Photo from here - http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_ZSLGTqUl7U/maxresdefault.jpg
When I say, Alice in Wonderland, what is the first thing
that comes to your mind? Mad hatter? Queen of Hearts? Rabbit Hole?
Hookah-smoker Caterpillar? Tea Party? And what else? A trippy trip down a kaleidoscopic
world? It is exactly these elements that made Alice and her Wonderland a very
familiar place for all the hipsters. Who would have thought Lewis Carroll’s
innocent tale for children (the article here -http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lewis-carrolls-shifting-reputation-9432378/-
says otherwise, but let us delve into it some other day when we are in the mood
for a “tea party”) would inspire so many psychedelic songs, the world he
created would become a happy place for the drug snuffling musicians of the 60s,
70s and the 80s?
When I first listened to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”
from their 60’s album “Surrealistic Pillow”, I assumed that it could be a description
of how Grace Slick’s mind imagined all the Wonderland materials. But what I didn’t
know was that there were several versions of the Wonderland as mused by many
other prominent bands of that era. I became a Beatles’ fan very recently and
after having listened to “I am the Walrus” song’s obscure lyrics, I anxiously
researched more about it and voila, or should I say goo ga joo, there it was
again – the Wonderland. Lennon was a huge fan of Alice book and often used the
characters in his songs. In fact, the song Lucy in Sky with Diamonds, was not
at all something he wrote after being inspired by his son Julian’s drawing, but
for LSD – the drug that causes the user to hallucinate the world to be made up
of radiant colors – a la Wonderland’s Rabbit Hole!
Then Aerosmith came up with Sunshine (this wasn't a psychedelic song, but since it belongs to the rock genre and I love Steven Tyler, I have added it here)! Steven Tyler was not
to be left alone. He tried his hands into writing something about this perceived
mad land. While the other writers resorted for writing about the place and the cornucopia
of weirdness of it, Tyler, the narcissistic yet affable Tyler wrote about how
Alice could be his friend!! Because let’s face it, he is not less of a
mad-hatter himself :P
It makes me wonder if Lewis himself was a believer of a parallel
universe where characters of his book are real. One’s imagination has no bounds
but how, oh how, did he come up with an entirely dopey world as the one in his
book! An interesting observation about this book that could have ignited the
minds of many a great musician into wandering off “through the looking glass”
is that it is not a utopia! It is not some place where everything and everyone
is happy. It is a place where there are hazy characters (Hookah Smoking
Caterpillar, what now?), mysteriously cloaked personalities (mad hatter), large
well-built creatures (White rabbit, the white effing rabbit), dull sadist
characters (the Queen of Hearts with her famous line “off with their heads”)
and yet this is the place someone high prefers to the real world! Ah the
mystery!
What really amused me is that there is a paradigm shift from
Alice in Wonderland being a children’s book which was written possibly to encourage
creativity to a place, an unhealthy place if I may, for the acid tripping rock
stars of the psychedelic era to dwell in, to avoid the reality of their lives
and responsibilities and to experience a universe of falseness! Whatever it is,
Alice would always remain relevant to pop culture. She won’t fade, she won’t
let anything faze her and she never will be restricted to a “phase” of a
culture! Alice, please inspire more and more musicians, may the creativities
flow.
P.S – Here is a list of songs that were written on Alice and
her Wonderland - http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/yradish/classic-rock-songs-inspired-by-alice-in-wonderland.html
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