A long time ago, I read that the song "Teacher" was Anderson's commentary on the instant gurus and charlatans who flourished in the 1960s due to the counterculture of the time, the quest many young people were on to find a deeper meaning to life than the mainstream path of career, marriage, family, and materialistic striving and accumulation. Specifically, the "teacher" was Timothy Leary, whom many came to believe was a self-serving, charming sociopath, pursuing his own fame and pleasure while leaving a trail of confused, sometimes disillusioned LSD users in his path. According to his own son Jack Leary, Timothy enjoyed drinking more than tripping on LSD and had used his charms to seduce women, Harvard graduate students, intellectuals, hippies, and artists even before his discovery of psychedelics in the early '60s. Anderson talks about a "teacher" who drinks and gets suntanned while the song's narrator had "something on [his] mind," i.e. is tripping on acid and trying to make sense of the jumble of insights, perceptions, and sensory phenomena he experiences while tripping. But the "teacher" is only along for the ride, drinking and having fun at the poor truth-seeker's (psychic and financial) expense.
Anderson (while capable of sometimes annoying self-righteousness and sanctimony in his own right- "A Christmas Story" being the prime example) was skeptical of all systems that promised a predigested path to the truth and authenticity, whether political leaders, organized religion, psychedelic gurus, or officially-sanctioned trips to the moon ("For Michael Collins, Jeffrey, and Me," also on "Benefit"). Like Dylan (especially the "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" Dylan- "...and not forget that it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to"), John Lennon (e.g., "God"- "I don't believe in Krishna, I don't believe in Buddha...I don't believe in Beatles; I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality"), Anderson advised his listeners to think and consider for themselves, take no easy answers handed to them by self-appointed gurus or "experts." "Teacher" is just a take on one such guru.
A long time ago, I read that the song "Teacher" was Anderson's commentary on the instant gurus and charlatans who flourished in the 1960s due to the counterculture of the time, the quest many young people were on to find a deeper meaning to life than the mainstream path of career, marriage, family, and materialistic striving and accumulation. Specifically, the "teacher" was Timothy Leary, whom many came to believe was a self-serving, charming sociopath, pursuing his own fame and pleasure while leaving a trail of confused, sometimes disillusioned LSD users in his path. According to his own son Jack Leary, Timothy enjoyed drinking more than tripping on LSD and had used his charms to seduce women, Harvard graduate students, intellectuals, hippies, and artists even before his discovery of psychedelics in the early '60s. Anderson talks about a "teacher" who drinks and gets suntanned while the song's narrator had "something on [his] mind," i.e. is tripping on acid and trying to make sense of the jumble of insights, perceptions, and sensory phenomena he experiences while tripping. But the "teacher" is only along for the ride, drinking and having fun at the poor truth-seeker's (psychic and financial) expense.
Anderson (while capable of sometimes annoying self-righteousness and sanctimony in his own right- "A Christmas Story" being the prime example) was skeptical of all systems that promised a predigested path to the truth and authenticity, whether political leaders, organized religion, psychedelic gurus, or officially-sanctioned trips to the moon ("For Michael Collins, Jeffrey, and Me," also on "Benefit"). Like Dylan (especially the "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" Dylan- "...and not forget that it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to"), John Lennon (e.g., "God"- "I don't believe in Krishna, I don't believe in Buddha...I don't believe in Beatles; I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality"), Anderson advised his listeners to think and consider for themselves, take no easy answers handed to them by self-appointed gurus or "experts." "Teacher" is just a take on one such guru.