Song text

[discovery1]

Any one remember the thread I made about my school winning state science olympiad (http://www.soinc.org/) competion? Tomorrow we leave for nationals! Woohoo! Course, we likely will get our butts handed to us, but that's okay, even with the likely security delays(1/6 of our team is muslim, a third white, and we are carrying at least one object that could easily be mistaken for an explosive, a robot if it matters).. It will still be fun And there is still the off chance that I will get a gold, and if I do it will be worth $100,000 in scholarships for me. And the best off all: someone I deeply care for will be going on the trip too, and she feels the same for me. She's so clever, ambitious, assertive, and cruel. :smitten:

[Redleg]

Good Luck in the competition.

~:cheers:

[discovery1]

Good Luck in the competition.

~:cheers:


Thanks Redleg. We need it.

[Blodrast]

Hey, good luck discovery1!

[Lonewarrior]

good luck!! :balloon2: :balloon2:

[ichi]

Best of luck to your team Discovery

Let us know how it all turns out

ichi :bow:

[Franconicus]

I need some help. I am not an English native tongue (surprise, surprise ~:) ).
Here's a Beatles song I like very much. But I do not have the slightest idea what it is all about. Can s.o. explain? :help:

Come Together

Here come old flat top, 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 shoe shine, he got toe jam football
He got monkey finger, he shoot co-ca 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 wal-rus gumboot
He got O-no 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 Mo-jo filter
He say, " One and one and one is three."
Got to be good looking 'cause he so hard to see
Come together, Right now, over me

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

[Dooz]

Well now that's a tough one to go after not being an English as a first language Beatles enthusiast ~:) . Many an English professor can't even explain this one to you my friend. It's just The Beatles beign The Beatles.

It's possible that it is about a threesome basically, with drug references as well. That's my take on it anyways.

There's probably the real explanation out there somewhere, but who wants that when you can interpret your own? ~D

[Beirut]

Got to be good looking 'cause he so hard to see



I always thought that was one of the coolest lines I've ever heard.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

I'm not sure it is about anything, it just sounds cool. Fantastic song.

I'm sure our resident Beatles enthusiast will be able to tell you more though. Oh Gawain, where art thou?

[Franconicus]

Gawain a Beatles enthusiast, is he?

[discovery1]

Hi all! We're back! Thanks for the well wishes. We placed 57th out of 60. In the events that I participted in I placed 38th in astronomy, I think 47th in physics lab(didn't study at all), 50 something in Wright Stuff(rubber band power airplane), and 23 in Remote sensing(sort of like map reading). I didn't do much for this event, but the other member of our team working on it( :smitten: ) is somewhat obessive compulsive, and studied all night for the event(she's an insomniac). She also placed our single highest event(well, she did all the problems except 3 tie breakers)
; 22nd in disease detective (tracking disease outbreaks).

[Franconicus]

Really noone? :help:

[Big_John]

from what i've read on the net, the song was originally composed as a campaign song for timothy leary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary) when he was thinking about running for governor of california against ronald reagan. john lennon was apparently inspired by timothy leary's book the psychedelic experience. i've read that the the song is comprised mostly of LSD tripping references and that much of the description is supposed to be characterizing leary himself. don't know how accurate any of that is though.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

'Puts on best Lurch imitiation voice' ....................You rang?


Come Together by The Beatles
Album: Abbey Road
Date: 1969
U.S. Chart: 1
Lyrics: View Lyrics
The Beatles

