Bob Lind wrote some very poetic lyrics - "Across my dreams, with nets of wonder, I chased the bright elusive butterfly of love"

ALways difficult to pick one favorite line - gonna have to give this more thought.  But for sure this Hollies line (and title) has got to be up there:  "He ain'r heavy, he's my brother".

Last edited by GrimsbyFan (September 17, 2023 9:47 am)

I can't I have one favorite but on 2 different levels here's two.
For fun..."When I woke up this morning Lucille was not in site, I ask my friends about her but all their lips were tight"
On a more cerebral side....And to see you're really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you
 

Time for some good news. Turning to the macabre, I'm submitting this one.
"Someone's found a way to give the rotting dead a will to live, go on and never die."

Not everyone here will know this song. It was by a Canadian group and I'm not sure it was a hit or ever got played in the U.S. The group was The Glass Bottle, a one hit wonder with a great song called "Ain't Got Time Anymore." 

And the line I love is:

"I can't get used to being left on my own.
 It takes up all my time just trying to be alone."

Leave it to Willie Nelson to come up with an absolute zinger... from Red Headed Stranger, he sang "You can't hang a man for killing a woman who's trying to steal your horse."
 

"I Ain't Got Time Anymore" has quite an interesting history. First, it began as a 1970 UK hit for Cliff Richard, the writers being Mike Leander and Eddie Seago. Second, although The Glass Bottle's version was recorded in Toronto, they were actually a Detroit band.
The reason for the song being recorded here was the new requirement (as of Jan. 1971) by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for radio stations to play 30% Canadian content. There were four components of a record that could qualify it as being Canadian, and one of them was if it was recorded in Canada. From 1972 onwards, records needed two of those components to qualify, but during the first year only one component was required. 
The new regulations were a particular concern for the legendary CKLW, since their audience was mainly in Detroit and other American cities, but as a Windsor station they had to meet the Canadian content requirements. So I think that they arranged for The Glass Bottle to record in Toronto, because I recall hearing that this was done to allow their records to qualify as Canadian content. Moreover, I had a look at the CKLW chart archive for 1971, and the song entered their chart on June 21 ... this was a month before it entered the Hot 100, and two months before it charted on CHUM. And it ended up reaching #7 and spent 9 weeks on their chart, so it was probably a bigger hit there than anywhere else (on CHUM it reached #17 in a 5-week run).

AzMike wrote:

Time for some good news. Turning to the macabre, I'm submitting this one.
"Someone's found a way to give the rotting dead a will to live, go on and never die."

There were two different versions of the song "Good News Week."

The U.K. got this one:
"Families shake the need for gold by stimulating birth control, we're wanting less to eat."

And then there's the one we got:
"Lots of blood in Asia now, they butchered off the sacred cow, they've got a lot to eat."

But frankly, I recall the first one better than the latter. I suspect both would face protest if this song was released today. 

GrimsbyFan wrote:

To continue on the sub-theme of favorite "fun" lines, I submit this line from Elenore by the Turtles:

Elenore, gee, I think you're swell
And you really do me well
You're my pride and joy, et cetera

I'm not entirely sure but is this the only hit song that uses the word "et cetera" in the lyrics?

One more, not that it's a favorite lyric, it's just so convoluted that Donovan must have twisted himself into a pretzel to make it fit in "Mellow Yellow:"

"Born to high forever to fly
Wind velocity nil.
Born to high forever to fly
If you want your cup I will fill."

It's been 56 years and I still don't exactly know what that means. 

Aflem, while I have never heard the Latin words "et cetera" in any song other than Elenore, in the Sly and the Family Stone song Everyday People there is the line "And so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby". 

I have another one, although it's a tad obscure. In the final lines of the mid-hit "Jug Band Music" by the Lovin' Spoonful, John B. Sebastian puts in a little joke for the listeners. After repeating the hook several times earlier in the song, it ends with a verse in which a surfer hits him in the water, gets off his board, and drags him to shore. 

"He emptied out his eardrum
I emptied out mine
And everybody knows that the very last line
Is the doctor said to give him Jug Band Music
It seems to make him feel just fine."

It ends with an instrumental sting of "Good Evening Friends," and always gives me a laugh. 

Good selection, 45adaptor.  The story is that when Johnny Cash was writing “Folsom Prison Blues“ in 1953, he wanted to come up with the worst possible reason for a person to kill another person and he came up with the lyrics you posted.

The big question about “Folsom Prison Blues” is, if Johnny Cash shot and killed a man in Nevada, why is he serving time in a California prison?

The other liberty with “Folsom Prison Blues” is that by the time Johnny Cash wrote the song, due to low ridership, the passenger train from Sacramento to Folsom had become a freight train and certainly was not on its way to San Antonio with rich people possibly eating in a fancy dinning car.  However, the lyrics were heavily based on the train in “Crescent City Blues” written by Gordon Jenkins who won a copyright infringement suit against Johnny Cash in 1969