9 Surprising Stories Behind Famous Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyrics
One of the best things about rock ‘n’ roll—in addition to the sex and drugs, of course—are the sweet, often obscure lyrics. Sometimes they’re political or spiritual, the rockers attempt to get serious; other times they’re just nonsense, the product of dope and booze. The best rock ‘n’ roll lyrics are the mysterious ones. Of course, sometimes they have no real meaning, but are just gibberish (for example, every Grateful Dead song). But sometimes there’s a real story about how those lyrics came about. So, with that as our inspiration, here we present to you 9 Rock ‘n’ Roll Songs with Weird or Surprising Stories Behind their Lyrics. Sometimes it’s crazy, sometimes it’s just not what you think, or sometimes it’s a lot deeper than you realized. But each of these classic songs has a story.
9. Losing My Religion (1991)
This surprise hit by REM was a surprise precisely because it’s subject matter, which was almost infinitely more serious than other chart-toppers of the day. The song’s narrative is from the perspective of South African political prisoner Sicelo Zumba, and more or less gives an account of the anguish he experienced rotting away and eventually dying in prison under South African Apartheid. When the narrator sings of “losing my religion” he does mean literally losing his faith; however, it is not only his faith in God but also in progress and human beings in general. He starts out the song optimistically, believing “life is bigger / it’s bigger than you and you are not me / the lengths that I will go to.” But as time goes on he becomes more cynical, eventually singing of being tortured, saying “every waking hour I’m choosing my confessions.” He becomes torn between his belief in the cause he represents and his own suffering, singing “oh no I’ve said too much / I haven’t said enough.” So, yeah, not a happy song.
8. Bad Moon Rising (1969)
This Creedence Clearwater Revival song contains one of the most famously misheard lyrics of all time. “There’s a bad moon on the rise” was and still is commonly heard as “there’s a bathroom on the right.” And while it certainly would be awesome if the song did claim there is a bathroom on the right, the real story of the lyrics is amusing as well. For you see, the song’s lyrics are basically a satire of a 1968 book written by a religious fanatic called Signs of the Times. The book got a lot of press in 1968 because it claimed that the end of the world was being foretold by the seemingly unusual number of natural disasters that had occurred in the years leading up to the book’s publication—the most famous disaster being Hurricane Alicia, which devastated the Texas cities of Galveston and Houston in 1967, killing 21 people. John Fogerty wrote “Bad Moon Rising” as a response, highlighting how silly such theories sounded.
7. Where the Streets Have to Name (1987)
This song from U2’s biggest and most influential album, “The Joshua Tree,” was a huge hit in 1987 and has remained one of U2’s best-known and loved songs. But the title and refrain have always been someone mysterious. Well, this is another classic rock song inspired by a novel, though in a more earnest way. Lead singer Bono’s lyrics were inspired by a novel he read in 1986 called, of course, Where the Streets Have No Name by Ernesto Bolano. The book is about a priest sent to be a missionary in 19th century El Salvador, but who comes to the realization that the isolated people he is supposed to convert know more about love than he does, and that they are better off without Christianity. The priest eventually takes up arms (and dies) in defense of the village against wealthy landowners who eventually take the land for themselves. The fact that the village streets had no name was a symbol in the novel for innocence and, eventually, innocence lost. U2’s song basically takes up these themes. Bono sings, “I want to take shelter from the poison rain / where the streets have no name,” and then “We’re beaten and blown by the wind / trampled in dust / I’ll show you a place / high on a desert plain / where the streets have no name.” You get the picture.
6. Oh, Pretty Woman (1964)
While this song was a huge hit for Roy Orbison when originally released, most people born since the 70s know it as the theme song and inspiration for the 1990 film Pretty Woman starring Julia Roberts. And though the song was interpreted in the 60s as a simple love song, Orbison later reveals that it was far more apt to inspire a movie about a hooker than people originally realized. This is because the “pretty woman” in the song actually is a prostitute, the song being a metaphor about the temptation of a married man who wants to remain faithful but is weak and prone to giving in to temptation. The opening lines of the song say it all: “Pretty woman walkin down the street / Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet / Pretty woman, I don’t believe you / You’re not the truth / No one could look as good as you.” In other words, the street walking woman isn’t the truth; his wife is the truth. No woman could really be as good as this other woman looks. Nevertheless, the man is taken in and pursues the false idea anyway.