Ringtones Listen/Buy @ Amazon Sheet Music


Songfacts: You can leave comments about the song at the bottom of the page.
Timothy Leary was a psychologist who became famous for experimenting with LSD as a way to promote social interaction and raise consciousness. Leary did many experiments on volunteers and himself and felt the drug had many positive qualities if taken correctly. When the government cracked down on LSD, Leary's experiments were stopped and he was arrested on drug charges. In 1969, Leary decided to run for Governor of California, and asked John Lennon to write a song for him. "Come Together, Join The Party" was Leary's campaign slogan (a reference to the drug culture he supported) and was the original title of the song. Leary never had much of a campaign, but the slogan gave Lennon the idea for this song.
John Lennon was sued for stealing the guitar riff and the line "Here comes old flat-top" from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me." The lawsuit did not come from Berry, but from Morris Levy, one of the music industry's most infamous characters. He owned the song along with thousands of other early rock songs that he basically stole from the poor, black, and unrepresented artists. Levy sued the Beatles, or more accurately, John Lennon, over the song around the time the Beatles broke up. For years, Lennon delayed the trial while he and the Beatles tried to sort out all the legal and business problems that plagued Apple Records. Finally, in an attempt to avoid the court room as much as he could (Lennon felt like he was appearing in court more often than not), he settled with Levy. In return for dropping the suit, Lennon agreed to record his Rock N Roll album, which was just a series of covers of songs Levy owned. Lennon always wanted to make a cover album and was thrilled to have the opportunity, and Levy wanted the value of his songs to increase, and when a Beatle re-records a song, that is just what happens. To make a long long long story short, Lennon recorded the album over the Lost Weekend, a year-or-two period when he was separated from Yoko Ono and lived in LA. During that time he was often drunk or high, and was rather sloppy and useless. Levy was getting frustrated with the lack of progress. Phil Spector was the producer, but in a fit of madness (which was not too unusual for Spector) he ran away and stole the recording session tapes. Levy invited Lennon to his upstate NY recording studio, and that is where he finally recorded the album. (thanks, Matthew - New York, NY)
The whispered lyric that sounds like "shoot" is actually Lennon saying "shoot me" followed by a handclap. The bass line drowns out the "me."
The Beatles recorded this on July 21, 1969 and it was the first session John Lennon actively participated in following his and Yoko's car accident 3 weeks earlier. John was so insistent on Yoko being in the studio with him that he had a hospital bed set up in the studio for her right after the accident, since she was more seriously injured than he was. (thanks, Adrian - Wilmington, DE)
The line "Ono sideboard" refers to Yoko.
The British Broadcasting Company (The BBC) banned this because of the reference to Coca Cola, which they considered advertising.
This has one of the most commonly misheard lyrics in the history of popular music: "Hold you in his -armchair- you can feel his disease." It's actually "Hold you in his arms, yeah, you can feel his disease." All published sheet music had the "armchair" lyric, including the inner sleeve of the 1967-1970 compilation, which contained lots of other errors too, notably on "Strawberry Fields Forever." (thanks, Mark - London, England)
The Beatles released this as a "double A side" single with "Something."
In 1969, this won a Grammy for best engineered recording.
When rumors were spreading that Paul McCartney was dead, some fans thought the line "One and one and one is three" meant that only George, John and Ringo were left. The line "Got to be good lookin' cuz he's so hard to see" was supposed to be Paul's spirit. (thanks, jill - placentia, CA)
Aerosmith's cover version was a #23 hit in 1978. They played villains that year in the movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is considered one of the worst films ever. Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees were also in the movie.
In 2001, Beck, Moby, Marc Anthony, and Nelly Furtado were scheduled to put on a tribute concert in Radio City Music Hall called "Come Together: A Night For John Lennon." Due to the terrorist attacks on America, it was postponed and dedicated to the people of New York City, with proceeds benefiting victims of the attacks.
Nortel used this in commercials.
On an early demo version of "My Monkey" by Marilyn Manson (whose vocals were sped up to sound like "a demonic toddler"), Manson sang the second verse as an opener. It appeared on Demos in Lunchbox by Manson's former band, The Spooky Kids.
This has been covered by Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, Guns 'N' Roses, Soundgarden, Marilyn Manson, Nazareth, and Oasis. (thanks, Brett - Edmonton, Canada, for above 2)

Great bass line bye the way.

[Franconicus]

Great bass line bye the way.
For sure!

Thank you, Gawain, great info :bow:
Do the lyrics (like Joo Joo eyeballs) mean anything or do they just sound cool?

P.S.: I wonder how a conservative knows so much about JL ~;)

[Big_John]

joo-joo eyeballs might be a reference to dilated pupils (caused by acid tripping).

[ichi]

There are many many many alternative explanations for this. The most commonly accepted are

1) that it was originally meant as a campaign song for acid-guru Dr Timothy Leary when he was going to run for US President (no kidding!), but later John re-wrote it in its present form. Leary's slogan was "come together, join the party", the "come together" alluding to I Ching, the Chinese book of changes.

2) John just liked to write nonsense stuff, it doesn't have any drug meaning or anything else like that. It is a great song, and people should stop criticising the Beatles just because the did drugs. Randomness is the art of tripping. John wrote this song to take the piss. He was probably sick of fans misinterpreting his songs.

3) Each verse is describing one of the four band members.

1: Ringo- the easygoing, level headed one in the group

2:George- the spiritual, naturist, searching for universal knowledge, and freeing your mind(and can wail his monkey fingers on a guitar neck)

3:John- the walrus, life now centered around his wife

4:Paul- the good looking one, having the group's mojo going by keeping them together. It could also have a reference to him "dying", now that it's impossible to see him buried, as he pleads for one, one, and one to "come together over me."

The oddest theory is that the the song is about bukkake, a Japanese term for a sex act where a bunch of guys come on a woman’s face. Allegedly Yoko “exported” it from Japan and turned John onto it. This song is about a particular drug-filled orgy they had, where Yoko ordered: Come together right now over me.

I doubt this very much. Personally I think its a great song, but probably just some cool phrases stuck together

ichi :bow:

[Gawain of Orkeny]

The most often origin claimed by John and the Beatles is this one


2) John just liked to write nonsense stuff, it doesn't have any drug meaning or anything else like that. It is a great song, and people should stop criticising the Beatles just because the did drugs. Randomness is the art of tripping. John wrote this song to take the piss. He was probably sick of fans misinterpreting his songs.

Its mostly just a fun song and has no meaning at all other than to sound cool. Which it accomplishes to great effect. Many people thing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is about LSD. Its easy to interpret that way but John and the Beatles infaticly deny it. Its ironic that he keeps saying shoot me in this song is it not or his other song happiness is a warm gun.

[Steppe Merc]

Bang bang shoot shoot. ~;)

About the drugs, I don't see why they ought to be ashamed... and I've read that Paul claimed that Srgt Peppers was deffinetly influenced by pot (if not acid...). Drugs did help expand the music of many geniuses... but then harder drugs killed them.
That said, I never thought of this song as meaning anything, unlike some of their other stuff.
But I have always thought of Lucy in the Sky was about LSD...

[IrishMike]

Personally, I don't care if aliens told him to write it. Its a great song. Long may the Classic Rock Revolution live!

People take music to seriously. Always trying to find a meaning, and not enjoying the music. Let the music find you, not find the music. Or as Led Zeppelin put it in Houses of the Holy. Let the Music be your Master.

[GoreBag]

I always thought it was "hold you in his arms, yeah, you can feel his disease", not "hold you in his armchair"...

[Franconicus]

Thank you all! You helped me a lot! :bow: