My Hallucination [Shaw/Blades featuring Tommy Shaw]

My Hallucination
Written by Tommy Shaw & Jack Blades
Lead Vocals by Jack Blades

Manson lived, Lennon died
You don't know the reason why
I'm crying

Thirty years enough time for me
Tell me who shot Kennedy
I'm dying

Long tall Sally
She comes and goes
Got diamond rings
All through her nose
Is that all we were fighting for?

Somewhere in my hallucination
I thought we were giving peace a chance
But what's a revolution
When the music plays
And no one wants to dance

We paid the price in Vietnam
While crosses burned in Birmingham
I'm sighing

In Memphis now the church bells ring
While L.A. crowns a different king
Can't we all get along

Hi-ho silver
Don't you know
I just got faxed from Tokyo
Is that what we're still fighting for?

Somewhere in my hallucination
I thought we were giving peace a chance
But what's a revolution
When the music plays
And no one wants to dance
Fat chance

Going insane with the fun you've had
Who's to blame when it all goes bad
You never know, whoo
Where you gonna go, whoo

Sliding down on a greasy rope
Check your watch
There goes your hope
Of hanging on yeah

In Yasger's farm
A flower grows
And where it stops
Nobody knows
I'm flying

Somewhere in my hallucination
I thought we were giving peace a chance
So much for resolution

In my hallucination
I heard someone singing
All you need is love
But all I see
Is war and hate
Well I wonder if we'll ever get enough

Interpretation

Why would mass murderer Charles Manson live a long life (in prison) while musician John Lennon was murdered in the street, his life cut short?  Many still question who was really behind the assassination of John F.  Kennedy in 1963, but not all the records have been released. Long Tall Sally (1956) has given way to girls with rings in their noses. Those are the freedoms people have died for in the wars of the past century.

Young men were dying in Vietnam while there was a different kind of war back home, with Birmingham, Alabama, at the center of the civil rights movement, and crosses burning as a symbol of white supremacist groups. Memphis was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, and now it is safe for interracial couples to be married in a church in Memphis. Now (in 1995) the King of Pop (Michael Jackson) is being accused of pedophilia and just a few years before (in 1991) there were riots when Rodney King was beaten by police and later when calling for an end to the riots was famously quoted saying "Can't we all get along?"

We remember the Lone Ranger shouting Heigh-ho Silver!, when America was exporting our culture to the worlds, but now we get faxes from Tokyo as Japan is taking the lead in technology and innovation. At Yasger's farm, where the Woodstock festival was held in 1969, the flower children had high hopes for the future, but now that they've grown up, have things gotten better?  We're running out of time and starting to lose hope.  We so much focus on having fun that we're driving ourselves crazy and then wonder why things aren't improving.

"Somewhere in my hallucination I thought we were giving peace a chance. So much for resolution. In my hallucination, I heard someone singing All You Need is Love, but all I see is war and hate."