Feels like a ghost here in this room
Well not the kind that rides a saddle in a costume
All around me, all around you
In from the window for a drag of your perfume

Let's move back to California
Let's make a promise, baby
let's both be there
Put our feet deep in the sand
This garden's only got four corners
Back to your trenches back to California

The days keep coming and the years overlap
Been crawling all over each other like wet cats
Hear the rebels yelling out in the dunes
I don't think it's half as a funny as I used to

Lets move back to CA
Lets make a promise, baby
let's both be there
Put our feet deep in the sand
Let's leave behind these maps and handguns
We're on our way back to California
We've got California in our eyes
Come on catch us if you can
with California in our eyes

Passing down through a valley full of lost sheep
Straight is the gate, narrow is the walkway
Mercury rising and poppies in bloom
This is the kind of thing that I can get used to

Lets move back to California
Lets make a promise, baby
let's both be there
Put our feet deep in the sand
There's still no shortage in creating bad blood
We're on our way back to California
We've got California in our eyes
Come on and catch us if you can
with California in our eyes
As fast as we can
Back to California,
Come on catch us if you can,
back to California
fast as we can
Back to California


Lyrics submitted by planetearth

Back to California Lyrics as written by Jakob Dylan

Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

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Back to California song meanings
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3 Comments

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  • 0
    General CommentThis is a Wallflowers song that is easy to understand, for once. This song just seems to be about wanting to move to California because it's a land of hope. The place he lives in now feels unsafe, empty, and crowded.
    stoolhardyon January 30, 2006   Link
  • 0
    General CommentI agree Stoolhardy. This one is pretty straightforward.

    Of course, Dylan uses religious references ("Straightis the gate..") to turn California into a sort of substitute for an Eden-esque paradise, which makes the song a bit more transcendent than it originally appears.

    (Some day I'm just going to count how many references there are to the Biblical Eden story in the Wallflowers' songs. There's a bunch of them.)
    Nuganon May 14, 2006   Link
  • 0
    General CommentMaybe a bit easier, but I'm sure there's a lot more to it here-
    for one thing, it makes me think of criminals on the run somewhere desolate. I'm picturing a Bonnie and Clyde type of thing, who are tired of that life -in "references like "Let's leave behind these maps and handguns" and "Come on catch us if you can" and "There's still no shortage in creating bad blood"(lots of criminal opportunities in California?)-but it may be just me. Maybe in Mexico...."Hear the rebels yelling out in the dunes".

    Also here the meaning is not so simple:

    Feels like a ghost here in this room
    Well not the kind that rides a saddle in a costume (headless horseman from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"?)
    All around me, all around you
    In from the window for a drag of your perfume
    musicalcureon April 08, 2010   Link

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