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Meaning Behind The Song


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Song #1: Going To California

  • Who's the unkind woman?
  • Who's the California woman?
  • Why a red sea?
  • Children of the sun?
  • A mountain of dreams ...?

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Spent my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine.
Made up my mind to make a new start
Going To California with an aching in my heart.
Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.
Took my chances on a big jet plane
Never let them tell you that they're all the same.
The sea was red and the sky was grey
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today.
The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake
As the children of the sun began to awake.
Seems that the wrath of the Gods
Got a punch on the nose and it started to flow;
I think I might be sinking.
Throw me a line if I reach it in time
I'll meet you up there where the path
Runs straight and high.
To find a queen without a king;
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings.
Side a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born.
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems
 

 

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8 hours ago, SteveAJones said:

They lyrics aren't meant to be taken literally, they're meant to be evocative and open to interpretation. 

I agree.

There was a scene in "The Big Chill" where William Hurt's character (Nick) says to Tom Beringer's character (Sam), " You're so analytical! Sometimes you just have to let art... flow... over you." I very often feel that way about song lyrics.

IMHO, in this song, some of the lyrics are said in the way they are simply to maintain the rhyme - others, if they do have specific meaning, would only have such meaning to Robert himself.

Still, no harm in asking. :)

 

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Sounds like a guy who is drunk/high in the moment who is disillusioned with life and has a fantasy that California is the promised land (irrationally).  If he could just make it there. But he never even makes the effort. Maybe even an old man looking back at his broken life? Or perhaps the man is dying and California is an analogy for Heaven?

I know Zep referenced Lord of the Rings at times and I think this has that kind of theme to it. Specifically the Hobbit. A great adventure awaits. Of course Bilbo was reluctant and this song is overlaid with jet planes to bring it to a more modern world.

 

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The song to me sounds half somewhat autobiographiful and half wishing and reflecting. But I'm almost positive Plant

has said many times that lyrics like poetry have no set meaning, that is part of the listener's interaction.

 

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