language
It had to be said in American headlines
Kennedy stretched and smiled and got double crossed by lowlife goons and agents
Rich bankers with criminal connections
Dope pushers in CIA working with dope pushers from Cuba working with a
big time syndicate from Tampa, Florida
And it had to be said with a big mouth
It had to be moaned over factory foghorns
It had to be chattered on car radio news broadcasts
It had to be screamed in the kitchen
It had to be yelled in the basement where uncles were fighting
It had to be howled on the streets by newsboys to bus conductors
It had to be foghorned into New York harbor
It had to echo onto hard hats
It had to turn up the volume in university ballrooms
It had to be written in library books, footnoted
It had to be in the headlines of the Times and Le Monde
It had to be barked on TV
It had to be heard in alleys through ballroom doors
It had to be played on wire services
It had to be bells ringing
Comedians stopped dead in the middle of a joke in Las Vegas
It had to be FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and Frank Costello syndicate
mouthpiece meeting in Central Park, New York weekends,
reported Time magazine
It had to be the Mafia and the CIA together starting war on Cuba,
Bay of Pigs and poison assassination headlines
It had to be dope cops in the Mafia
Who sold all their heroin in America
It had to be the FBI and organized crime working together
in cahoots against the commies
It had to be ringing on multinational cash registers
A world-wide laundry for organized criminal money
It had to be the CIA and the Mafia and the FBI together
They were bigger than Nixon
And they were bigger than war
It had to be a large room full of murder
It had to be a mounted ass- a solid mass of rage
A red hot pen
A scream in the back of the throat
It had to be a kid that can breathe
It had to be in Rockefellers' mouth
It had to be central intelligence, the family, allofthis, the agency Mafia
It had to be organized crime
One big set of gangs working together in cahoots
Hitmen
Murderers everywhere
The secret
The drunk
The brutal
The dirty and rich
On top of a slag heap of prisons
Industrial cancer
Plutonium smog
Garbage cities
Grandmas' bed soft from fathers' resentment
It had to be the rulers
They wanted law and order
And they got rich on wanting protection for the status quo
They wanted junkies
They wanted Attica
They wanted Kent State
They wanted war in Indochina
yeah
It had to be the CIA and the Mafia and the FBI
Multinational capitalists
Strong armed squads
Private detective agencies for the oh so very rich
And their armies and navies and their air force bombing planes
It had to be capitalism
The vortex of this rage
This competition
Man to man
The horses head in a capitalists' bed
The Cuban turf
It rumbles in hitmen
And gang wars across oceans
Bombing Cambodia settled the score when Soviet pilots
manned Egyptian fighter planes
Chiles' red democracy
Bumped off with White House pots and pans
A warning to Mediterranean governments
The secret police have been embraced for decades
The NKPD and CIA keep each other's secrets
The OGBU and DIA never hit their own
The KGB and the FBI are one mind
Brute force and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
It had to be rich and it had to be powerful
They had to murder in Indonesia 500000
They had to murder in Indochina 2000000
They had to murder in Czechoslovakia
They had to murder in Chile
They had to murder in Russia
And they had to murder in America.
Yeah!
It had to be playin' on TV
It had to be loud mouthed on the comedy hour
It had to be announced over loud speakers
It had to be said in American headlines
Kennedy stretched and smiled and got double crossed by lowlife goons and agents
Rich bankers with criminal connections
Dope pushers in CIA working with dope pushers from Cuba working with a
big time syndicate from Tampa, Florida
And it had to be said with a big mouth
It had to be chattered on car radio news broadcasts
It had to be screamed in the kitchen
It had to be yelled in the basement where uncles were fighting
It had to be foghorned into New York harbor
It had to echo onto hard hats
It had to turn up the volume in university ballrooms
It had to be in the headlines of the Times and Le Monde
It had to be barked on TV
It had to be heard in alleys through ballroom doors
It had to be bells ringing
Comedians stopped dead in the middle of a joke in Las Vegas
mouthpiece meeting in Central Park, New York weekends,
reported Time magazine
Bay of Pigs and poison assassination headlines
Who sold all their heroin in America
in cahoots against the commies
A world-wide laundry for organized criminal money
They were bigger than Nixon
And they were bigger than war
It had to be a mounted ass- a solid mass of rage
A red hot pen
A scream in the back of the throat
It had to be in Rockefellers' mouth
It had to be central intelligence, the family, allofthis, the agency Mafia
It had to be organized crime
Murderers everywhere
The drunk
The brutal
The dirty and rich
Industrial cancer
Plutonium smog
Garbage cities
They wanted law and order
And they got rich on wanting protection for the status quo
They wanted Attica
They wanted Kent State
They wanted war in Indochina
Strong armed squads
Private detective agencies for the oh so very rich
And their armies and navies and their air force bombing planes
The vortex of this rage
This competition
Man to man
The Cuban turf
It rumbles in hitmen
And gang wars across oceans
manned Egyptian fighter planes
Bumped off with White House pots and pans
The OGBU and DIA never hit their own
The KGB and the FBI are one mind
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
They had to murder in Indonesia 500000
They had to murder in Indochina 2000000
They had to murder in Czechoslovakia
They had to murder in Chile
They had to murder in Russia
Song Info
Submitted by
sean7711 On Jul 23, 2002
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Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.
a poem written by allen ginsberg
this song is crazy. it just keeps on climbing and climbing
Hey im from Australia and ive never heard this song before, did they put it on a cd? Was it not released in Australia or something?
its on the live and rare cd
The Live & Rare version is the best version they recorded. Other versions inc. the studio mix don't seem to capture Zacks rage. The lyrics are slightly different to the original poem but being live, the whole performance sounds amazing!
Lyric corrections: "Brute force, world-wide, and full of money" is "One mind, brute force, its full of money."
"The secret police have been embraced for decades" is ""The secret police embraced for decades"
"NKPD" is "NKVD," (the 'Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del' or People's Commisariat for Internal Affairs, the Soviet secret police).
"Grandmas' bed soft from fathers' resentment" is "Grandmas' bedsores, fathers' resentment"
This song is pretty obviously about Kennedy's assassination, and how in Rage's (Ginsberg's) opinion, it was not a single man.
"Kennedy stretched and smiled and got double crossed by lowlife goons and agents"
Also comments not so sublety on the rumored connections between organized crime and govermnent,
This is my interpretation of the song:
The poem uses the analogy that the global conflicts during the cold war between the U.S. government and the old Soviet Union were gang warfare:
The U.S. government is controlled by a few very wealthy minority and they employed the CIA as instigators and the U.S. armed forces as the muscle. The Soviet Union was also controlled by a very wealthy minority who used the KGB as instigators and the red army as the muscle:
bombing planes"
There seems to be a connection between the tactics used by the mafia, and the tactics used by Government agencies to defend territory. There also seems to be collaboration between the two (mafia and U.S. Government) against the Soviet Union:
"It had to be the FBI and organized crime working together in cahoots against the commies"
The poem reaches its climax, when the result of this gang warfare between rich people is revealed to be millions of poeple killed:
In the beginning of the poem, the author imagines and wishes that this knowledge would be distributed in every corner of the U.S:
I think you are completely wrong its not a metaphor "The CIA and the Mafia are in cahoots" thats a literal statement
I agree
I agree
The cold war was seen in the Western World as the struggle of freedom fighters (U.S. backed guerrillas and armies) against the evil empire (Soviet-backed guerrillas and armies). The poem indicates it was just gang warfare; that's what I meant by analogy.
"The CIA and the Mafia are in cahoots against the commies" refers to tactics used by the U.S. Government in collaboration with the mafia to inflict damage on the other side. I never attached the world analogy to this part of the poem.