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Jim Capaldi started writing this in Morocco, where he was getting ready for a movie with actor Michael J. Pollard that never got made. Said Capaldi: "Pollard and I would sit around writing lyrics all day, talking about Bob Dylan and the Band, thinking up ridiculous plots for the movie. Before I left Morocco, Pollard wrote in my book 'The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.' For me, it summed him up. He had this tremendous rebel attitude. He walked around in his cowboy boots, his leather jacket. At the time he was a heavy little dude. It seemed to sum up all the people of that generation who were just rebels. The 'Low Spark,' for me, was the spirit, high-spirited. You know, standing on a street corner. The low rider. The 'Low Spark' meaning that strong undercurrent at the street level." (thanks, Adam - Lake Forest, IL)
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The Star Shooting up out of the Ground - Children Playing with musical Toys in obscurity to eventually Shoot Up Out of the Ground to become guitar wielding superstars, they all get caught in the business net and Don't WorryToo Much, don't doubt it, if you get to this level It'll Happen To You as well... The Gun is the financial bullet that many mid-range earning artists get shot by, even though they may appear to be quite large and successful. Even the Stones had to go into Exile to escape
financial death. I agree with Kim, it'd be a desert island pick for me too. This is one of my favorite all time songs by one of the most musically advanced groups ever in rock and roll, that last note still renders me immobile for a few minutes after it screams through my mind....
'Low Spark...' has haunted me all my adult life because I carry a lot of credit card debt and the interest I pay really limits my freedom. It is too high a price to pay in life! It also carries an anti-corporate message admonishing the listener to not fall into the trap of consumer debt as I have. The idea of coming to the end of my life, being granted one final wish, and asking for a second chance is my idea of hell. As a recovered addict I am learning to not spend my time in fantasy, regretting my past, and dreaming about reliving it and making different choices. Winwood has, throughout his career, embraced spiritual themes and anti addiction themes as many musicians do; Blind Faith, 'Come down off your throne and leave your body alone', "Low spark", and later on his solo album, 'Take Me To A Higher Love'.
I've never thought the song had a gay meaning, IMHO the low spark of high heeled boys is just a metaphor for rock music in general. Like the old saying 'When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake' it is not violence that will lay to rest our capitalist system, but the revolutionary content in the message of modern rock. May the walls crumble!
Robert Blume
The sound is not the easiest on the ears; it can be an acquired taste for some. That distinctive sound was heard on a lot of albums at the time. Probably like the mellotron- an instrument of it's time. I haven't heard it on anything in recent years.
the first verse could refer to the halucanations (star coming out of the ground), as well as the great sound the guitar makes to take you away?
the second verse, could refer to the high risk by taking such drugs "percentage you're paying is too high-priced". the man buying the new car could be the drug dealer proffiting off your dreams or chances of achieving them becoming less in doin harder drugs
third verse: could be talking about if you were able to start anew, with no addictions to these such drugs, would you take it.
fourth verse: you could look at it like him talkin to his choice of drug, asking him would it help him if he needed it? or just keep abusing him and take him for "the ride" and his body may suffer but hell still have his spirit?
makes sense or no?
Some suggest he meant bands such as "T-Rex" and "Sparks". One such group the band did hold in high esteem was Mott the Hoople, who were wrongly categorized as a glam band because they did one tour wearing the thigh high boots. Traffic knew better, beacuse the guys in Mott the Hoople were just everyday blokes, no different than you or me...with the exception they wrote great music with intelligent and witty lyrics. (Just listen to their "Mott" album. Pure genius!!!
Bill
So, if I gave you one last chance to ask Steve a question, what would you ask?
Of course, we asked what "Low Spark" was about. He said, "Basically, Vietnam." They used metaphors.
Freedom of choice, and Anti government. This couldn't be farther from the target, they were one of many Steve Windwood creations. If you follow him through time you will find that the music his bands produced were all about getting high and freedom of the mind.
First lets get the lyrics correct:
"The percentage you're paying is too high-priced,
While you're living beyond all your means.
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams".
This could be interpeted that the junkie is paying for his death. The man in the suit is living off the dreams he supplies the junkie, kind of like a "Superfly" if anyone remembers.
But today you just READ (not "Swear") that the man was shot dead
By a gun that didn't make any noise.
But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest,
Was the low spark of high-heeled boys.
Ask any recovering addict about the relation between a needle and a gun, they both can hurt and kill.
When you use the correct lyric "READ" instead of "SWEAR" it takes away the implication that the word "SWEAR" implies that it is a rumor or a hope!
But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest,
Was the low spark of high-heeled boys.
There are lots of slang words in the drug world, lets just cover what we have so far.
Needle = Spike, Works(with the spoon, etc..),Nail, and "High Heel"
Heroin = Junk, Horse, China Doll,and "BOY"
With this being said, I stand very confident that Traffic was doing what they always have done, just like "Dear Mr. Fantasy"and Rock and Roll Stew, Back in the HIGH LIFE.
Oh by the way, Eric Clapton didnt write "COCAINE", J.J. Cale wrote and sang it. He also wrote and sang "Call Me The Breeze" , then Lynard Skynard produced it.
