Baker Street Muse

[Nonfatman]

Okay, here on Look Into the Song, we will now be closely examining Baker Street Muse for the next week or two, pursuant to a specific request by Lordiffyboatrace!

What we are looking for in this thread is some real in-depth analysis and discussion of the music and lyrics of each song that is being spotlighted, and this week it is Baker Street Muse that will come under our collective microscope. So, since it was your request, why don't you start things off, Dave?

And tootull, I know this is your all-time favorite Tull album, so I'm sure you'll be piping in here as well, or even take the lead with this one if you'd like. Me? I've got to go listen to it a few times first.

Jeff

[tootull]

Slight ramble on: Love the lines...

I have no time for Time Magazine or Rolling Stone.
I have no wish for wishing wells or wishing bones.

Talking to the gutter-stinking, winking in the same old way.
I tried to catch my eye but I looked the other way.
Indian restaurants that curry my brain

Walking down the gutter thinking, "How the hell am I today?''
Well, I didn't really ask you but thanks all the same.

Note this: 12/31/09 "Minstrel in the Gallery" discography page added discography -> studio
www.j-tull.com/discography/minstrel/index.cfm

Minstrel is a very personal album to Ian Anderson and ah, me. I don't know if I can share my feelings as they are just too personal. ;D Lighten up!
I like Baker Street Muse for the mood that it sets, plus it's a mini concept album in a song.

And if you think I'm joking, then I'm just a one-line joker in a public bar.
And it seems there's no-body left for tennis; and I'm a one-band-man.
And I want no Top Twenty funeral or a hundred grand.
There was a little boy stood on a burning log,
rubbing his hands with glee. He said, "Oh Mother England,
did you light my smile;
or did you light this fire under me?
One day I'll be a minstrel in the gallery.
And paint you a picture of the queen.
And if sometimes I sing to a cynical degree
it's just the nonsense that it seems.''

-tootull
thanx to...
www.cupofwonder.com/minstrel.html

[TM]

Jan 7, 2010 22:07:51 GMT -5 tootull said:

Slight ramble on: Love the lines...

I have no time for Time Magazine or Rolling Stone.
I have no wish for wishing wells or wishing bones.

Talking to the gutter-stinking, winking in the same old way.
I tried to catch my eye but I looked the other way.
Indian restaurants that curry my brain

Walking down the gutter thinking, "How the hell am I today?''
Well, I didn't really ask you but thanks all the same.

Note this: 12/31/09 "Minstrel in the Gallery" discography page added discography -> studio
www.j-tull.com/discography/minstrel/index.cfm

Minstrel is a very personal album to Ian Anderson and ah, me. I don't know if I can share my feelings as they are just too personal. ;D Lighten up!
I like Baker Street Muse for the mood that it sets, plus it's a mini concept album in a song.

And if you think I'm joking, then I'm just a one-line joker in a public bar.
And it seems there's no-body left for tennis; and I'm a one-band-man.
And I want no Top Twenty funeral or a hundred grand.
There was a little boy stood on a burning log,
rubbing his hands with glee. He said, "Oh Mother England,
did you light my smile;
or did you light this fire under me?
One day I'll be a minstrel in the gallery.
And paint you a picture of the queen.
And if sometimes I sing to a cynical degree
it's just the nonsense that it seems.''

-tootull
thanx to...
www.cupofwonder.com/minstrel.html

Lot of memorable lines in this one for sure TT.

[Lordiffyboatrace]

Yes this song must be up there as one of IA's best "story" type of lyrics that i think he is very good at writing.
I defy anyone that listens to this song not to be transported away to the locations that he is describing therein, especially in the first 2 or 3 mini songs that this suite consists of.
i think its amazing that all these bits and pieces are seamlessly joined together to make up one song. I shouldnt be surprised tho as of course this album came a couple of years after TAAB and APP!
Musically i think my favourite part is the slightly rockier section
around about these lyrics:

Walking down the gutter thinking, "How the hell am I today?''
Well, I didn't really ask you but thanks all the same.

but there is also loads of acoustic passages throught the song (and the whole album) that i still think is Ian's forté. Not so much flute on this album as on previous ones as i think that Ian was really concentrating on his acoustic guitar during this period of the 70s.

Sometimes i think its tricky to work out what Ians lyrics are referring to but in my opinion, the song pans out like this:

In the first part (the baker st muse bit) sees our hero walking down the street observing life and minding his own business. he observes people standing cold at the bus stop, but something in a shop window catches his eyes and he stops to look at it.
He sees a shady looking man checking the fly on his trousers (maybe even rubbing his crotch! In an underpass a flute busker is playing his tunes and along the road are indian restaurants that he has visited in the past.

