Blinded by the Lyrics: Behind the Lines of Rock and Roll's Most Baffling Songs

Brent Mann

Jan 2005 · Citadel Press

About this ebook

The ultimate book for every music fan who has ever sped down the highway with the top down wailing right along to the Band's "The Weight" ("I Will fix your rack, if you take Jack, my dog) and wondered what in the world those guys were talking about, Blinded by the Lyrics lifts the veil from the most obscure, perplexing, and downright goofy lyrics from the 1960s to the late 1990s. In the only book to ever decode these lyrics' real meanings, music expert and author of 99 Red Balloons, Brent Mann offers fascinating inside stories behind hundreds of rock lyrics, as well as the stories behind some of the weirdest band names of the last fifty years. In Blinded by the Lyrics, rock fans will find the fascinating, often hilarious explanations behind rock & roll's quirkiest, most head-scratching lyrics of all time. Who are the Jester, King and Queen in Don McLean's enigmatic classic "American Pie"? What inspired the lyric "You're what? Tin roof--rusted!" in The B-52s' 1989 hit, "Love Shack"? What was Bruce Springsteen smoking when he wrote "And little Early-Pearly came by in her curly-wurly" in "Blinded by the Light"? And what, exactly, is a "a real estate novelist" in Bill Joel's 1974 song "Piano Man"? As informative as it is entertaining, this is essential reading for all rock fans and for anyone who has ever been left wondering why having "a bustle in your hedgerow" is no cause for alarm...