Album: Even In The Quietest Moments (1977)

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• History recalls how great the fall can be
  While everybody's sleeping, the boats put out to sea
  Borne on the wings of time
  It seemed the answers were so easy to find
  "To late," the prophets (profits) cry
  The island's sinking, let's take to the sky
  
  Called the man a fool, striped him of his pride
  Everyone was laughing up until the day he died
  And though the wound went deep
  Still he's calling us out of our sleep
  My friends, we're not alone
  He waits in silence to lead us all home
  
  So tell me that you find it hard to grow
  Well I know, I know, I know
  And you tell me that you've many seeds to sow
  Well I know, I know, I know
  
  Can you hear what I'm saying
  Can you see the parts that I'm playing
  "Holy Man, Rocker Man, Come on Queenie,
  Joker Man, Spider Man, Blue Eyed Meanie"
  
  So you found your solution
  What will be your last contribution?
  "Live it up, rip it up, why so lazy?
  Give it out, dish it out, let's go crazy,
  Yeah!" Writer/s: RICHARD DAVIES, ROGER HODGSON
  Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 30

• Jh from LondonI was always struck how similar the "History recalls ..." bit is to The Beatles' Fool On The Hill. The instrumentation and pulsing piano chords are just the same. Given the name of the song, "Fool's Overture", I often wondered if this arrangement was done as a tribute.
• Also Anonymous from FloridaThis is my interpretation, but I don't think there needs to be deep lyrics or any real meaning. The point of the song is that the fool extends an idea and weaves it into a narrative; the fool believes that history is one long linear path, when if one considers it, is untrue. History can be non-linear. Many things occur at different points, but to a fool it is all correlated, and for that, to them, whoever they might be, wherever they might be, it is a beauty of life, all one domino line formed to topple. Maybe it might not make sense to one looking out from the glass dome, though to a fool, it all relates, it all adds up. That's why the lyrics are confusing, or conflicting, or simple. Because it is all fabricated fantasy piled together from the idolisation of historical figures to weave a narrative.
  
  But I can't really say much. I just like Supertramp, unfortunately.
• Kevin from OntarioFirst part about Churchill, second part like Steve from Ballwin said, Jesus Christ. Third part is coming from the guy singing the song
• Paul from LancashireI agree fully with Glonkman. A real deep thinker would maintain a thread and at least offer some solution. These lyrics are gibberish and at no time does Roger ever mention Rick Davies or what input he had in it. Simple, confused words made to fit, not the genius he would like to be known as. If you want real meaning from lyrics, try The Beatles - Let it be. Three essential to life meanings. Music to this track is simply wonderful though
• Anonymous from CaliforniaGotta love that it means many different things to so many souls. Sent with RESPECT for all the fools.
• I'm The Fool from UsaThe lyrics of this song are perhaps the best ever written. Beautiful music also.
• Glonkman from TiptonHad he spent time honing the lyrics, he would have had something to say, but, regrettably, he simply put three half-baked notions together to create meaningless drivel that he attempted (and still attempts) to pass off as having some deep meaning. The fact that he cannot explain the lyrics is enough to dismiss them as collective gibberish. Too bad, because the music is nice to listen to.
• Dave A Jacobs from Martinez, San Francisco Bay Area, CaliforniaI was a seventeen year high school student when I heard this song for the first time. At first, all it meant to me was a good test of loudspeakers. The lyrics spoke so much more to me after that. Was the song about Nevelle Chamberlain's "peace in our time"?. Maybe, but I thought it was more likely about how GB threw Churchill out of office right after the war, with no more thought than one would give to flushing a just soiled square of toilet paper. A sorry, maybe even despicable, ending for a man who saved Western democracy. If it wasn't for Churchill's resolve, it's likely that all of Western Europe would have eventually fallen to Stalin (the Soviet Union would have eventually defeated Germany, and rolled all the way to Spain, and then some). It didn't help his reelection chances when, after the war, the United States did everything it could, from denying GB aid under the Marshall Plan to taking Egypt's side during the Suez Canal crisis. Yeah I know those came later, but it drove the last nail into his political coffin. Who ever said life was fair?
• Charlie Baker from UkGreat song: in one sense it is evocative, moving, poigniant and profound; however, we must remember the title "Fool's Overture". We are lead down the garden path and given some pretty big springboards to jump off - ramping up emotion, nationalism with references to Churchill, perhaps Chamberlain, the Lend-Lease program, Jerusalem...then "Dreamer" is played. When asked about this song, Roger Hodgson studiously avoids explaining what this song is about. Rather, he explains how it makes him feel when he sings it with an orchestra, and he reminds us that he stitched it together from three dissonant parts writen at different times with different meanings. Individually parts of the song could be about nationalism, Churhill/Chamberlain, England's rise and demise, the US's empire busting noose around the UK, personal growth, destiny, but together and with reference to the last verse, are meaningless. It is called the "The Fool's Overture". We are the fools if we try to read too much into this overture other than what WE want it to mean.
• Sven from Rusa ItalyOne of my favorite songs, and I was lucky enough to hear it and see it live in a concert in Hamburg, Germany (Open Air) in 1982. The closing scenes of the song with the bombing, Hitler, and Churchill's words still resonates in my memories. It was a time when the German youth were still dealing with the aftermath of the war and being considered the losers. After many years though, I found a different meaning in the song. It was not so much about 'just' Churchill and fighting the Germans (or that matter the Royal Family), it was more about the general futility of war, politics, and power structures.
  
