And so it was that later... as the miller told his tale

...that her face, at first just ghostly
turned a whiter shade of pale

 

Haven't we all been in this exact mood at some time? I know I have.

 

Up until I had access to the lyrics, I thought it was about a waitress in a bar who put acid in the drinks of the guys in a band that was doing a gig there. Here's how I heard it phonetically:

We skipped the life Fandango
Turn cartwheels 'cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of seasick;
The crowd called out for more

The room was humming harder;
And the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink,
The waitress brought a tray,

And so it was the lady
As the mirror told its tale
. . .

 

i never tried to make sense of anything it sounded like,
just figured it wasn't anything that was supposed to have to.
liked the sound of it that way.

i did kind of think it was about someone relating an experience or their fantasy about their experience.
and always i hope, when a lyric is unclear to me, that its about something less mundane,
some world less streight-jacketed by hatred of logic and imagination.

always thought it was an annonimous, unclear, ghostly face, that turned a light shade of pale,
not neccessariy a human or humanoid face, nor of nor possessing any gender at all.

kind of thought the setting was a swaret in a rented room in a railroad station,
i think in my mind i'm bashing a couple of differnt things together.

i just never felt like anything had to relate directly, be tied to the limitations, of anything we're familiar with.
humans are this earth, every place else, each has its own forms.

the whole sound, i thought, was an attempt to be 'other worldly'.
dissapointing to me to find the lyric to be anything but.

 

Yes, I know. As I said, "Up until I had access to the internet and lyrics . . ."

As it turns out, Keith Reid, the guy who co-formed the group, wrote the song. And despite the alleged reference to The Miller's Tale, from The Canterbury Tales, Reid said: "I'd never read The Miller's Tale in my life. Maybe that's something that I knew subconsciously, but it certainly wasn't a conscious idea for me to quote from Chaucer, no way."

 

Love this song......................

 

well that was one of the associations i made in my mind. the other was a bunch of peeps sitting around stoned, telling each other scary stories.
(maybe that's what he had in mind, or was inspired by?)
it certainly seemed like it was going for that ambiance.

i also liked 'in a white room, with black curtains at the station' for my obvious association with that line.
no idea why i assocate the two songs with each other though, other then perhaps, another kind of life kind of ambiance.

 

Von Miller!

 

And here he is 39 years later: