Machinehead

One can appreciate great songs like "Machine Head" in a couple ways- for pure relaxation and enjoyment, or on an analytical level. Also, I want to stress that some songs have a right and a wrong interpretation. I know as a lyricist/poet that songwriters often try to get a specific message across. Anyone who thinks "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen in patriotic, for example, is mistaken. So, imagine how Bruce feels about presidential candidates using that song at their rallies! "Machine Head" can go a couple ways, though. Here's my way... There's some imagery suggesting cars. Later in the song, Gavin sings, "Got a machine head better than the rest." That is, he is ahead of other people, better than them. Our culture uses cars as a symbol of status and position, right? His own drive for success controls the 'narrator' (I don't know if Gavin wrote this song about himself or not) -"tied to a wheel," and he feels like this drive makes him inhuman, hence the phrase (and title) "Machine head." Some of the verses acknowledge the narrator's selfishness, cruelty, carelessness, and his insensitivity concerning his treatment of others-"blood is like wine, unconscious all the time," and his insensitivity, carelessness, and selfish, blind drive have made him "deaf, dumb, and thirty" to others (I guess the narrator realizes this at thirty years of age- or perhaps prematurely "old," like the saying "never trust anybody over thirty"). The narrator experiences his epiphany in the first verse- "fingers got to feel bleeding through a tourniquet smile." The narrator detects his drive to get ahead has caused some damage to himself. That's when he sees the light-"I felt you like electric light," and he chooses to "spin on a whim and slide to the right," in which "slide to the right" means the right way. "Breath in breath out" is a call against artificiality; machines can't breathe. "From green to red" means the end to the narrator's drive for artificial. He rejects artificiality in the end- "I walk from my machine."