This initially comes off as a pastiche of late-1960s pop music references--the description of the park as "melting in the dark" and the question, "Is your name MacArthur Parker?" are in reference to the 1968 string-drenched hit of the same name; the "horse with no mane" is a clear reference to the America hit, "Horse With No Name"; "Dr. Aaron Butterfly" is most likely a play on "Iron Butterfly," and even the backmasked message "I buried my parakeet in the backyard" seems like an oblique reference to the alleged backmasked message at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever" which has John intoning, "I buried Paul." The rest of the song probably contains more late-60s pop-culture references, though I can't make them out. The last line, "I need to leave my past behind," casts the song in an interesting light; the song could be interpreted, based on this line, as a paean/elegy for the band members' (possibly just Fred's) nostalgia for the late 1960s, during which time the band members would have all been between the ages of 10-15 and thus deeply impressionable, especially as consumers of pop culture.
This initially comes off as a pastiche of late-1960s pop music references--the description of the park as "melting in the dark" and the question, "Is your name MacArthur Parker?" are in reference to the 1968 string-drenched hit of the same name; the "horse with no mane" is a clear reference to the America hit, "Horse With No Name"; "Dr. Aaron Butterfly" is most likely a play on "Iron Butterfly," and even the backmasked message "I buried my parakeet in the backyard" seems like an oblique reference to the alleged backmasked message at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever" which has John intoning, "I buried Paul." The rest of the song probably contains more late-60s pop-culture references, though I can't make them out. The last line, "I need to leave my past behind," casts the song in an interesting light; the song could be interpreted, based on this line, as a paean/elegy for the band members' (possibly just Fred's) nostalgia for the late 1960s, during which time the band members would have all been between the ages of 10-15 and thus deeply impressionable, especially as consumers of pop culture.