White Room - Cream (Lyric Pete Brown)

WHITE ROOM - by Cream
(Music Jack Bruce and Lyrics Pete Brown)

In the white room with black curtains near the station.

Pete Brown

Black-roof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.
Silver horses run down moonbeams in your dark eyes.
Dawn-light smiles on you leaving, my contentment.

I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines;
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves.

You said no strings could secure you at the station.
Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows.
I walked into such a sad time at the station.
As I walked out, felt my own need just beginning.

I'll wait in the queue when the trains come back;
Lie with you where the shadows run from themselves.

At the party she was kindness in the hard crowd.

cream - white room

Consolation for the old wound now forgotten.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.

I'll sleep in this place with the lonely crowd;
Lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves.

Love the lyrics of Pete Brown - especially this one. Pete Brown was a poet in the early 60's, touring on the National Poetry and Jazz circuit with poets such as Danny Abse, Michael Hamburger, Alan Brown John, Edwin Brock, Thomas Blackburn, John Heath Stubbs, Douglas Hill, Ted Hughes, Anselm Hollo, Bernard Kops, Laurie Lee Christopher Logue, Sike Milligan, Adrian Mitchell, Dom Moraes. Peter Porter, Jeremy Robson, Vernon Scanell, Jon Silkin, John Smith, Stevie Smith, Nathaniel Tarn. It reads like a who's who of British Poetry in the  60's. Some of his poems appear in Poems From Poetry and Jazz by Jeremy Robson - Panther (available from Amazon). They also appeared in 60's anthologies like C'Mon Everybody - The Poetry of Dance and Love Love Love (The New Love Poetry) Edited by Peter Roche. Apart from writing some of the classic lyrics for Cream and Jack Bruce (Songs for  a Tailor, Pete Brown also had his own Bands in the 70's - Pete Brown's Battered Ornaments and Pete Brown and Piblokto.

People have interpreted the lyric variously on blogs as being about Vietnam, or Clapton's drug addiction. The meanings of songs (especially in the 60's) were often open ended in terms of meaning. Multiple meanings are all possible and part of the fun but there is nothing specific in the song relating to Vietnam and Clapton didn't write the lyric and also his drug addiction came after Cream.

Pete Brown himself has said in interviews - "I like to think that people can still relate to those songs. I've come a long way since then, and I write in different ways. But "White Room" is a state of mind, as well as a description of a particular place and time."

And "How did you come up with the words to "White Room"?
Did you write them knowing what the music was beforehand?
The music was written first. I had one stab at a lyric that had
nothing to do with the final song. It was called "Cinderella's Last
Goodnight" -- it was about some doomed hippie girl. Jack didn't like
it, which was fair enough. Then I found this eight-page poem I'd
written that had things about white rooms and other stuff in it. I
worked that into a lyric that went with the atmosphere and meter of
the song. Jack and I always had that chemistry, the telepathy of
knowing what was needed." Pete Brown

Taking the lyric at face value, the song  is set in London "No Gold Pavements" with the joys and sorrows of relationship being contrasted with the starkenss of the the room and railway station (often used symbolically and realistically in blues material to suggest splitting up with some one and resultant loneliness). The room is White, with Black curtains, black roofed and no illusions as in the phrase about no gold pavements. Contrasted with the lover "Silver horses, run down moonbeams in your dark eyes". The protagonist is reflecting on the leaving and longing for a return a common enough plot for a song but with great and economical imagery not usually found in pop songs, that creates a sense of mystery. Obviously as this was based on an 8 page poem, the music obviously dictated the brevity. There are no wasted words, parred to the image and this brevity reflects the bleak, no frills, mood of the piece. It is videophonic without a video! You can see it and feel it.

In a blog discussing this lyric with some thinking the leaving the station was about a character going to Vietnam (this was an English lyric) - well you could se it that way but there's nothing to tie it to that specifically. It could have a drug interpretation with rail lines being pertinent but Brown's work and this lyric is rooted in the more serious poetic culture mentioned above. In the  same blog some discouts those interpretations -

"A lot of people think this song is about Vietnam -
White room - white house and other little metaphors within the song, not to mention it was right in that time period, but i read that Jack Bruce and Pete Brown wrote this song about Brown's flat and it's surroundings and a longing for this girl. If you look at the descriptive words you'll notice that when talking about the outside world and everything in it, they use very flat descriptive words. But when they refer to the girl they use really good imagery and she seems to be the light in the poorly light white room."

