Anyone for Tennis?

I think that this song is a kind of satirical description of the world of the late 1960's. The monk burning at the zoo is obviously a reference to the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest the Vietnam war, but there are also other things in here that reference things that happened during the time. "The Bentley Driving Guru" is Osho, who was also known as the Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh. He was the popular leader of an idealistic spiritual community at the time, and it became public knowledge that he owned a fleet of Bentley automobiles, which many people found to reflect religious corruption. It became public perception that he was cheating his followers out of their money so he could spend it on himself, and he was eventually deported from the US.

The overall tone of the song is deeply cynical. "The prophets" give out "messages of hope with jingle bells and fairy tales and blinding colliding scopes", which implies that even what the prophets of the day say is a lot of superficial stuff that means nothing, and in the end, they are "all the same underneath the pretty lies". The whole world is chaotic, but no one has any kind of vision of truth or sincerity. That's what the line "Anyone for tennis, wouldn't that be nice" implies. Everybody in the world seems to be focused on trivial nonsense and amusement, while the world plunges into darkness and "fate is setting up the chessboard while death rolls out the dice". Civilization may be in its "fading years", but the world will continue to go its selfish and superficial way, right to the end.

Anotehr underrated cream song, this is an awesome song.

It really applies to the Vietnam War since he is probably referring to the famous picture of a Buddhist monk lighting himself on fire and just sitting there.

wow. the lyrics have such dark connotations, yet it sounds very happy. so, hey theirs a monk burning, anyone for tennis?

I LOVE IT. I agree with bar, seriously underated song. boo you guys.

yeah..i agree with u guys...i didn't even notice how morbid the lyrics are until i looked here...this song just sounds so HAPPY for some reason, it makes me think beatles..like the white album or something

I think this song has to do with politians and how they just relax (play tennis) and put all the matters of the world off.

my favorite Cream song...very trippy...and "fate is setting up the chessboard while death rolls out the dice" = greatest line ever

i can't beleive they only lasted 3 years

i love this song it is so awesome, its sung so happily about what life is really like. In my opinion i think its about how the gov't in america treated the vietnam war to the to public, If you look at the lyrics is obvious, i always thought it was about war and when i saw "The yellow Buddhist monk is burning brightly at the zoo" it was so obvious, when we dropped the bomb over hiroshima and the people who lived their burned up, i read a book about it, and i recall their was monks in it and one was burned badly, and when it says the thing about the zoo, its the gov't treating it like a nice situation like hey lets go to the zoo and watch innocent people be burned by our bombs, SUGARCOATING, and the song captures it perfectly because the song is SUGARCOATED to mock the american gov't, it has what was happening and then how they treated it, like in a happy casual way to convince people no worrys. this is my favorite b/c it captures my views exactly

Definitly about Vietnam. The contrasting images of the buddist monk setting himself on fire, whilst the yuppies and polititions in America ignored these kinds of things and instead lit their cigars and played golf (anyone for tennis...? ) I think you can pretty much analyse each line easily, and apply it to that interpretation.