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Back to California Lyrics
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
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 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
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 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
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 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
Song Info
Submitted by
planetearth On Jun 13, 2005
More The Wallflowers
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Closer To You
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This 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.
I 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.)
Maybe 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