  I worry that those who see this as a great historical bravo for Churchill might miss the message, or even be what this song is about. History is written by the winners, one needs to remember that Churchill went to the USA before the Blitz started, and asked the US Congress (in a very passionate speech) to act outside the Monroe doctrine. The USA congress listened and provided a financial backing to get the British war-effort going. If I am not mistaken, Great Britain had to pay back the loan, which was concluded by Tony Blair in the early 2000s. War was always on the cards for Great Britain and the USA, but internal structures, such as the Royal Family in GB or industrial machinery in USA (i.e. Ford and other industrialists provided Hitler with vast number of products - including vehicles, trucks, machines etc.) prevented an open acknowledgement of support. Pearl Harbor changed this, and now it was possible to fully enter the war, with the added bonus to prevent communism (Hitler was already not able to reach Moscow and the Soviets would eventually be coming to Europe) from coming to USA and GB (hence the support of the industry to enter the war).
• Theo from Uddevalla Sweden Hi! It just dawned upon that the melody in the beginning of Fools Overture has a striking resemblance with Gustav Holsts movement "Venus" (The Peacebringer) from The Planets. This can't possibly be a coincidence? Tell me if I'm wrong! If they decided to "borrow" the theme from Holst, then it's a ingenious move!! I've heard both pieces of music so many years but it hasn't really occured to be until just now... A small - but yet - a mindblowing experience.
• Ian from EdinburghA section of the instrumental part of the song was used by Channel 4 as the theme for their coverage of The Masters golf in the mid 80s
• Mary Anne from TexasI totally and completely agree with Allan from Canada. The song is ALL Winston Churshill. It fits well with Churchill's documented history - beginning with his reputation at the start of WW2 due to his experience in the Boer War and the Great War. This song is RICH with layers of meaning. A big THANK YOU to Winnie.
  
  During the first 2 to 3 minutes of Fool's Overture, we hear an excerpt of Churchill's famous speech to Parliament in May 1940: "We shall go on to the end...we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...."
  
