Posted on 03/11/2012 9:34:24 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
Don McClean once answered that question by stating, "It means I'll never have to work again." :-)
Very interesting post, I thought I knew all the cultural references in that song, but I learned a lot of new things.
What about the “Unhown Comic?”
“hey hey Chucky baby”
What about the “Unhown Comic?”
“hey hey Chucky baby”
Mark.
There are at least 3 levels of meaning in that song, it’s pretty deep. The whole “Buddy Holly” interpretation is just superficial, this political/historical one hits on some of the deeper elements, but beyond that there is a lot of Biblical symbolism that McLean might have used to convey yet another message.
Just a few examples:
“I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride”
Widowed bride, as in the Bride of the Lamb who was slain, the Church. One can read about this bride in the Bible, of course. He can’t remember if he cried, but something touched him deep inside when he read the Bible, in other words, his spirit was moved.
“Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry”
Since “chevy” can also mean “torment”, and “levee” can be rendered as “Levi”, this verse could mean “Took my torment to the Levi (the priest) but the priest was dry (depleted). The power of the Levites was depleted when Christ institued the New Covenant.
“Did you write the book of love”
The “Book of Love” can easily be as descriptive of the Bible, God’s book of His love for mankind. From that perspective, the questioner may be doubting whether God really wrote the Bible, and the doubter’s questions are continued in the next verses:
“And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?”
This faith based on the Bible is contrasted with the modern-day alternative in the next verse:
“Now do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?”
Rather than having faith in God and his Book of Love, do you believe in the works of men, and their power to save you?
“Oh and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown”
The king that wears the thorny crown is, of course, Jesus. Stealing this crown would be the act of someone trying to claim Christ’s authority, or counterfeit it. Therefore, the “Jester” is a type of the antichrist.
“The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned”
What courtroom springs to mind in reference to the King with the thorny crown? The court of Pontius Pilate, where he refused to render a verdict, and adjourned the hearing instead.
There’s more Biblical symbolism in there, too, so I think there a 3rd, more spiritual message that McLean was really trying to convey, especially considering he named the music publishing company that holds the rights to this song “Yahweh Music”.
So-called progressives will be out of business after the default process. They need the time afforded from government-derived incomes to be political.
There's a lot to be said for the interpretation, but the song wouldn't have caught on if different people couldn't understand it and take it to heart in different ways.
There was a lot of nostalgia and longing in the 1970s. It wasn't necessarily resolvable into a left versus right thing.
If conservatives looked back to John Wayne or Ronald Reagan, you could also find a kind of nostalgia for what liberals thought America had been in Easy Rider or Hunter Thompson's writing.
Don McLean wrote something that a lot of people could hook into in different ways. It was similar with the religious overtones. Nowadays one might take them literally. At the time, a lot of people took them for part of the poetry.
bttt
This really puts it all together. Thanks.
No problem. I think there’s a lot of other, more obscure references in there too, if you want to dig around in the prophecies. I think he was writing a song of lament for America, which used to be the most Christian nation on Earth, but which he saw falling away from that and possibly becoming something else entirely. From the perspective of 40 years later, I think his fears were turned out to be pretty valid.
I’ve been digging and there’s alot out there. I guess I was right to be impressed and was not alone in looking for the deeper meaning when first I heard it. Lyrics were tough to come by back then without the internet. :-)
Georgia is in Florida, dumbass!
Placemark for reading. I forgot to ping out a couple of your more recent ones, been too busy to ping. Maybe tomorrow.
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