Somebody to Love

To me, the meaning of this song was exactly as they portrayed it in the movie, "A Simple Man". <<<SPOILER ALERT!>>> A man is going about his normal life just the way he was trained. Get a good education, a good job, and a good wife. Out of the blue, his wife wants a divorce; she met another man, and wants him to move to a hotel. This is a tragedy and his kids aren't even fazed by it. He turns to religion to seek the advice of the senior Rabbi, just like he was trained to do. The senior Rabbi is too busy and the junior Rabbi's can't give him any direction. He keeps trying and still can't see the senior Rabbi. He is up for tenure at his job and somebody is writing negative anonymous letters to the dean and he is being threatened by a student. Everything he has worked for is going down the toilet. His wife takes all of his money out of the bank. He and the wife's boyfriend are in 2 separate auto accidents on the same day; he lives, the boyfriend dies. The wife wants him to pay for her boyfriend’s funeral. He sees his hot neighbor sunbathing in the nude and invites himself over. She plays some 60’s rock and they smoke a joint. She is casual and happy and it is the only time in the movie that he doesn’t seem anxious or neurotic. He attends his son’s bah mitzvah in front of many people that know what is happening in his personal and professional life. His son got caught with a walkman / radio device at school at got it taken away. As a reward for his bah mitzvah, his son gets to meet with the senior Rabbi; The same Rabbi that the father has been dying to see. After supporting the Synagogue all those years, sending his kids to their private school and paying for the bah mitzvah, paying for his wife’s boyfriend’s funeral, he can’t get five minutes with the senior Rabbi. But his apathetic kid is going to waltz in there and roll his eyes. When the kid goes into the meeting the senior Rabbi returns his radio while Jefferson Airplane’s - Someone to Love is playing. The Rabbi repeats the first few sentences of the song - which is the meaning of the movie and the meaning of the song: When the truth is found to be lies (He has done everything his parents, religion and society trained him to do and it was all for nothing. His family life is a joke, career could end, and his religion has no answers)

And all the joys within you dies (With great wisdom comes great sorrow, truth can be isolating and depressing. Like most people, he did what he was trained to do his whole life and pretended that he was happy chasing goals that were put in his mind by religious and social indoctrination and peer pressure)

Don't you want somebody to love (This is the realization of what life is about. This makes us happy. Money, career, social standing mean nothing; when we achieve a goal and realize that we are not happy, we just raise the bar and chase a new goal, wasting more of our life. Love is what makes us happy. Love should be our goal) Don’t you NEED somebody to love (without love, man becomes bitter, angry and depressed) You’d better find somebody to love (You are running out of time, we are all going to die, we just don’t know when. Don’t waste another day) The movie ends with the man talking with his Dr. about his chest xrays. The Dr doesn’t want to discuss them on the phone; instead, he wants to see him immediately. The scene changes to his son being rushed out of school with the other kids trying to get into an underground shelter with a huge tornado in the background coming towards the school and the city.