Beautiful song. Has a melancholy, bittersweet feel to it. Interesting vocal arrangement too. It sounds to me like the girls and guys switch up on lead and harmony at various points throughout the song, and not at neat, tidy points. It’s not like they switch verses or one does the verses while the other does the chorus. It’s scattered among phrases.
I wish I knew the meanings of all the lyrics. Knowing how many drugs John Phillips did, the song may not really be about anything more than his stream of consciousness. The part about cloudy waters and vibrations bouncing and shattering, I can’t figure out. Maybe I’m over thinking it.
I believe I read in one of the biographies of the group/members that it’s like two songs combined, with the verses being one song about one thing and the chorus being another song about something else. The title seems to follow that idea.
I do know that all four of them were living in New York City at some point and that John did live near a building that had a broken clock on a steeple. There are stereotypical comments on NYC and LA in the song, with NYC being “dark and dirty” and LA being a very happy place to be. Of course, the group struggled in NYC and found great success in LA. Had that been switched, the song may have been different, if it existed at all.
I also read that during one of John and Michelle’s many breaks from their marriage, John moved in with Denny in Denny’s house in Laurel Canyon (I think that’s the one.). Being big deals at the time and effectively single, they had a steady steam of groupies in and out of the house. That’s where the “young girls coming to the canyon” came from. John wrote very personal songs, pretty much airing his dirty laundry in many of them. Wouldn’t surprise me if he wrote this to part of the song to rub it in Michelle’s face that he wasn’t sitting around pining over her during the break but enjoying all that was offered him.
@smellykellyjay
Trinity Church at the top of Wall Street had a clock that I used to see in the 1960s with its hands stuck at 12:30. The young girls coming into the Canyon then were the girls and women walking into work on wall street in the morning. Trinity was very blackened with soot like so much else at that time in Manhattan. This song pairs beautifully, historically with the group's move from NYC to L.A.
@smellykellyjay
Trinity Church at the top of Wall Street had a clock that I used to see in the 1960s with its hands stuck at 12:30. The young girls coming into the Canyon then were the girls and women walking into work on wall street in the morning. Trinity was very blackened with soot like so much else at that time in Manhattan. This song pairs beautifully, historically with the group's move from NYC to L.A.
Beautiful song. Has a melancholy, bittersweet feel to it. Interesting vocal arrangement too. It sounds to me like the girls and guys switch up on lead and harmony at various points throughout the song, and not at neat, tidy points. It’s not like they switch verses or one does the verses while the other does the chorus. It’s scattered among phrases.
I wish I knew the meanings of all the lyrics. Knowing how many drugs John Phillips did, the song may not really be about anything more than his stream of consciousness. The part about cloudy waters and vibrations bouncing and shattering, I can’t figure out. Maybe I’m over thinking it.
I believe I read in one of the biographies of the group/members that it’s like two songs combined, with the verses being one song about one thing and the chorus being another song about something else. The title seems to follow that idea.
I do know that all four of them were living in New York City at some point and that John did live near a building that had a broken clock on a steeple. There are stereotypical comments on NYC and LA in the song, with NYC being “dark and dirty” and LA being a very happy place to be. Of course, the group struggled in NYC and found great success in LA. Had that been switched, the song may have been different, if it existed at all.
I also read that during one of John and Michelle’s many breaks from their marriage, John moved in with Denny in Denny’s house in Laurel Canyon (I think that’s the one.). Being big deals at the time and effectively single, they had a steady steam of groupies in and out of the house. That’s where the “young girls coming to the canyon” came from. John wrote very personal songs, pretty much airing his dirty laundry in many of them. Wouldn’t surprise me if he wrote this to part of the song to rub it in Michelle’s face that he wasn’t sitting around pining over her during the break but enjoying all that was offered him.
@smellykellyjay Trinity Church at the top of Wall Street had a clock that I used to see in the 1960s with its hands stuck at 12:30. The young girls coming into the Canyon then were the girls and women walking into work on wall street in the morning. Trinity was very blackened with soot like so much else at that time in Manhattan. This song pairs beautifully, historically with the group's move from NYC to L.A.
@smellykellyjay Trinity Church at the top of Wall Street had a clock that I used to see in the 1960s with its hands stuck at 12:30. The young girls coming into the Canyon then were the girls and women walking into work on wall street in the morning. Trinity was very blackened with soot like so much else at that time in Manhattan. This song pairs beautifully, historically with the group's move from NYC to L.A.