5. Purple Haze (1966)
Most people assume this Jimi Hendrix song is about drugs, since “purple haze” was both the street name for a certain type of weed and the name given to the cloud of pot smoke at a concert. And this song is about drugs…just not in the way people think it is. Hendrix wrote the song in London after reading a bizarre newspaper story about a a waitress who became obsessed with a regular customer. She began stalking the man after he left the cafe where she worked. One day the woman slipped LSD into the man’s coffee and, with his faculties rather impaired, led the man back to her apartment, where she tied him up and held him captive for several days. Hendrix was struck by the story, and wrote the song from the perspective of the man coming to his senses and wondering what the hell was going on. In interviews, Hendrix always refuted the simple interpretation of the song’s drug inspiration by pointing to the line, “Am I happy or in misery? / Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me / Help me, help me.”
4. Stairway to Heaven (1971)
This Led Zeplin classic was never even released as a single off the album “IV,” since it was 8 minutes long and impossible to reduce to a single-length track due to its composition. Nevertheless it became one of the most-requested and most-played rocks songs in radio history. What’s funny about the song is that the story told by the lyrics comes from an unlikely source for a rock song. Robert Plant got the idea from a fable by the famous 19th century Danish children’s storyteller Hans Christian Andersen. The story was called “Den Gyldne Trapper” in Danish, “The Golden Stairs” in English. It was a fable about a wealthy woman who was so obsessed with getting to heaven that she was building a golden staircase to get there. The story ends tragically, of course; the staircase becomes so heavy that it sinks into the earth and becomes a staircase to “Helvede” (Danish for hell). Robert Plant happened to read the story while the band was writing songs for their album at a cottage in Whales, and he thought it was a good lesson for the band as they became richer and more famous.
3. Billy Jean (1983)
This song was probably Michael Jackson’s first mega-hit, the second single off his album “Thriller” which paved the way for the title song. The “Billie Jean” MJ sings about is based on the famous tennis player Billie Jean King. While it was never suggested that the two were an item—King was 15 years older than Jackson…and a lesbian—they were friends, having been introduced by one of Michael Jackson’s other older woman friends, the late Elizabeth Taylor. One night at a party at Taylor’s house, a recently retired Billie Jean King told a story about how a deranged female fan wrote to her repeatedly claiming she was having King’s baby. Jackson, no stranger to obsessed fans himself (he once framed a letter from a stalker and hung it in his mother’s house), was obviously fascinated by this level of delusion. Currently in the studio working on his next album, MJ penned a song about a deranged fan, and in a nod to the source material, named the fan Billie Jean.
2. Tutti Frutti (1955)
This Little Richard song was one of the original Rock and Roll hits—some critics say the very first. It is also part of the reason why uptight parents were so uneasy about this new “Rock and Roll” fad. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the song has something to do with promiscuous activity. He’s got a girl named Sue who knows just what to do? A girl named Daisy who almost drives him crazy? But what does the refrain, “Tutti Frutti, all rooty” mean? Well, as you might imagine, African American rhythm & blues culture was pretty wild and had its own slang vernacular. “All rooty” basically meant “all right!” And “tutti frutti?” Well, that was code for a certain two-word sex act that begins with the same letters. So uptight preachers and old-school public figures may not have known exactly what their kids were dancing to, but they knew it wasn’t good—and they were sorta right.
1. Hey Jude (1968)
This all-time classic, like many other classic Beatles songs (e.g. Yellow Submarine, I Am the Walrus, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Strawberry fields) was written with—how shall we put it?—pharmaceutical assistance. In the late 60s a trend was growing of watching The Wizard of Oz while smoking pot or doing LSD (a trend later responsible for the theory that Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” fits perfectly with the film). While never admitting to taking part in this activity himself, McCartney did explain that the titular Jude is in fact Judy Garland (Dorothy). The line “take a sad song and make it better” refers to “Over the Rainbow,” while the line “You’re waiting for someone to perform with” refers to Garland’s famous attempts at finding love (and the many times in which her relationships publicly crashed and burned). Bet you won’t ever
here this song the same now, will you?
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