  By September 1940, Britons began sustaining something they call "The Blitz," which consisted of nightly bombing raids that occurred for 8 long months. Britons were keeping their children off of undetonated bombs buried in the streets near their houses after a raid. Some had nervous breakdowns. There were severe food shortages. There was in-fighting among the British leadership and there was the Fifth Column who supported Hitler. Churchill very bravely called for a vote of confidence in Parliament in the middle of the Blitz to see exactly how much support he might have for the hard decisions he was going to have to make ahead. Churchill lived on about 3 hours of sleep a day strategizing on how to win the war. He "took the sky" with the RAF after many battleships were sunk. "The island was sinking" in bombing raids, so a ship full of British children - many of them sent without their parents - to try to save them in case Britain fell - was headed for Canada, but it, too, was sunk by a German bomb and never arrived. No survivors.
  
  The US gave Britain a supportive but lackluster response during the 8 month Blitz and only got involved in the war in December 1941 because Pearl Harbor was bombed - which was 3 months after the Blitz bombings stopped. The US could not have won that war without Great Britain's resolve guided by Churchill's leadership.
  
  I think that the explosion movement of the Fool's Overture represents the chaos of a bombing raid. The search lights rotating through the air and the audience while this movement played are the searchlights used to find planes flying overhead in the dark during a raid (searchlights were used before radar was invented). The flames in the background on the stage was the aftermatch of such a raid. I often wonder what took the US so long to get involved - and I understood why John Helliwell sometimes played the Star Spangled Banner on his saxophone in the middle of the explosion movement of Fool's Overture. Churchill tried many times to get the US involved earlier as he watched his people suffer.
  
  I was a young American airman stationed on an RAF base when Fool's Overture was a hit and met many people who lived through the Blitz, which made this song so much more poignant for me - and still does today. I heard many of their stories....
  
  As Churchill once said, "One always measures friendships by how they show up in bad weather." We really do need to take better care of our allies....
• Chip from TexasI agree with Allan. All Churchill. Thought this from the moment I heard the song. One of my favorites of all time.
• Robert P. from White Rock, CanadaI've listened to this song, and album, since its initial release.
  I agree with Allen from Canada for the most part, except that I always thought the man 'Called a Fool' was Neville Chamberlain, mostly for his foreign policy of appeasement. After Hitler invaded Poland, he was mostly blamed for NOT preparing Britain for war, and was subsequently replaced by Churchill. The rest of course, is history...
• Allan from CanadaI think it's all Churchill. "Called the man a fool:" he was a "hero" in the Boer War (escaping capture), First Lord of the Admiralty in WW1, but in the inter-war years he was relegated to the back benches, basically with no influence. Why was he a fool? His was the lone voice warning about Germany's rearmement and encouraging Britain to build up arms, but was derided as a belligerent warmonger, an out-of-date old soldier looking for the action of an older time.
  
  "Boats put out to sea" - Dunkirk? (catch the movie); "take to the skies" - Battle of Britain? "Up until the day he died" - despite his war service he was still thought of as a bit of a dinosaur, a throwback to a time gone by. So where has that spirit gone? Everyone's looking out for themselves; "live it up, let's go crazy." A series of unremarkable Prime Ministers (did Roger foresee the free-for-all Thatcher years?!), we need someone with backbone.
  
