Love Ire & Song

It's about staying true to what you were like when you were "crass enough to care", that caring about things doesn't have to stop once you reach your thirties. He's asking whether it would be so bad to remember what you believed in when you were young and to go out and fight for it

a lot of you guys are half getting it right and some of you are missing the point completely.

this song is not about avoiding giving up on ideas as you grow older.

Frank is writing about the implication of seeing the complexities of issues as he grows up; things are much less black and white and it is clear that radically changing the world/society is not really doable. "punk rock didn't turn out how i hoped that it could be". lots of young, energetic, optimistic left wingers try to change the world and grow up to see that the issues are far more complex than they had originally thought. "idiot fucking hippies, poor excuse for protest etc"

the end of the song is about nostalgically enjoying the days when it was all black and white and the corporations and governments were evil and the left wing hippies and punks were right and were going to change the world.

But memories of hope, and glorious defeat Are a little bit harder to beat

frank knows now that there is no victory to be had and that defeat is inevitable; there won't be a radical shift in socity etc. but it was worth trying and it was fun to try.

Lets be 1905 but not 1917 refers to Russian history, 1905 was when anti czarist sentiment in Russia started to swell, there were assassinations of nobility, union agitation, anarchist and socialist politics that extended into political terrorism, the whole shebang. World War 1 put attention elsewhere for a while, but in 1917 due to riots Czar Nicolas was forced to abdicate, as large portions of the public were furious with the way the government was conducting their efforts in ww1. A provisional government was set up at one point the government was not really fighting the war but the Bolsheviks were, and a few months later the Bolsheviks counter revolted in October, which led to the Russian Civil War, in which the White Army lost to the Reds who eventually consolidated into the Soviet Union. The Whites were mostly monarchists that wanted a constitutional monarchy, or just ideologically anti Bolshevik.

The Light Brigade line does refer to the Tennyson poem, which again refers to a battle in the Crimean War in the 1850s in which 600 or so British Cavalrymen were sort of accidentally sent into a valley between two hills filled with Russian artillery to force back a force at the end of the valley. The officer who tried to turn them when he realized what was going on was hit with artillery and they kept going, changed through and ended up losing about half of their number but accomplishing their objective, some observers thought the British must have been drunk to charge through artillery the way they did, but as insane brave accidents go it isn't bad.

Frank Turner has a graduate degree in European History if I remember correctly.

I'm pretty sure the line is "old light brigade" not life brigade -- referring to the Tennyson poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade." (en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade)

For me this song is about how you should never give up, not to become old and not care about the world anymore just thinking about yourself. Everyone should have the opinion of the young which is to care about everyone else and not just be driven by money. I think the first few lines pretty much sum up the whole song - "Well a teacher of mine once told me That life was just a list of disappoints and defeats And you could only do your best, And I said "That's a fucking cop-out, you're just washed up and your tired, and when I get to your age I won't be such a coward" Just my way of looking at it.

i think that's a good analogy. i think hes talking about when he was young and in the punk rock scene everything was revolt and rebel. now that he has got older and seen that life is a little more complicated hes seeing things as a wiser more mature person but there is still that rebel inside him that wants to see change. 1905 not 1917, is a reference to the Russian revolutions. he wants us to be older but still have the passion and fight that we did as younger people

Greatest song on his new album. Love the realizations he comes to in it. It's so real.

Its brilliant

Does anyone know what Frank is really talking about in this song? It's great that we have these little interpretations of verses, but I'm just wondering what the whole of the song means. I get that it's about reliving the past, and being successful in that, but what exactly does "fighting and winning" mean?

Awesome, thanks for the insight!

And so then judging by the rest of the verses, he believed in some kind of leftist political reform, but was disgusted by the poor attempts of the time:

It was worst when we turned to the kids on the left And got let down by some poor excuse for protest By idiot fucking hippies in 50 different factions Who were locked in some kind of 60's battle reenactment

My next question is what does he mean by the "idiot fucking hippies" lyric? I mean the hippie movement was all about peace, love....and also the influence of drugs to say the least...so is he initially disgusted by the way they are going about protesting, only to revoke his anger toward the protests later in his life by saying "let's be 1905 but not 1917?" (assuming that what aforementioned about the socialist revolution is correct)