What did Johnny Rivers DO?

[donald]

I used to think Brian was referring to Johnny's southern schtick when he was actually a New York Italian.   Sure, Johnny lived in the southeast for a few years and picked up a few licks and some of the idiom, but he wasn't the character singing most of those songs.

By the way.  I've often noted the line from Memphis ;  "Marie is only six years old, information please, try to put me through to her in Memphis Tennessee"......is that a satire on mountain child brides or iis he referring to his daughter seperated by divorce?

[bossaroo]

mountain child brides? 6 years old? are you serious???
geez.

marie is his daughter. the whole song you are supposed to think he's singing about his woman, and it turns out to be his little girl. Chuck Berry writes a pretty good song.

the real question is:
is "I Want To Pick You Up" about a child or a woman?

or

is "Hey Little Tomboy" the creepiest song ever written?

[Aegir]

I Want to Pick You Up is about a woman. "You're still a baby to me."

[Dave in KC]

I disagree. First I have to ask if you ever had a daughter? That song came out just when my own daughter was old enough to start doing things on her own. A happy and yet sometimes sad time for me which the song related to at the time.  I NEVER read anything else into IWTPYU from day one. And Tomboy? It's so real life lyrical Beach Boys lifestyle work that just made common sense to me all along. Why can't these Beach Boy songs be looked upon on their own merit? Life. Without a twisted view.

[John]

I get sick of that kind of stuff too. "Child brides"? It's cleverly written. And IWTPYU, I agree with Dave. Same with all the others. Brian sometimes writes from a teenage point of view because that how he thinks he got the hits, by appealing to a teenage audience. He didn't think in the 70s - with Mike probably badgering him for old-style hits too - that anyone wanted to hear about the P.O.V. of guys in their thirties. And he's right: Bob Ezrin went through the Wall deleting references to Rogers Waters' age, citing that "people don't want to hear about old [sic] rock stars." Waters was 36.

That's all Brian ever does. Roller Skating Child doesn't mean he wants to screw a teenager. Mick Jagger wasn't born in a crossfire hurricane either; he was born in Dartford. And John Lennon? Actually a human, not a walrus; he and the Beatles didn't live in a yellow submarine either, but in big houses. It's songwriting.

Like blues giant Willie Dixon said, "Those people who said Spoonful was about heroin? They just have heroin ideas, I guess."

[Aegir]

I don't have children, but I have a girlfriend. And I don't want this to come out the wrong way or anything, but often when I'm being cutesy with her there's that whole "baby" thing going on. "I want to pick you up, rock and back and forth and make you smile," that's the epitome of how I feel about her. I think it works both ways, though. Love is love, whether it's man-woman love or parent-child love.

[Dave in KC]

Sure love can be all encompassing. But I'm sorry. Until you actually go through the experience of being a parent and bringing a child into the world from your own flesh and blood, the two can't be compared. How could you know if you never experienced it?

[Aegir]

I'm not trying to say I know. I'm trying to say you can interpret a love song in multiple ways. John Denver had a song called For Bobbie, which was a love song. A few years later, he released For Baby (For Bobbie), which was the same song except for one lyrical change - "hand" was changed to "tiny hand". And it suddenly stopped being a song about a woman and became a song about a child.

[Dave in KC]

Exactly!