· “Watching The Wheels” is interpreted by many as an autobiographical song composed by the ex-Beatle John Lennon. Lennon was a what he called a "househusband" between 1975 and 1980. He retired from the music industry and concentrated on raising his son Sean. According to him, people were confused by his choice
· The song was written in 1980 and was first released in the US and then in the UK, the same year as a part of the album Double Fantasy. The genre of the song is pop rock and it has a length of 3.30 minutes.
·
According to a Lennon
aficionado, this song was written when he was addicted to watching a popular
late-night religious television program called, 'The 700 Club'.
· When he sings "No longer riding on the merry-go-round" Lennon seems to be talking about no longer clinging to his youth. The song is about crossing from a prolonged youth into adulthood as a father
o
and self-awareness as a
middle aged human being who has come face to face with his own mortality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVXR2LYeFBI
1. From the very outset of the song Lennon creates a dichotomy: it’s a song about “people vs. I”. Then, who is he singing this song for – One gets the idea that this is meant for like-mined people. The term ‘People’ can be read as a vague generalization or a direct criticism of the dominant ideology of the White Anglo- Saxon Protestant West. It is in that West, sayings such as “idle mind is the devil’s workshop” were created and novels such as Robinson Crusoe were prescribed as course material for the shaping of budding manhood.
5.
However,
the person in the song, presumably Lennon himself, is not idle – he is “[d]oing
what he is doing” :
a. Watching shadows on the wall
b. Watching the wheels go round and round
6. But none of the things done by the lyrical person meets with the approval of “people”. “People” are concerned for the well-being of lyrical persona and issues warnings to “save” him “from ruin”. What he is doing – retiring and raising a child which is considered as primarily women’s work – is considered unproductive and slothful. And we know sloth is one of the seven deadly sins in Christianity.
9. The lyrical persona assures “people” that he is “okay” but far from being reassured by the assurance, they look at the him in a way he terms as “kind of strange”. People have come to the conclusion that the lyrical persona has become odd, and oddness is something society frowns upon and is something society is often determined to change. Hence we have witch hunts and the burning of heretics.
1. The second stanza too begin in the same way the first does with the exception of “crazy” being replaced by “lazy”. This time the accusation is that the lyrical persona is dreaming his life away. In the third line, instead of issuing warnings, this time they are offering “all kinds of advice/ designed to enlighten” the lyrical persona. There is a wealth of ironic humour in the 3rd and 4th lines of this stanza. Once again the lyrical persona tries to reassure the concerned ‘people’ – he tells them that he is “doing fine watching shadows on the wall”.
6. In the title, he was satisfied with watching the wheels go by– if we are to take the term wheels literally then we might read it as an example of synecdoche – wheels stand for vehicles; instead of being in them and travelling all over the world as he used to, the lyrical persona is content to watch other people doing what he used to. He could very well be seeing what he used to be in them. People on the other hand seem to think that the lyrical persona is being childish in his withdrawal from playing the ball as indicated by the use of “boy” to refer to the lyrical persona.
8.
In
this stanza, instead of watching the “real thing” he is content to watch their
shadows on the wall.
9. I don’t know how much of a Classicist Lennon is but this reminds me instantly of the Allegory of the Cave Plato uses in the Republic to illustrate the difference between his world of Ideas and the world he lived in. If this is the case, then there is a deep philosophical implication in the reference to watching shadows. People think that they are watching the real thing. However, the lyrical persona knows what people are seeing is nothing but a shadow “twice removed from reality” as Plato puts it. The entire world is a world of shadows of the world of Ideas and Lennon knows it and he looks at what is in front of him with that understanding. So, the irony of people who have no idea that they are shadows and what they see shadows designing to enlighten a person who has reached a much higher state of self-realization is hinted at here.
1. In the third stanza, the lyricist return to “wheels” and this time they are going “round and round” indicating the monotonous repetitive nature of life. Caught in the rat race we are hardly able to breath let alone philosophize the nature of our existence.
3. One has to step outside the grid to see what is happening within the grid – this is what Ascetic Siddhartha did. It is not my intention to compare John Lennon with Ascetic Siddhartha, but both had so much and it is in having so much that had made them appreciate simple life. No longer caught in the rat race, the lyrical persona is able to appreciate what he had missed out when he himself was going round and round on/in the wheels
5. In using the term merry-go-round the lyricist implies that the time he spent riding wheels was quite a lot of fun, but it was the kind of fun better suited to children. On has to grow up sometime and leave childhood behind, so he “had to let it go. The use of the term “had to let it go” implies that the decision to step back was not without pain.
1. Still people are not ready to take his word so they keep on asking questions to clear their own confusion. Once again he assures that his stepping outside of the grid is not a problem but a solution to a problem. Still they think they know better and pity him thinking he has lost his mind. He once again tells them that there is no need to rush about
5. The second part of the last line once again hints at deep self-awareness –“Doing time” is a slang term for serving a prison sentence. He seems to have understood that life is a sort of imprisonment – we are trapped within our body and one needs to sit and meditate on how to correct that situation instead of rushing around like headless chicken.
8.
Once again, there is something Platonic in
this seemingly simple statement. In one of Socratic Dialogues related by Plato,
Aristophanes, the Greek comic playwright states that human babies were beings
from the world of Ideas trapped by the honey of generation into being born in
the same way cheese is used to trap mice in a trap.
9. According to Aristophanes this is why babies cry at birth. They resent the imprisonment within a human body and they want to break free and return to their original pure energy form – which is a little like how Buddha describes genesis in Agganga Suuthraya. At this point Lennon seems to see himself as someone “betrayed by the honey of generation” and had become trapped and imprisoned within his body.
1. In the penultimate section of the
song the third section is repeated verbatim:
2. The last part of the song is a repetition of last tine of the third section of the song: I had to let go. It is repeated three times. The repetition points to the pressure of being on the wheel and the deep desire to step off for the sake of self-preservation. Incidentally, letting go – both literally and metaphorically - is one of the key aspects of Buddhism in order to realize Nirvana. Here, he is letting go of the blatantly materialistic aspects of his life in order to find himself. Many of us are struggling to obtain the things they believe will define and complete them and Lennon who had it all, while defending his life choice, is trying to tell them what people think that they needed was nothing but delusion for life itself is a shadow on the wall.“Help!”, “ Nowhere Man”, “Working Class Hero” and “Imagine” – some of his other songs along the same line of thoughts
5. Interestingly, Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman while Lennon was signing his copy of Double Fantasy. Later, Chapman was recorded in police custody reciting the line "People say I'm crazy" from the song “Watching the wheels”.
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