Robert Plant looks back at the entertainment of the 1950s, the years of his childhood, and how film, television, and music stars portrayed upstanding lives, " a community life centered around the church" symbolized by their laundry, "white, clean, and neat." But, as an adult, he knows that the celebrities of that time had secrets that were hidden from the public until they blew up in public scandals: Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds's marriage ending with an affair and divorce while Johnnie Ray was arrested more than once on laws that forbade homosexuality, and had a failed marriage intended to conceal his preference. The song includes some audio clips that alternately emphasize the more puritanical values and the not entirely hidden longings that typify real life, unlike the false moralizing portrayals the song calls "such a long way from the streets."
So, the song calls out the enormous gap between public presentations of the celebrities' lives and the messier reality, and criticizes the morality of Pat Boone, who was an outspoken proponent of the kind of values that, the song, observes, are often not as real as they seem.
Robert Plant looks back at the entertainment of the 1950s, the years of his childhood, and how film, television, and music stars portrayed upstanding lives, " a community life centered around the church" symbolized by their laundry, "white, clean, and neat." But, as an adult, he knows that the celebrities of that time had secrets that were hidden from the public until they blew up in public scandals: Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds's marriage ending with an affair and divorce while Johnnie Ray was arrested more than once on laws that forbade homosexuality, and had a failed marriage intended to conceal his preference. The song includes some audio clips that alternately emphasize the more puritanical values and the not entirely hidden longings that typify real life, unlike the false moralizing portrayals the song calls "such a long way from the streets."
So, the song calls out the enormous gap between public presentations of the celebrities' lives and the messier reality, and criticizes the morality of Pat Boone, who was an outspoken proponent of the kind of values that, the song, observes, are often not as real as they seem.