Behind the music

Some time ago, you might recall that I spoke of a dream I had that showed Lennon and McCartney had a collaborator that even they weren't perfectly well aware of.  Here it is:

1-1-2009 

I was watching John Lennon and Paul McCartney recording one of their hits, but I can’t remember which one now. There was a man there with them. He was tall, clean shaven, with short, reddish-blonde hair. He sang along with them as they recorded, and I thought to myself, “I never noticed his voice in that song before,” and it was like a revelation to me. He saw that they’d goofed one part and rewound the tape to that spot (you could see it on a computer screen, so it wasn’t period technology). He re-sang his part, but Paul and John didn’t join in. They looked confused by him. Then he stopped and had a vision, remembering how the song really went in the future. He said to them, “You will write a bridge to this song, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. I could show you because I can see it and hear it, how it will appear in the future. But it’s so easy. I don’t know which one of you will write it, maybe it will be Paul.” The two Beatles were really confused now. They seemed helpless, so that he took up a guitar and started playing the song to get them into it again, but accidentally showing the change as he did. Then he looked at John and Paul and realized that he knew what was going to happen to them. John especially seemed to want to know. The man decided not to tell them.

In my notes about the dream I mentioned that he had seemed German -- and I had the association with Nazi Germany.  Something about him seemed ominous, though he was not especially evil or malevolent in the dream.

I just happened to run across a video from Pink Floyd's film, The Wall.  It's the section with the song "Comfortably Numb,"  and I was suddenly struck by the ending of the video and how similar it was, to my mind, to the dream that I'd had.

In this case, there's no man sitting beside "Pink" in the limo, but he keeps picking at the skin on his face, until it starts to bubble and boil off him:

When he finally gets it all off, he reveals that inside is a man dressed something like a Nazi.

Later in the movie, you will see this character leading a sort of neo-nazi rally, but it's not very hard to just see this as an interpretation of a rock show.  Perhaps the insight of the movie is that the nazi rallies and rock shows are related?

A much older Roger Waters in a similar outfit

So I had this dancing around in my head, thinking that it was interesting that image would be there.

Now I just noticed the lyrics to Foo Fighter's song Learn to Fly.  Check out what jumps out of the first verse, but keep going along, keeping in mind the idea that sometimes the music made by popular artists might come from an outside source:

Run and tell all of the angels
This could take all night
Think I need a devil to help me get things right
Hook me up a new revolution
Cause this one is a lie
We sat around laughing and watched the last one die 

I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright
I'm looking for a complication
Looking cause I'm tired of trying
Make my way back home when I learn to fly high 

I think I'm done nursing the patience
It can wait one night
I'd give it all away if you give me one last try
We'll live happily ever trapped if you just save my life
Run and tell the angels that everything's alright 

I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright
I'm looking for a complication
Looking cause I'm tired of trying
Make my way back home when I learn to fly high
Make my way back home when I learn to. . . 

Fly along with me, I can't quite make it alone
Try to live this life my own (and)
Fly along with me, I can't quite make it alone
Try to live this life my own. . . 

If we take the image of flight to refer to success in music, this whole song could be a rather plaintive call for influence from whatever it is in the sky -- spirits, aliens, whoever.  Though the first verse seems pretty clear about the artist realizing that he needs "a devil to help me get things right."

Taking a look at the history of the Foo Fighters, isn't it rather interesting that "Learn to Fly" was their first big hit.  Before this song was released, they hadn't had that sort of success that Dave Grohl must have been used to, having known such heights with Nirvana.  Grohl was perhaps pretty "tired of trying" to match that by the time he got around to writing "Learn to Fly."

It may only be that this sort of thing is a way of artists acknowledging the unconscious element that fosters, supplements, and often even directs the creative process.

Or it may be something else..