  I have played this album so many times, working all-nighters, and have had years to mull it over. Am I reading too much into this?
• Thierry from FranceI don't know if anyone ever noticed that the theme played at 1:00 in the video above was taken from Gustav Holst's Planets, and more precisely Venus, the Bringer of Peace ( a very appropriate use for this song) at 2:21 in this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKvG0RU4_fI . Sorry if this has already been said. Roger is not only talented but has a real great knowledge of any kind of music.
• Joe from Toronto, OnNeo, you do realize that Neville Chamberlain was a conservative. And FDR was a liberal. You can't define everything with broad stroke labels. Or live your life in paranoia. I doubt that is what this song is about.
• Neo from Waterville, MnWhether this song was some attempt to paint Neville (the cowardly lion) Chamberlain as some sort of positive figure or not, I cannot say. What I will say is that Winston Churchill was a God send and savior to the western world, for if he had not wakened the Chamberlain's of the time, evil would not have been defeated.
  That same evil exists and grows yet today and it seeks the same end as Hitler did ....world power and annihilation of the Jewish people. Liberals need to awaken from their slumber, nobody likes war, but evil exists and if not confronted, 2/3 of the world population will be victims. I chose Winston Churchill.....and that's who I think of when I hear this song.
• Tom from Ottawa, OnI just wanted to add that the song was not meant to paint Chamerlain as fool, but to honor his memory. A noble man with noble intentions, he it was just in the wrong place and time in history
• Tom from Ottawa, OnThe song is about Neville Chamberlain, who was derided as a fool for trying to appease the Nazi's during to lead up to WWII. Camberlain resigned after the fall of France and the Battle of Britain was about to begin. Churchill took over as Prime Minister. Chamberlain was dead within a few months from cancer
• Roy from Milton, OnI think it's fairly obvious it's about Winston Churchill. In addition to his famous speech, a lot of the lyrics refer to the WWII struggle in England. "The island's sinking, let's take to the sky..." refers to London being heavily bombed and Churchill's fight using the RAF (which he was criticized for).
• E.j. from Corona, CaI love Fool's Overture. I think the song is about Jesus Christ. Roger Hodgson is still touring around the world. I saw him recently here in California. He still can sing. He plays with a guy named Aaron McDonald who is an outstanding musician.
• Steve from Ballwin, MoI always associated it with Jesus Christ as the Fool. "Called the man a fool, stripped him of his pride, everyone was laughing until the day he died. Though the wound went deep. Still he's calling us out of our sleep. We're not alone. He waits in silence to lead us all home..."
• Drdos from St Louis, MoThis song is about when you have had enough of this world and you ride the whipering wind to the dream world within each of us. You must blow up the world of what is precieved to be self reality to see true reality. Most of the people in the world are asleep and few of us see our island sinking and if you do you may take to the sky within. It will only happen in quietest of moments. Remember that you silly fool for you didn't live that golden rule for once your through with this world there is another waiting there for those that want to see their souls again.
  
  Zen Power Dreamer
• S.d. from Denver, CoJimbo, I can't say for certain, but I've always been convinced it's a metaphor the foolishness of war.
• Donna from Boston, FlOne of the best! Brings back memories of days gone by. The 1970's had some really talented musical compositions. Supertramp is highly qualified as one of the greats!
• Michael from Okla. City, OkAwesome song by Rodger Hojdson on acoustic guitar & vocals. Michael, OKC, OK, 4-24-08.
• Jimbo from Sequim, WaTo whom do they refer to in the song? Is it an actual person? I've heard Einstein, Billy Mitchell, etc. suggested. Or is it some sort of metaphorical person? Help!
  
• Rob from Vancouver, Canada'Crime of the Century' and 'Even in the Quietest Moments' were both big sellers in Canada. They didn't dent the American market until 'Breakfast in America'. Great Band. Put on a phenomenal live performance at Empire Stadium aroung '80 or '81.

More Songfacts:

Won't Get Fooled AgainThe Who

"Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who is about a revolution, but it doesn't have a happy ending, since in the end the new regime becomes just like the old one. Pete Townshend thought that whoever was in power was destined to become corrupt.

Let's Stay TogetherAl Green

Al Green's commitment classic "Let's Stay Together" launched Tina Turner's comeback when she covered the song in 1983.

Mellow YellowDonovan

The "electrical bananas" in the Donovan song "Mellow Yellow" were vibrators.

Don't Tell MeMadonna

Madonna's hit "Don't Tell Me" was written by her brother-in-law, Joe Henry, who has produced albums by Hugh Laurie and Bonnie Raitt.

I Shot The SheriffEric Clapton

Eric Clapton's only Hot 100 #1, either solo or with one of his many bands, was his cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff."

Jailhouse RockElvis Presley

The name "Schoolhouse Rock," which was a series of educational cartoons, was a play on "Jailhouse Rock," the title of an Elvis Presley song.

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