he wants another opinion....

“so move on if you are a gear talk purist...:)

my son has a song presentation to give on friday and the song is the Beatles "Come Together"...on the many interpretations of the lyrics.....he showed me the lyrics (i kinda know em by heart anyways) and asked me what my interpretation was and well, ...he just wasn't real impressed (heh...whatever..)

Anyway.....I thought, what a great place to get all kinds of opinions on any subject.... a TT chatter thread...

so...any of you TT Beatles nuts out there have any personal interpretation of that song? have a minit to share? thanks~~~~~~~~~~~~~”

“oh yeah, and my interpretation was the literal obvious one in the title...and that it was a song about nothing...ok...so i am shallow....”

“Hey why not, Om? I've posted homework on this board too. It was great!

But I can't interpret the song; I'm really bad at songs; sorry.”

“Don't let your kid read this, but obviously: he is describing having group sex with some very weird and kinky people and is encouraging his partners to acheive simultaneous orgasm. He is obviously on the bottom.”

“See, I never thought that. But then I thought that Elton was singing about a chick named Lucy who liked diamonds.”

“Actually you've got me curious about what it does mean. Here are some notes on terms in the song (from a website):

"Come Together"

Toe-jam football - a nonsense phrase; it could refer to either American
football or British (soccer). "Toe-jam" may refer to an
injury but it could be one of Lennon's famous "portmanteau"
words...and remember that "jam" in Br.E. means what "jelly"
means in Am.E. (in Br.E, "jelly" is American "jello".)

Wonky finger - more nonsense, but "wonky" in Br.E. means "off center" or
"not functioning properly" as in "The TV's gone wonky".

Walrus gumboot - Walrus probably refers to the famous Lennon song, but
gumboots were a standard British term in the thirties
for rubber boots such as "wellingtons" or more popularly
"wellies".

Ono sideboard - a sideboard is a piece of furniture placed in a dining room,
and sideboards/"sidies" are Br.E. for sideburns.

Spinal cracker - "cracker" could mean any of the following:
(1) something which cracks
(2) an unsweetened biscuit for cheese (a.k.a. cream cracker)
(3) a Xmas cracker---a cardboard tube wrapped in fancy
paper, with a gift and a motto inside. Two people hold
either end and pull it. It usually has a small device that
that cracks when the cracker is pulled open. Common in
Britain but unknown in the States.
(4) a good-looking woman
(5) a good joke.

Mojo filter - possibly a use of the voodoo word for magic, but in
England a "mojo" was a candy ("sweet") sold at 4 for a
penny. Also perhaps a reference to the many blues songs
using the word "mojo" ("I Got My Mojo Working", etc.)”

“Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly
He got Joo-Joo eyeball he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please

He wear no shoeshine he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger he shoot coca-cola
He say "I know you, you know me"
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together right now over me

He bag production he got walrus gumboot
He got Ono sideboard he one spinal cracker
He got feet down below his knee
Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease
Come together right now over me

He roller-coaster he got early warning
He got muddy water he one mojo filter
He say "One and one and one is three"
Got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see
Come together right now over me

Come together, come together, come together, come together, ...


Uhhhh . . . . absolute gibberish? Or some deeply religious ode to their funny-looking bhagwan who speaks the greater truth.”

“Holy Chao... it looks to me like it might have been about Ronald Reagan (the "he") and Timothy Leary, me.

Also, it looks like it is "wonky" finger not "monkey" and it is "arms" not "arm chair."”

“Here is what I am finding on the web:

From the ROCK HISTORY REFERENCE GUIDE- Volume 1:

Come Together
ABBEY ROAD 10/ 1/69 ...a song that was John Lennon's effort at writing a campaign song. Lennon's 'Come Together' was written to be given to Timothy Leary who, at the time, was mulling over a race for Governor of California.

from other sites:

"Come Together" is the opening song from "Abbey Road," the last album the Beatles ever recorded. John Lennon wrote it as a campaign song for Timothy Leary's campaign for California governor against Reagan in '69; Leary's slogan was "Come together, join the party."

In the mid-'70s, he [Leary]wrote a cover story for National Review attacking the counterculture, accusing John Lennon of stealing "Come Together" from the Leary gubernatorial campaign (Lennon had written the song for the campaign) and denouncing Bob Dylan for everything from whininess to Squeaky Fromme. By the '80s, Lennon and Dylan were icons in the Leary pantheon once more.