The pig-me and the whore section details someone copping off with a hooker in an alleyway. It has some really great metaphors for sex in this bit. my favourite being
Shedding bell-end tears in the pocket of her resistance.
very funny!

i think the crash barrier waltzer section is about an old homless woman he comes across and offers to help but a policeman moves her away. Thats what i imagine it to be about anyway, but i may be wrong of course.

I must admit im also not 100% sure about the meaning of mother england reverie, in my head its Ian being introspective about not wanting to receive the adulation or fame that comes with doing what he does for a living, but again I may be wrong on that.

The song ends with a bit of studio banter with the final chords of the song being strummed, Ian takes off his guitar and gets up to walk out of the studio singing to himself. You can then hear him trying to open the door twice but its locked, then he shouts "I can't get out!" haha

[TM]

The lyrics - in case anyone is looking for easy access...

Baker Street Muse

Windy bus-stop. Click. Shop-window. Heel.
Shady gentleman. Fly-button. Feel.
In the underpass, the blind man stands.
With cold flute hands.
Symphony match-seller, breath out of time.
You can call me on another line.

Indian restaurants that curry my brain.
Newspaper warriors changing the names they advertise from the station stand.
With cold print hands.
Symphony word-player, I'll be your headline.
If you catch me another time.

Didn't make her
with my Baker Street Ruse.
Couldn't shake her
with my Baker Street Bruise.
Like to take her
but I'm just a Baker Street Muse.

Ale-spew, puddle-brew
boys, throw it up clean.
Coke and Bacardi colours them green.
From the typing pool goes the mini-skirted princess with great finesse.
Fertile earth-mother, your burial mound is fifty feet down in the Baker Street underground. (What the hell!)
Walking down the gutter thinking,
``How the hell am I today?''
Well, I didn't really ask you but thanks all the same.


Pig-Me And The Whore

``Big bottled Fraulein, put your weight on me,'' said the pig-me to the whore,
desperate for more in his assault upon the mountain.
Little man, his youth a fountain.
Overdrafted and still counting.
Vernacular, verbose; an attempt at getting close to where he came from.
In the doorway of the stars, between Blandford Street and Mars;
Proposition, deal. Flying button feel. Testicle testing.
Wallet ever-bulging. Dressed to the left, divulging the wrinkles of his years.
Wedding-bell induced fears.
Shedding bell-end tears in the pocket of her resistance.
International assistance flowing generous and full to his never-ready tool.
Pulls his eyes over her wool.
And he shudders as he comes.
And my rudder slowly turns me into the Marylebone Road.

Crash-Barrier Waltzer

And here slip I
dragging one foot in the gutter
in the midnight echo of the shop that sells cheap radios.
And there sits she
no bed, no bread, no butter
on a double yellow line
where she can park anytime.
Old Lady Grey; crash-barrier waltzer
some only son's mother. Baker Street casualty.
Oh, Mr. Policeman
blue shirt ballet master.
Feet in sticking plaster
move the old lady on.
Strange pas-de-deux
his Romeo to her Juliet.
Her sleeping draught, his poisoned regret.
No drunken bums allowed to sleep here in the crowded emptiness.
Oh officer, let me send her to a cheap hotel
I'll pay the bill and make her well - like hell you bloody will!
No do-good over kill. We must teach them to be still more independent.

Mother England Reverie

I have no time for Time Magazine or Rolling Stone.
I have no wish for wishing wells or wishing bones.
I have no house in the country I have no motor car.
And if you think I'm joking, then I'm just a one-line joker in a public bar.
And it seems there's no-body left for tennis; and I'm a one-band-man.
And I want no Top Twenty funeral or a hundred grand.

There was a little boy stood on a burning log,
rubbing his hands with glee. He said, ``Oh Mother England,
did you light my smile; or did you light this fire under me?
One day I'll be a minstrel in the gallery.
And paint you a picture of the queen.
And if sometimes I sing to a cynical degree
it's just the nonsense that it seems.''

So I drift down through the Baker Street valley,
in my steep-sided un-reality.
And when all is said and all is done
I couldn't wish for a better one.
It's a real-life ripe dead certainty
that I'm just a Baker Street Muse.

Talking to the gutter-stinking, winking in the same old way.
I tried to catch my eye but I looked the other way.

Indian restaurants that curry my brain
newspaper warriors changing the names they advertise from the station stand.
Circumcised with cold print hands.

Windy bus-stop. Click. Shop-window. Heel.
Shady gentleman. Fly-button. Feel.
In the underpass, the blind man stands.
With cold flute hands.
Symphony match-seller, breath out of time
you can call me on another line.

Didn't make her
with my Baker Street Ruse.
Couldn't shake her
with my Baker Street Bruise.
Like to take her
but I'm just a Baker Street Muse.

(I can't get out!)

[Nonfatman]

Thank you John and Dave for leading off with this....great analyses so far, and thanks you Paul for setting out the lyrics for our convenience.

