Monday, May 14, 2012

Other Voices, Part 5

When you listen to the B/Featles' 1968 song, Revolution 9 backwards, there are several instances when someone is shouting "Let me out!"  This song was commented on extensively during the first exploration of the Paul-Is-Dead rumor in 1969.  Revolution 9 was released November 22, 1968.

The Move, an English rock band recorded a song called Blackberry Way and released it on November 28, 1968.  It was a bouncy little pop song with a hidden agenda.  Here are the lyrics to that song and alongside are the lyrics to Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which I think Blackberry Way referenced:

     Blackberry Way:                                             Picture yourself on a boat on a river,
     Absolutely pouring down with rain.       With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
     What a terrible day.                                        Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
                                                                                     The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
                                                                   
                                                                                  Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,
     Up with the lark.                                            Towering over your head.
     Silly girl I don't know what to say.          Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes
     She was running away.                                And she's gone.
                                                                   
                                                                                  Lucy in the sky with diamonds (X3)
     So now I'm standing on the corner         Ohh, oh.
     Lost, in the things that I said.               
     What am I supposed to do now?             Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain,
                                                                                  Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow
                                                                                          pies.
     (Chorus)                                                            Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
     Goodbye Blackberry Way:                          That grow so incredibly high.
     I can't see you,                                              
     I don't need you.                                              Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,
     Goodbye Blackberry Way,                            Waiting to take you away.
     Sure to want me back another day.         Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
                                                                                     And you're gone.    
                                                                                   
     Down to the park.                                            (Chorus)
     Overgrowing but the trees are bare;                     
     There's a memory there.                              Picture yourself on a train in a station,
                                                                                   With plasticine porters with looking-glass ties,
                                                                                   Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile:
     Boats on a lake:                                                  The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
     Unattended now, the laughter drowned;                
     I'm incredibly down.                                        (Chorus -- repeat to fade)
                                                                                      
     Just like myself they are neglected.
     Turn with my back to the wall.
     What am I supposed to do now?

     (Chorus)

     Run for the train.
     Look behind you for she may be there.
     Say a thing in the air.
     Blackberry Way.
     See the battlefields of careless sins
     Cast to the winds.

     So full of emptiness without her.
     Lost in the words that I said.
     What am I supposed to do now?

     (Chorus -- repeat to fade)

According to a Wikipedia article about this song, it was supposed to have been inspired by the B/Featles song, Penny Lane, but the lyrics are an un-psychedelicized, post-events unmistakably parallel version  of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.  The references to a girl running away, a boat on a river (although in Blackberry Way, it's boats on lake), being in a park, the reference to being at a train station---the parallel lyrics are all there.  So I listened to the song reversed and I found a run of lyrics (five in all) starting at 0:22 in the reversed song that says:

     "Please let me out.  Please snake me out."

The word "snake" threw me, so I did some research and found that snake used as a verb meant sneak  as in "sneak me out" according to The English Dialect Dictionary, Volume 5, ed. by Joseph Wright (1898, and reprinted by Hacker Art Books, 1962.)  I confirmed that the pronounciation of the word continued by finding the same definition in The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Volume 15 (1989.)

Again, it's a strong indication that the rumor I have been exploring in past posts has validity and that there were musicians other than the new Beatles who knew something about what happened to Paul and were commenting on it, both forward and backward, in their songs.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Other Voices, Part 4 (Stupid Bloody Tuesday?)

The next song I found with a backmasked reference to Paul is the Marianne Faithfull/Rolling Stones song, Sister Morphine.  Originally released as a single by Marianne Faithfull in 1969, it was included in the Stones' 1971 album, Sticky Fingers.  According to my research, the Stones recorded the song in March or May-June, 1969 (depending on the source) during their Let It Bleed album recording sessions.  The forward lyrics are grim and ominous:

     Here I lie in my hospital bed.
     Tell me Sister Morphine
     When are you coming 'round again.
     Oh, an' I don't think I can wait that long.
     Oh, you see that I'm not that strong.

     The scream of the ambulance
     Is sounding in my ears.
     Tell me, Sister Morphine,
     How long have I been lying here?

     What am I doing in this place?
     Why does the doctor have no face?
     Oh, I can't crawl across the floor.
     Ah, can't you see, Sister Morphine
     I'm trying to score.

     Well, it just goes to show
     Things are not what they seem.
     Please, Sister Morphine,
     Turn my nightmares into dreams.
     Oh, can't you see I'm fading fast?
     And that this shot will be my last.

     Sweet cousin cocaine
     Ah, lay your cool, cool hand on my head.
     Come on, Sister Morphine
     You better make up my bed.

     'Cause you know and I know
     In the morning I'll be dead.
     Yeah, and you can sit around, yeah,
     And you can watch all the
     Clean white sheets stained red.

I went looking into this song because of the allusions to hospitals and ambulances.  (In England, nurses are called sisters.)  I didn't find any backmasking in the Marianne Faithfull version, but when I reversed The Rolling Stones track  (listen to the forward track at:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IWF509L3H4 ), I found the following line beginning at 1:15 in the reversed song:

     Paul looking dead.  Ahhh, [mumbled] looking dead.

The Rolling Stones knew The Beatles and were rivals of them.  Marianne Faithfull was a friend of Paul.  In her autobiography, Faithfull (with David Dalton; 1994:  Little Brown), Ms. Faithfull said of Paul:  "Paul and I had a very close and unique friendship.  He helped me on a lot of my work.  He always had a special kind of vision."  (P. 159.  Note how Faithfull refers to Paul in the past tense.)

This is the first time I have ever heard of anything connecting Paul with a drug addiction and I'm not convinced that the song is totally autobiographical concerning Paul, but it is another indication that Paul WAS involved in some sort of accident and the "stupid bloody Tuesday" line in I Am The Walrus might have been a comment on a bloody accident that Paul had.