In this refined,
pensive, acoustic song we see how Ray Lomas,
being an old early-sixties rocker or greaser, is
confronted with someone from an earlier
generation, who like him, cannot let the past
go and clings to ideas, fashion etc. in this
case of the fifties' beat generation. This
beat is living in his memories and idealizes
that era. Ray is bored by his stories: he
cannot relate to it and leaves: "Think you must have me
all wrong, I didn't care friend, I wasn't
there, friend". I
suspect, that Ray intuitively feels that he
will end up like this beat guy, if he
continues living his life the way he does.
With "dead beat" Ian
refers to the beat generation, also known as
beatnix or beatniks, a movement started in
the USA by poets and novelists. They
criticized the establishment, the consumer
society, the rat race (a term they introduced
btw) and materialism. In 1956 beat generation
drew the attention of the public with 'Howl
and other poems' by Allen Ginsberg and
the novel 'On the road' by Jack
Kerouac. They adopted a life style of
chosen poverty and anarchistic individualism,
striving for 'extatic' ("beatific")
experiences: "...
sharing wet dreams of Charlie Parker, Jack
Kerouac, René Magritte ...". Many
of them were travelling the US from coast to
coast constantly ("sat
in the station ...")
and/or used drugs, trying to flee from the
dullness of a moralizing and fixed society.
The theories of Zen-buddhism influenced them,
as well as those of the french experimental
authors of the twenties. When it comes to
music, bebop and hard bob jazz (Charlie
Parker) were very popular
among the beatnix, while the influence they
had on jazz music of those days is reflected
in the free jazz style of Ornette Coleman
a.o. Young intellectuals, students and
artists were attracted by their life style
and ideas, but the nucleus of the beat
generation fell apart in the early sixties.
The well-known authors of this movement
continued to publish: the poets Gregory
Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder
Phil Walen and the novelists Jack Kerouac,
Chandler Brossard and Wiliam S. Burroughs,
while some of the older authors like Norman
Mailer and Kenneth Rexroth were clearly
influenced by them (1.).
René Magritte (1898
- 1967), mentioned in this song, was a
Belgian surrealist painter, writer, essayist
and film-producer, who became very popular in
the UK and the USA. One of his most famous
paintings is the above "The treachery of
images" (1929). It depicts a pipe, but
the painter tells us it is not ("Ceci
n'est pas une pipe"): it's just a
representation of what we see (2.). More
information about his ideas and examples of
his art can be found at The
Official Magritte Site.
* Jan Voorbij ; Sources: 1. Encarta
Encyclopedie Winkler Prins Editie 99,
Amsterdam 1998; 2. The Official Magritte
Site.
Bad-eyed And Loveless
"Weekend
happiness seekers pent-up saturation. Well,
we don't mean anyone any harm, we weren't on
the Glasgow train". Two
points. The Glasgow supporters WERE notorious
(and usually only at matches between the two
main Glasgow teams, I think), but not to the
same extent as English fans. More importantly
for the song, Glaswegians wouldn't be
travelling to Blackpool for the football,
since English and Scottish league teams don't
play each other. I suspect a specific event
inspired this line, giving Glaswegians a bad
reputation at the time. "I'm
the Big Dipper": Its
really important to note that Ray WAS the
champion in his youth, but on this visit,
he's just laughed-at. This is the final straw
motivating his fateful bike ride.
Blackpool's Big
Dipper.
Like 'Up the 'Pool' this song too is about
Blackpool. In the album sleeve's cartoon, the
panel entitled 'Home' actually shows the
Tower. There is a Big Dipper on the Golden
Mile.
* Neil R. Thomason
-
As a Rangers fan
I take offence to this interpretation. Rangers and Celtic
fans are not, and as far as I know, never have been, well
known for being hooligans. I think that's the English fans
you may be thinking of. Your interpretation is wrong I am
afraid - Ian must have meant something else.
I know what a
hooligan is, but Rangers and Celtic fans are no worse than
any other team- Scottish football fans are well respected
throughout the world for their friendliness, "The
Tartan Army" has been praised on numerous occasions.
Today's football hooligans are mostly English (in terms of
newspaper headlines and violence anyway).
I'm sure I
read somewhere that Ian Anderson grew up around Blackpool
- I'd suggest maybe people came down on the "Glasgow
train" and had fights with the English people around
Blackpool at weekends. Nothing to do with football, just
rival gangs. This seems more sensible than any football
connection.
I've been to
many Rangers games and never had ANY bother (that's not to
say there never IS any bother, or that Rangers fans are
all angels - I just don't think the lyric means anything
about football).
*
Steven O'Mullan
I don't
think it's football -- Scottish fans wouldn't be
travelling down to England, since Scotland has its own
league and they don't play English teams! Mind you, there
used to be an annual Scotland vs England match, and
Scotland fans were known for their hard-drinking and
violence ... it was a two-way thing, of course ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/11/99/battle_of_britain/47375
6.stm More likely --- people from Glasgow take regular
holidays in Blackpool, especially during the Bank Holidays
--- it's a kind of tradition. An old guy in my work still
goes to Blackpool once a year. It would have been very
common in the 60s and 70s for bus-loads and train-loads of
'merry' Glaswegians to be arriving in Blackpool for the
weekend. No doubt there was some antagonism from the
locals ....
*
Andy Jackson
"Glasgow
Train".
If you want to get to Blackpool from London or the south of
England by train, you would take a northbound "west coast"
train and most likely change trains at Preston (as in "Cheap
Day return"). The majority of the northbound trains would
have Glasgow as their ultimate destination. However, there
used to be a direct service from London to Blackpool once a
day, and there are some northbound trains that have
destinations other than Glasgow.