I've always been amazed at how Baker Street Muse contains what are arguably Tull's most coarse and vulgar lyrics, Pig-Me and the Whore, followed immediately by what are arguably Tull's most sensitive and heartfelt lyrics in Crash Barrier Waltzer, which is accompanied by an appropriate shift in the music. But that is 100% in keeping with the extremes that you would witness walking down any city street in a metropolis like London.....I see things like that every day in New York City.

I especially like these lines in Crash Barrier Waltzer:

Oh officer, let me send her to a cheap hotel/
I'll pay the bill and make her well/like hell you bloody will/
No do-good over kill/ We must teach them to be still more independent.

It is a perfect crystallization of the political debate regarding what to do about the less fortunate people in society, a debate this country has frequently had concerning to what extent should we be a welfare state. The conservative position, represented by the officer, i.e., the authority figure in the song, is always that there should be no government spending on public assistance, because if there are handouts in encourages the poor and homeless to rely on that assistance rather than go get a job, whereas the liberal position, represented by the song's narrator, is that the government has the responsibility to help the needy, homeless and often mentally disabled people who really are not in a position to help themselves, like the Crash Barrier Waltzer who has nothing. Under the Clinton Administration, Clinton angered many liberals by taking a more conservative position vis-a-vis welfare reform, which was basically to basically implement a "workfare" system.

I believe that most of the song is a pretty straightforward description of the weird, fascinating and diverse things ones sees while walking through the city, although with a lot of puns and wordplay that is sometimes difficult to decipher. I agree with Dave that the Mother England Reverie is a little less straightforward and more difficult to understand than the other parts of the song.

But the lines that I find most baffling are:

Didn't make her
with my Baker Street Ruse.
Couldn't shake her
with my Baker Street Bruise.
Like to take her
but I'm just a Baker Street Muse.

I never understood what Ian was getting at in these lines, or how this verse fit within the context of the song. Can anyone help me out here? Who is the "her" that he is referring to in these lines, and what do these lines mean? And what is he referring to when he says "Baker Street Ruse" and "Baker Street Bruise"?

Jeff

[tomasio]

<quote>
Didn't make her
with my Baker Street Ruse.
Couldn't shake her
with my Baker Street Bruise.
Like to take her
but I'm just a Baker Street Muse.

I never understood what Ian was getting at in these lines, or how this verse fit within the context of the song. Can anyone help me out here? Who is the "her" that he is referring to in these lines, and what do these lines mean? And what is he referring to when he says "Baker Street Ruse" and "Baker Street Bruise"?

Jeff
</quote>

Hi Jeff,

as I stumbled about an Interview with (maybe) Ian Anderson at the "Jethro Tull Press" where he explains at least the word play mentioned in your last lines I wanted to post the link here as my first deed as new forum user:
www.tullpress.com/s27sept75.htm (last but two paragraph).

Have fun,
--
tomasio

[Nursie Dear]

Ah!!!! That's about what I thought.

[Nonfatman]

Feb 6, 2011 18:29:42 GMT -5 tomasio said:

<quote>
Didn't make her
with my Baker Street Ruse.
Couldn't shake her
with my Baker Street Bruise.
Like to take her
but I'm just a Baker Street Muse.

I never understood what Ian was getting at in these lines, or how this verse fit within the context of the song. Can anyone help me out here? Who is the "her" that he is referring to in these lines, and what do these lines mean? And what is he referring to when he says "Baker Street Ruse" and "Baker Street Bruise"?

Jeff
</quote>

Hi Jeff,

as I stumbled about an Interview with (maybe) Ian Anderson at the "Jethro Tull Press" where he explains at least the word play mentioned in your last lines I wanted to post the link here as my first deed as new forum user:
www.tullpress.com/s27sept75.htm (last but two paragraph).

Have fun,
--
tomasio

Welcome to The Jethro Tull Board, Tom, and thanks for your informative first post. In reading Steve Rosen's explanation, I guess it really should have been obvious to me, but it wasn't. He says:

The 'Baker Street Muse' (play on the word mews) is Ian again, this time reliving a real-life situation where he went for the woman and she "didn't want to know. My attempts were politely refused." He first tried to con her into it with some line, some angle ("my Baker Street ruse"), and when this fails he tried being heavy ("my Baker Street bruise"). He finally accepts himself as being nothing more than a "Baker Street muse".

Thanks for providing the link for that site, which we're familiar with of course, but I have never read that particular article before. There really are a ton of articles on that site.

In any event, thanks for signing up with us, and we look forward to chatting with you more in the future!



Jeff

[Morthoron]

I don't have much to say about "Baker St. Muse" lyrically-speaking, but I do think the segue between "Baker St." and "Pig-me and the Whore" is the best in the Tull discography. The sudden switch from electric to acoustic while maintaining the same key is both a surprise and a clever turn around.