Also from the Rock History guide:

...a Beatles track that resulted in a promise between John and his idol Chuck Berry. Lennon had used a couple of lines from Chuck's 'You Can't Catch Me' for the song 'Come Together.' When Berry's publishing company called asking for royalties, John avoided the court case by offering to cut a couple of Berry's songs on a future album. It finally happened in '75 when John put the songs on his solo ROCK 'N' ROLL LP.

OK now back to grading papers (yucko.. which is why this was suddenly so fascinating).”

“Sorry, it was a cut and paste job! I should have looked it over carefully.
"armchair" - sheesh!

Please insert:"Hold you in his arms, yeah, you can feel his disease"”

“I interrupted Beethoven and listened to it. It's not anything that I would keep.

So I called my 23 yr. old daughter and asked. Her response was, "It's a pretty good song. I like it."”

“"It seems very pretty," [Alice] said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand! ... Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are!"”

“Hey pedxing I like the way you think!!!!!

8)”

“Absolute gibberish, obviously written on an acid trip. John Lennon was a musical genius, but some of his lyrics just make you shake your head and go "huh?"

I'm always careful about asking people for second opinions.... my doctor told me I had "Grave's Disease", and I said to him that I wanted a second opinion. He said, "Well, okay, if you insist. You're ugly too"”

“pedxing....thanks for some other references, i am happy that you were distracted from grading papers......he had grown impatient with his online searches. your first post was my initial response just to kid around with him,(hey, he is in college after all) actually the post on the british meanings of some of the words is very helpful.

then my second was more like limpy's post.....

lol hobbit.....that was my third opinion and the one he had concluded was the only explanation for such weird lyrics.
thanks again for your input....if ever i am fortunate enough to bp with any of y'all...i will bake you a choklit cake with gooey choklit icing over the primus.
~~~~~~~~~~~”

“Regardless to what Lennon meant by the lyrics, the interpretation lies with the listener - so I would suspect.

Three people would likely get three different interpretations...”

“Hehe...I concur with Ped.”

“om - I always had the same interpretation as you and never tried to define the various phrases...must be a B52 thing. I wonder if it is sort of a modern day "Jabberwocky" of some kind instead of a bizarre use of British slang.

I did the same thing with my daughter once and helped her interpret a song: Particle Man by They Might Be Giants. It turned out pretty cool, really.”

“oh, what a cool thread! poetry analysis--one of the best rushes out there! :-) good info, ped...”

“If you play it backwards it's the Devil's Recipe for Chili.”

“i think that's the recipe Homer got a taste of in that trippy episode where he went out into the desert! :-D”

“Oh yeah! I loved that one! Someone on this board must have THAT recipe!”

“i have that recipe...but it will cost you your soul.”

“Were you the one that sold me that $2.00 brownie at the Iowa-Ohio State game back in college?”

“hey, a girl's gotta make a living somehow...

”

“Zat you, Miss Cleo?”

“That's one of those songs that is/isn't supposed to mean anything in particular.

The words are intended to be lyrical only.

A lot of Procul Harum's songs, if not all, were filled with nonsensical lyrics as in "Whiter Shade Of Pale".
The had a guy, Keith Reid, who was strictly a lyricist.

Early Genesis, Peter Gabriel & Steven Hackett(guitar), did a lot of the same kind of stuff.

In a lot of these songs there can be interpretations or not, but I believe that the lyrical quality of the words is more important than any meaning.

Have any of you seen Cirque de Soleil(sp)?
Their vocalists sing on and on with the band and it is in no particular language.
They are just jammin' with the band......or so it seems.”

“"If you play it backwards it's the Devil's Recipe for Chili."
aero
09:43:35 AM
03/28/02

I have been known to raise a little h@ll from time to time, but this is going too far. ;)”

“I agree w/ Tom. e.g., Inna godda davida. In the Garden of Eden? Yeah, right! They were just wasted.”

“.......wasted and gettin' a laugh just thinkin' about all the wankers who will try and interpret some "deep" meaning out of it.”

“It was all code for “Paul is dead”:

"one and one and one is three" - three surviving Beatles.

"He got hair down to his knee, He got toejam football, He got monkey (wonky?) finger " - when you die, your hair and nails keep growing.

“Come together right now over me” – over his grave?

“Got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see” – Paul was the ‘good looking’ beatle.



Actually if you drop acid, it makes perfect sense (or so I've been told).”

“I always thought George was the cute one.”

“OFF THA HEEZY FO SHEEZY!!!”