542
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph.
He blew his mind out in a car
RICHARD POIRIER
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure
If he was from the House of Lords.
I saw a film today oh boy
The English Army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
But I just had to look
Having read the book.
I'd love to turn you on.
...
The news in the paper is "rather sad" but the photograph
is
funny,
sO
how does one respond to the suicide; suicide is a violent repudia–
tion of the seH but it mightn't have happened if the man had follow–
ed the orders of the traffic lights; the victim isn't so much a man
anyway as a face people have seen someplace in the news, in photo–
graphs or possibly even on film; and while a film of the English army
winning the war is too dated for most people to look at, and maybe
they don't believe in the victory anyway, the man in the song has to
look at it (oh boy - a film) because he has read a book about
it
and therefore it does have some reality for him. "Turning on"
is
at
least a way of escaping submission to the media designed to turn on
the mind from the outside - quite appropriately the song was banned
on the BBC - and loving to turn "you" on, either a lover or you,
the listener,
is
an effort to escape the horror of loneliness projected by
the final images of the song:
I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn
Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes
To fill the Albert Hall.
I'd love to turn you on.
The audience in Albert Hall- the same as the "lovely audience" in
the first song that the Beatles would like to "take home" with them?–
are only so many holes: unfilled and therefore unfertile holes, of the
earth and therefore holes of decomposition, gathered together but