The good thing is that music allows us to interpet and relate too, How ever our frame of mind or passion.
I think it currently describes John McCain and the entire Bush empire. The gun didn't make any noise and many of us are suffering from the 'low sparks' (underground sabbotage) of the 'high-heeled' (rich) boys. Am I paranoid? It's possible, but I'm wondering why some people are SO rich and getting richer and others of us are -well - I haven't screwed people and I haven't make that million - and probably won't.
I saw them in 72 preforming this song in Santa Barbra ca or Santa Monica I cant remember..
I was always haunted by that closing melody
Cream was the white creamy color of smack in a spoon being prepared for a hit. Didn't Clapton write a song about coke? Need I gone own?
Yes, it is all a matter of interpretation but compare the lyrics to the writer ... often a dope addict.
Another thing to remember is that they were all stoners and alot of profound lyrics are just an opportunity to find a rhyme and maybe sound profound or just creat confusion.
Think T-Rex- glam rock as opposed to the Woodstock era. It was all a very self-centered time but at least we were advocating social change. Can they same be said for todays youth? They are self-centered without any community virtue. They are materialistic. The man may not be wearing a suit but he's making more profit now that he ever did.
Great song anyway.
The gun that didn't make any noise: assassinations are often done with silenced weapons, so the person who said the gun that didn't make any noise was a gun with a silencer, is correct. So the man in the suit is (or was) assassinated.
But a better question is: "Who is the man in the suit?" and why did he buy a new car and why do we care? It is someone important enough to assassinate, but to understand who he is we need to understand the theme, the epigraph that was left by Pollard, who penned it: "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys."
A high heeled boy is quite simply, one of two things: a woman, or a man dressed as one. Men don't wear high heels generally unless they are in drag. What is meant by it varies from one stanza to the next - in allegory the simplest explanation works the best in the context of the tale being told. So - the man in the suit (he's wearing a suit NOW!) is assassinated by a silenced gun, but what killed him was not the bullet, because he was already singled out...
by the women, or by the men in drag, or by both. In this case, it is both. There is one public figure whom we all know now, had been assassinated, very publicly, and the reason for his death was explored in great depth by the Warren Commission and deemed to be the work of one man: that man in the suit would be John F. Kennedy, Jr. Since then the conspiracy theories have mounted up and up and this song gives a key to what actually happened, as does "Crossfire" by Jim Garrison - J.F.K. was set up for assassination by the transvestite and closeted homosexual J. Edgar Hoover, and he was carrying on an affair with Marilyn Monroe who herself died under mysterious circumstances not long afterward.
Both definitions of "high heeled boys" come into play here assassination. The conspiracy investigation yielded information about silenced weapons rather than the rifle used by Oswald. The spark is an ignition, just as the ignition in the opening of the song:
If you see something that looks like a star
The launching of a nuclear device, which was the Cuban Missile Crisis for which the Kennedies had to make a decision whether or not to bomb Cuba and go to (nuclear) war with the Soviet Union.
And it's shooting up out of the ground: land based ICBM
And your head is spinning from a loud guitar:
There is only one loud guitar that makes your head spin and everyone who lived through this era knows whose guitar it is: Jimi Hendrix's.
The song is about the events that shaped the entire era of the 1960's, the women's rights movement, the formation of public homosexual identity which had not existed before, the assassination of JFK, giving the root cause of the assassination, etc. Not so hard when you have enough context.
~ Veronica, Islamorada, FL
analogy (plant=person) was actually carried out in ritual all over pagan Europe and western Asia
for centuries or more. The myth is that the goddess's lover or son (the earth's gift of
plants as food) must be sacrificed (cut down)
and ritually eaten. The person/plant will return in the spring reincarnated (grown from seed) to be sacrificed yet again. Many experts theorize that a human representative actually was ritually killed and dismembered, as the barley grew to its adult form and then was cut down in the field and processed to become food.
from the profit he's made on your dreams." The theme persists today in Media-jolt free day and "No buy day" and the slogans they have like "Your living is the factory, the product being manufactured is you the consumer." The extreme of this is the likes of the Matrix film but instead of providing electricity, people are farmed for targeted consumerism. This is how I have always seen "...the man was shot dead
by a gun that didn't make any noise.
But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest
was the low spark of high-heeled boys." like in a Matrix but to grow consumers. The high heeled boys are the advertising execs. The RON (Reality or nothing) is another expression of the same theme.
http://au.geocities.com/newbie_m50/human_cultural_framework.html
This ties in with reference to "shooting up out of the ground".
Basically, this may have been the first "anti-nuclear" rock song. I've seen a lot of Steve Winwood in Austin in the last year, both live and on Austin CIty Limits, but haven't heard Low Spark preformed. I think it's just as seminal as Mr. Fantasy and hope to hear a current rendition someday. Comments welcome, has anyone else hears the nuclear angle? -Dave Bowman
Back to Traffic, Steve Winwood is multi talented as well, his voice has a Ray Charles quality to it. Dave Mason was also in an early verson of Traffic as well
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this whole album rocks if i was on a desert island i could hang if i had this and one or two other albums