Really interesting question. (Like Oblo, someone in college explained “turning Japanese” to me. Still trying to figure the entendre behind “Walk Like an Egyptian.”)
While I got allegory at an early age, I’ll fess up and say I didn’t understand what the basic meaning of “rock & roll” was all about. Being a kid and all.
I remember the high school newspaper article that deconstructed “Come On Baby Light My Fire.” I didn’t think it was about fellow scouts trying to get the marshmallows roasting, but I thought it was more or less along the lines of “Honey? Would you mind delineating the Eleusinean Mysteries?” Honestly, to this day I believe that may have been part of Jim Morrison’s meaning.
In college I remember having a discussion with a friend of mine about Brain Damage and Eclipse, two songs that I would listen to over and over at the time. My friend said that he thought the lyrics were just nonsense, I was lost grasping for an interpretation. What I remember saying was that when I listened to the two songs, I get the feeling that it’s okay not to see things as other people do. Recently I saw a documentary on the making of Dark Side in which Roger Waters said that it was partly about Syd Barrett, but also about the sense of being different.
I did feel somewhat vindicated by that.