Ray has evidently caught one of these. I'm not sure about the
implied malice of the users of a Glasgow train, but I don't
think it has anything to do with football. In my experience of
these trains in the seventies, the Glasgow-bound ones tended
to be very crowded and hence dirty and gloomy. Often there
were not enough seats and some passengers were forced to stand
for what is a very long journey. A good deal of alcohol was
consumed on these trains, and the overall atmosphere was
depressing. I expect sometimes violence easily broke out among
youths riding on the these trains. "Big
Dipper"
Perhaps it doesn't need to be said, but claiming to be a
"big dipper" is a boast of sexual prowess.
* Alan
Jolley
 
Too Old To Rock'n'
Roll: Too Young To Die!
"So
the old Rocker gets out his bike to make a
ton before he takes his leave". 'A
ton' is slang for travelling at 100 miles per
hour."Up
on the A1 by Scotch Corner":
The A1 is the main (hence trunk road)
north-south route on the eastern side of
England. The Pennine mountain range down the
middle of northern England means that there s
the A1 to the east of the Pennines, and
north-south traffic on the western side of
the mountains follows the M6. The A1 is
effectively a motorway (nowadays the correct
name is in fact the A1(M) ), with multiple
lanes in each direction. Near the small town
of Scotch Corner, it narrows and becomes a
more minor road. This means a huge volume of
traffic becomes concentrated onto a smaller
road, and theoretically has to decelerate.
However, if one has been driving at 70mph
(more likely to be 80-90mph...) for a couple
of hundred miles, it s difficult to readjust
to the lower speed limit on the smaller road.
Unsurprisingly, Scotch Corner is an accident
black spot . There's something about this
song that puzzles me. According to the album
s story, Ray travels down to London, in
south-east England, then to Blackpool, in
north-west England, but his bike accident
occurs near Scotch Corner, in north-EAST
England. So where was he going? If he was
heading from Blackpool to London, he wouldn t
go via Newcastle! Similarly, the logical
route to Scotland stays on the west of the
country; even if he was going to eastern
Scotland, he'd be likely to stay on the west
almost until Glasgow. Something to consider:
was Ray driving too fast just to release his
frustrations, or was it suicide?
* Neil R. Thomason
Lawrence Westhaver
points out that a "Rocker" was not
just a rock & roll fan (notice
that Ian capitalizes the 'R' in Rocker as if
it is a proper noun). To be a rocker was a
lifestyle in the late fifties, early sixties
in Western Europe, esp. in the UK. In a way
they can be considered as the European
equivalents of the Beatnix - a subculture
that goes back to the mid-fifties in the USA
(see above). Apart from racing the motorways
on their bikes, the cafe's where they met
were important elements in this youth culture
("the transport caf'
prophet of doom...").
There is more detailed information on the
subject on these sites: The
Rise Of The Caféracer And The Rocker, A
Rocker's'Tale: Bikes, Burnin' and Birds, Rockers:
An Amercian Perspective, Written In The
Sixties.
* Lawrence Westhaver, Jan
Voorbij
In
response to the puzzlement that Ray went up the "A1":
He was simply reliving old times, and racing up the A1 was
simply an enjoyable pastime for the bike gangs of his youth,
for the sheer pleasure of it, not because there was a
destination in mind. At the time of Ray's youth there were no
motorways, and the A1 was the longest, fastest road there was.
* Alan Jolley
The Chequered Flag
(Dead Or Alive)
"The
sunlight streaks through the curtain cracks,
touches the old man where he sleeps. The
nurse brings up a cup of tea two biscuits and
the morning paper mystery." It's
probably just coincidental, but this verse is
very reminiscent of 'Cheap Day Return' and
'Nursie'.
* Neil R. Thomason
The song 'Chequered
Flag' almost brings tears to my eyes, as it
seems to me this is Mr. Anderson's vision of
the end of his own life. Finally coming to "the
hard road's end" as "the
deaf composer (God?) completes
his final score", he
is now a weak old man in a nursing home. The
words "sunlight
streaks" are
reminiscent of 'Aqualung,' and
help evoke an image of loneliness and
failing health. But the old man takes comfort
in knowing that he lived with a "gladiator
soul" and was at least once "the
taker of the day". He
has created works that will live on beyond
him and will continue to "play
to the stand" long
after he is dead. Having done his best in
life, he sees no reason to fear death
and boldly charges "the
chequered flag" as if
it were "the bull's red rag." This
song, and especially the line about the "still-born
child", reminds me of a
famous quote from Theodore Roosevelt: "Far
better it is to dare mighty things, to win
glorious triumphs, even though checkered by
failure, than to take rank with those poor
spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight that
knows neither victory nor defeat."
* John W. Loosemore
"The deaf
composer"
obviously refers to the deaf Ludwig van
Beethoven -- as there is actually a Beethoven
quotation: Right after the words "he'll
never hear his sweet encore" you can
hear four characteristic notes from the first
movement of the ninth symphony (two
intervalls downward: ba-baaaa, ba-baaaa).
It's quite unremarkable, very sophisticated,
very covert (especially as the notes are not
totally equal to those in the symphony; but
the quotation is definite).
By the way: there is another Beethoven
quotation: "Dark Ages" is
paraphrasing the first movement of the fifth
symphony. Listen to the motif
tam-tam-tam-taaaaam. The tempo is much more
slow and the pitches of the notes are not the
same as in Beethoven -- but the architecture
is resembling the symphonic one: developing
the music out of just one characteristic
motif.
* Armin Raab
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