Saturday 24 May 2008

Five Beatles Songs That Make No Sense

5: Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?

What ‘They’ Say

Going back to song meanings for one last time, the people have spoken, and their consensus appears to be that Paul saw two monkeys having sex in the middle of a road at one point in his life. Whereas most people would look away or drive onwards, Paul kept watching and his cunning song writing brain clicked away at another idea. ‘If the monkeys can be so carefree about love’, he thought to himself, ‘then why can’t humans?’ And with that, he wrote himself another song, probably on the back of his hand because there are only two different lines during the whole thing, and recorded it for legenedary oddball collection “The White Album”. Another commenter thinks that Paul sounds like an “old black guy” on the song, whereas most of the others are engaged in a long recitation of Eric Idle’s ‘Wink wink nudge nudge’ character.
There is really a lot of gold stuff on the board for this song. Others still suggest this song is about The Rolling Stones getting arrested for public exposure after they had a wee by the side of the road – sadly, you see, people were watching them. Oh, and then some people pick up on the “no one will be watching us” line as a reference to the Orwellian control that the Government enforces over us, thus restricting all of us forever more. And one person thinks it’s kinky.

The Song, Then

As you can see, many conflicting ideas come after people listen to this song, which perhaps shows that less is more? Anyway, the main concern I have with this song is why Paul thinks nobody would watch him if he does ‘it’ in the road. As a member of the most famous quartet in musical history (sorry ABBA) he would doubtless have been followed everywhere by legions of fans. If he chose to get his kicks in the middle of a road, then surely he would be seen by someone? At the very least, a road is… where cars drive. The dangers of doing it in the road are much greater than simply the peril of being ‘seen’ by someone. If you get hit by a car whilst lying in the middle of the road in a missionary, you’re pretty much done for. What makes least sense is the fact that I, amongst everyone else in the world, instantly thinks that this song is about sex. Paul doesn’t even go so far as to explain the ‘it’ of the song, instead just repeating it again and again and… you get the idea. He could be talking about a tea party, in which case – why would he have a tea party in the middle of the road? This seems like a reckless move. Knowing Paul though, he is probably talking about hilarious amounts of drug-taking.
Taking drugs in the middle of the road is almost certainly a bad move.
I don’t like to pick, but Sir Paul always singles this song out for praise whenever people ask him if he’s a cosy songwriter who can’t do edgy stuff. This, and Helter Skelter, which itself narrowly escaped inclusion into this list. That’s all very well and good, Mr McCartney, but at the very least couldn’t you have made this song make sense?

No comments:

Post a Comment