beatLes fans? question

[sniffa]

i Love the song "bLackbird". i've been toLd it's about the bLack race in america rising up one day.

true or faLse? something eLse?

i think it wouLd be a good theme song for the Left, right here and now in this time.


Black Bird.
(Beatles - Lennon / McCartney).

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

[Loonman]

1. Inspired by Linda

Most of his stuff was after he met her.

[flowomo]

2. Found this online:

McCartney
Paul: Acoustic Guitar and Lead Vocal

Legend tells that Paul got this song in India out of a real blackbird after being awaken by the bird. He just transcribed what the Blackbird sang into music. The truth is that no matter what the origin was, Blackbird is in my humble opinion the best acoustic song ever written. The song was simply recorded with an acoustic guitar masterfully played by Paul, a metronome ticking the beat and Paul singing with blackbirds singing as well, not in the dead of night but in Stuart Eltham's back garden (where he had recorded them for EMI 3 years earlier).

[flowomo]

3. The meaning you suggest....

was apparently attached after Charles Manon and the Helter Skelter gang got associated with it.

[sniffa]

4. no idea

that's why i ask.

[chelsea0011]

15. That's what I thought

Manson thought the Beatles were prophets who sent Manson messages to him through the White Album. And Black Bird was the meaning of the back man rising up. He was truly nuts.

[Loonman]

5. A lot of folks read really weird things into Beatle's lyrics

Their life as a working band and their own songwriting notes are even weirder.



Such as: did you know Penny Lane is chock-full of sexual innuendoes and double entendres? (it is!)

[flowomo]

6. "And the fireman wears a mack in the pourin' rain....."

very strange..... got a condom thing goin' right there

[dawg]

7. Nope ... the banker

and he doen't wear a mack ....

[meatloaf]

9. I'd always understood that it was a Mack. A "mack" or "mac" being

a term for a raincoat?.?.?.?

[Loonman]

11. "in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen"

(porno)


"he keeps his fire engine clean, it's a clean machine"

(no need to explain that one)

[flowomo]

12. jeez... put your metaphor hat on

n/t

[johnnie]

8. On the Back in the US DVD

Paul plays this one and says..in England they call women birds. And he was meaning this song for the black women of America. Something close to that.

[emulatorloo]

10. Yes - about Black Woman/Civil Rights - here is what Paul says

in an interview:

"I had in mind a black woman, rather than a bird. Those were the days of the civil-rights movement, which all of us cared passionately about, so this was really a song from me to a black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: 'Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.' As is often the case with my things, a veiling took place so, rather than say 'Black woman living in Little Rock' and be very specific, she became a bird, became symbolic, so you could apply it to your particular problem.

This is one of my themes: take a sad song and make it better, let this song help you. 'Empowerment' is a good word for it. . .

p 485-487 Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, 1997

[sniffa]

13. thank you

as pretty as the song is, it does stir me (not a bLack woman btw) to act. my cause being: getting dubya the fuck outta john's house.

[emulatorloo]

34. yr welcome, it is a great song. . . .n/t

[H2O Man]

14. I got here late, but ....

the best book on the Beatles is by Nicholas Schaffner, "The Beatles Forever." He gives accurate and insightful information on their music, etc. The answer to your question has obviously been supplied, and it's interesting to note that it actually is about black liberation. (The Manson "family" added the violent bit to ALL Beatle songs.) Paul was actually a very good writer when the mood struck him, and the Beatles (or White Album) was a high point for Paul, John, and George. It is, however, pre-Linda; photos of the Beatles in India, where most of the inspiration for the songs came, show another of Paul's earlier girlfriends. Last, my favorite part of Penny Lane is the reference to "fish and finger pie." If John wrote that, people would have been outraged.

[johnnie]

16. Knowing John...(not that I know him.mind you)

That probably was a line he gave to Paul...

[H2O Man]

18. It could be....

... though I have a difficult time visualizing John being intertested in Penny Lane. It's funny how Paul was the Beatle who spoke out first about LSD, got busted for pot numerous times, (even spent time in jail in Japan), and his songs are loaded with references to pot. But many people think of John as the drug-using Beatle. Of course, there is some evidence John experimented with drugs, (grin), but it's just funny how Paul's cute face created so different a public image.

[johnnie]

24. I don't think..

Fish and finger pie is a drug reference.

[H2O Man]

25. 'Course not.

It's a reference to a vagina.

[johnnie]

30. Ok...

I just wasn't quite sure on your post.

[Beware the Beast Man]

17. Have any of you read "A Hard Day's Write"?

It's a really good book that explains the background story of all the Beatles' songs...yet I never heard anything about the double-entendres in "penny Lane".

Yet in the song "Girl" (off Rubber Soul)...they sing the word "tit" repeatedly in the bridge

[Loonman]

19. How about "Walrus"?

One of the chants at the end is "everybody loves POT, everybody loves POT"

At the end of "Strawberry Fields", John does not say "I buried Paul", he says "Cranberry Sauce".

[Beware the Beast Man]

20. "Baby You're a Rich Man"

at the end of the song, Lennon allegedly sings "baby you're a rich fag Jew", a dig at Brian Epstein. I guess John used to lay into Epstein (good naturedly, of course) on a regular basis.

[TX-RAT]

21. Her name was McGill they all called her LIL but everyone knew her as?

Won 2 tickets on the Magical Mystery bus, answering this.

[johnnie]

22. Nancy n/t

[TX-RAT]

23. Damn that was fast.

[H2O Man]

27. Wow.

Though John may have said strange things to Brian when he was alive, it's a stretch to think that he added a line like that to a song he wrote some time after Brian had died. The lyric is pretty clear, and it does not say that at all.

[Beware the Beast Man]

28. I think t's at the fade-out..very hard to hear

also that song was recorded before Epstein's death. It wasn't released on LP until after his death..
I may be wrong but I think he altered the lyrics in rehearsals, so it may not be in the final cut.

[H2O Man]

31. I think you are right

on the order .... in fact, it may have been released a week or two before Brian died .... and especially in the early days in Germany, John came out with outrageous lines on stage. Alcohol and speed can do that. But by 1966-67, the outrageous things that Brian missed, Paul had begun to filter. This, of course, created some of the tension that would have occured anyhow. John & George saw Paul as going in a different direction, with god-awful songs like Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, or Your Mother Should Know, which NEVER should have been included on a Beatle album. Hence the truly interesting "Paul is dead" gag, where many read far too much into it, though John did put some great "clues" in .... I had my 16-year old play Revolution 9 backwards on the computer a week or so ago .... kids don't appreciate how creative the Beatles were. Anyhow, I get carried away .... while the lyric is clearly something John would have done, it isn't on any "released" Beatle material.

[H2O Man]

26. Though it sounds like the "pot lyric"

it's not. George Martin brought in not only cellos, violins, and horns, but also a full-scale choir that chanted, "oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumpah." While many of us may have prefered the pot lyric, which many heard as "smoke pot, smoke pot, everybody smoke pot," neither that or "everybody loves pot" is on the song.

[johnnie]

29. When my band plays that live

We say "smoke pot smoke pot" loud and clear...lol, but I know thats not what is being said.

[H2O Man]

32. Many years ago,

I played with David Peel & the Lower East Side Gang. They had earlier been part of the very fluid Plastic Ono Band. (You could find Peel's material if you look him up on the internet.) Also played with a few other creative souls. But I never tried to do "I am the Walrus" live! Dang! Where do you play? Maybe I should get out my guitar ..... nah, I'm too old. Peel used to play in the Village with Jim Morrison, a few times, anyhow .... Jim said that David was the only person he ever met crazier than him! See what you've done? Got me remembering the good old days, with Peel's influence on John around the Sometime in New York double album. Do you know "Luck of the Irish" and how that is closely related to Nixon's attempt to get Lennon out of the country?

[johnnie]

33. I saw Peel...

About 13 years ago he came here to Cleveland. It was pretty cool. I ended up getting a "The pope smokes dope" pin. It is still on my guitar strap on my one tele. The funny thing is...I bet there were more feds there than fans. I also think I was the youngest person there, I was 27.
We had, or have some video of us doing Walrus live on our website, but I don't know if it's still up and working. (www.echogrove.com).
And yeah, i know Luck of the Irish. great song. It took me quite a while to find a good copy of Sometime in New York...that was before Cd's. John Sinclair is one of my favorite off of that one.

[H2O Man]

35. On feds and fans....

that's funny. David has at times drawn the attention of various police agencies. Now, this is something that I've never seen in print, but have heard from reliable sources: when John & Yoko were in their "street radical" phase, and hanging out with Peel, he talked to them at length about the "good fight" in Ireland .... you may recall from the booklet in Walls & Bridges that even then John was making comments on being of Irish ancestory .... his found out that his white outfits were, in fact, similar to the Druids all-white clothing. And David has at times moved in interesting circles, including being friends with several of the Irish guys in the Village. There is some reason to believe that some of the $ from the double album was sent along to the Irish cause. I think that was a big part of the attention Lennon got at the time. The Nixon Administration didn't give a shit if he sang "Imagine," any more than they cared if King wanted to drink a cup of coffee at a counter in Mississippi. But they did care when guys like these began to challenge the foundations of their system. Gosh, those were the days. I tend to like Lennon with guitar and/or piano, alone or thereabouts. Working Class Hero is great. I've never found, but am aware that there is a copy of Revolution that he does alone on acoustic, as well as Help, which I think is a slower version. I used to play Lucy In The Sky on acoustic, not very well, perhaps, but I liked it.