And is it just me, or is "Mother England Reverie" far too short? I could listen to another couple stanzas at least.

[Deleted]

Mother England Reverie is definitely short. But perhaps it is what makes us appreciate the glimpse all the more.

Baker Street Muse is one of my all time favorites from Tull. Martin does some pretty amazing electric guitar work--not to mention the fantastic acoustic passages and rhythms Ian provides (as always).

Lyrically it's fantastic as well. Definitely self-indulgent, but sometimes one has to be self indulgent in order to produce such personal and passionate poetry. That's obvious though I guess.

[jrpipik]

To my mind "Baker Street Muse" is Ian Anderson's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." At first in a series of staccato images and then in more relaxed narrative verse he looks back on his years as a young musician in London, the various scenarios and stories that surround and ultimately form him as a songwriter and performer. The scene is a feast for the senses charged (as such things so often are for youth) with aggressive sexual energy.

The tales lead up to the first verse of "Mother England Reverie" and an older Anderson, wiser and more cynical accompanied by grim minor chords and a funereal drumbeat, getting about as close to baldly stating his artistic creed as an artist can without giving away the goods completely: "I want no top twenty funeral and a hundred grand."

Then the music leaps into spritely innocence again, a lone acoustic guitar accompanying the childlike enthusiasm which includes even a touch of madness. All the experiences of Baker Street summed up in the single image of "Mother England" have lit the artistic fire under him, inspiring him to his ultimate destiny: to a be an artist, "a minstrel in the gallery" or "a Baker Street muse," who will create his own work describing the world that has inspired him back to itself, painting it "a portrait of the queen," i.e. "Mother England": in short the world of his youthful experiences. And off into the crash and thunder of the electric denoument.

Ever wry, Anderson caps off this heartfelt personal statement of his aesthetic history and mission with the cynical observation that his destiny is at least part trap: "I can't get out!"

[Nonfatman]

Apr 6, 2011 18:14:29 GMT -5 jrpipik said:

To my mind "Baker Street Muse" is Ian Anderson's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." At first in a series of staccato images and then in more relaxed narrative verse he looks back on his years as a young musician in London, the various scenarios and stories that surround and ultimately form him as a songwriter and performer. The scene is a feast for the senses charged (as such things so often are for youth) with aggressive sexual energy.

The tales lead up to the first verse of "Mother England Reverie" and an older Anderson, wiser and more cynical accompanied by grim minor chords and a funereal drumbeat, getting about as close to baldly stating his artistic creed as an artist can without giving away the goods completely: "I want no top twenty funeral and a hundred grand."

Then the music leaps into spritely innocence again, a lone acoustic guitar accompanying the childlike enthusiasm which includes even a touch of madness. All the experiences of Baker Street summed up in the single image of "Mother England" have lit the artistic fire under him, inspiring him to his ultimate destiny: to a be an artist, "a minstrel in the gallery" or "a Baker Street muse," who will create his own work describing the world that has inspired him back to itself, painting it "a portrait of the queen," i.e. "Mother England": in short the world of his youthful experiences. And off into the crash and thunder of the electric denoument.

Ever wry, Anderson caps off this heartfelt personal statement of his aesthetic history and mission with the cynical observation that his destiny is at least part trap: "I can't get out!"

That's a great analysis, Jrpipik, and you're undoubtedly correct, in fact the title track shows his acute sense of self-consciousness as an artist. I feel, though, that the song is a little too self-important and condescending. Still, despite my reservations about the lyrics, I love the song and it just may be Tull's best heavy rock piece.

Requiem is another song where he seems very self-aware of his sensitivity as an artist who suffers a painful personal loss. But of course that is on the opposite end of the musical spectrum.

This Look into the Song subboard is something we were doing for awhile, and I'd like to see us get back into this type of song analysis, so if anyone would like to discuss a song, feel free to start a new thread here and we'll get into it!

Jeff

[likeparty]

www.tullpress.com/c9dec75.htm
The articles at TullPress.com are just an amazing compilation.
Here we are evaluating a song/album/artist that was completed right at 40 years ago. Even though I am about 5 years behind you guys in 2016.
It was quite a disappointment to read some of the articles and the apparent domination of the creative process that Ian held. I've met both Martin and Ian several times. I've queried Martin about the creative process. It is patently unfair...asking a man about what was in his mind, day to day activity as they were writing and recording...some 30 years on (this was mostly in the early 200x Tull timeline). He really claimed to have little recollection of who wrote what part of the guitar work and solos etc.
You guys did a really good job of delving into the Baker Street Muse. I'll be reading on and maybe can add a thought or two here or there.
Massively dedicated Tull fan...Minstrel Tour, Bursting Out, A, then a lull and more than 20 dates in the JTull.com era all over the US. Sad to see that era end, especially with Martin being less involved today.
Did I mention that Martin is my HERO?