"It's about throwing away a great relationship and then regretting it forever. Silver horses and Yellow tigers, is more likely a nod to the poems of William Blake - The lamb and Tiger tiger burning bright, respectively (possibly the songs of innocence/experience too) than anything to do with War and Vietnam."

Lets see - in verse one (4 short lines) the scene is set - the white room, black curtains. We establish its near the station (setting it up for what happens further on in the lyric, the station is a setting for the action that comes later - the leaving and the gieving), it's in London (No gold pavement and thus no illusions), main character - the lover introduced romatically as having Silver horses running down moonbeams etc, We given a Time Frame - it's dawn and we are told she's leaving his contentment. The arouses the curiosity. We want to know more.

We get all that from the first verse! Four lines with great and imaginative imagery - Silver horses in dark eyes etc contrasted ith the bleak surroundings. Quite an achivement for a pop song although Pete Brown is no ordinary pop writer.

Bridge 1 - The lyricist uses this two lined bridge to tell us that he (or the narrater) is refelcting on all this - it already happened and he's still hoping for reconciliation and it's having emotional impact on him (Shadows run from themselves).

Verse 2 - in verse two we learn more about the relationship - "you said no strings could secure you"  - echoes of Ruby Tuesday here maybe "who could hang a name you". Then a very cryptic and packed line. The station setting comes into its own and the images cleverly and economically describe the place, the action and the emotion in a very visual and emotive way, with great use of personification (giving inanimate objects human qualities eg Restless diesels - it is he that is restless not the diesels but by putting them together economises on description in service of the musical motifs and acknowledges that the way we view the objective world is coloured by our emotions.  eg if you are depressed you might describe a fair as noisy, jarring, annoying etc but in a happy mood you might view it as fun etc. Goodbye windows say so much with two words. Just think of the people seeing loved ones off at the station. Goodbye windows says it all! The rest of the verse tells us it begins to hit him and that the feeling of loss is beging to kick in.

Bridge 2 Brown uses the the two line bridge to effect, changing the lines each time the bridge comes around to comment on the characters emotions state and reflection. Either physically but more likely emotionsally he's wait for her in hope at the station. The line about shadows is reminiscent of Paul Simon - Dangling Conversation - and pretty loaded I'd say. It describes the brooding maybe, the loneliness a kind of haunting feeling (the shadows are maybe like ghosts scaring each other) - plenty to think about in that line.

Verse 3 Toward the conclusion now. How did the association start - she was kindness in the hard crowd - Consolation for an old wound now forgotten - he's reflecting on it now it's gone, trying to make sense of it all (as you do). Relfecting on the passion - Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes (a nice counterpart to the Silverhorses line earlier). And then - She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings. A one-night stand perhaps but he's not happy to let go of it so easily.

Bridge 3 I'll sleep in this place with the lonely crowd - (It sounds like Heartbreak Hotel is just around the corner!) - Lie in the dark where the shadows run from them selves - The song ends on that note lyrically.

A simple love story but told with the skill of an experienced and talented poet within a musical structure set up byone of the most talented rock musicians of the era. Of course you might take this love story and interpret it wholesale as a metaphor for a soldier leaving for war or a drug trip or other things - the reader brings their own things to literature which may be quite differerent to how the auther saw it. Sometimes the author doesn't know what a piece is about, its wider interpretation may have come from the sub-conscious - who knows. This song works just fine at face value I think.

Comments

[Naomi]

[this is good] what do these things in the song mean?

a.

[Naomi]

a.    Blackroof country—

b.    no gold pavements—

c.    tired starlings—

d.    silver horses run down moonbeams in your dark eyes—

e.    Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment—

f.    goodbye windows—

g.    Consolation for the old wound now forgotten—

h.    Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes