Word: mad
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first time the writer called, all that she could hear was a child squalling loudly in the background and a harassed male voice that shouted, "Could you call me back in a few minutes?" When she did, he was all caution. "This may get you mad, but you'll have to give me your phone number and I'll call you back. I mean-well-you sound just fine, and I can tell it's all right, so I'll tell you something. I get a lot of calls from crackpots and curiosity seekers . . ." The result...
Native Country. The play-within-a-play takes place on a blazing August day in a U.S. Southern town. The two characters are a brother and sister who fear that they are mad. They also believe that all the neighbors think them mad and thus never leave their home...
...incest, and by the fact that their father killed their mother and committed suicide. Outwardly, this seems like native dramatic country for Tennessee Williams. But the new note is a Pirandellian ambiguity as the characters continually shift between their two poles of reality. Are these actors 'playing a mad brother and sister, or are they a mad brother and sister playing actors? In any event, the psychic locale of the play is a kind of streetcar named despair; the loaded revolver that glints with menace in the closing scene of the play could go off with equal accuracy...
Everybody's going mad. everybody's going mad...
...really puzzling point of interpretation is the quote from King Lear, which floats through the end of the song. Why Lear? Well, it's a play about madness, and everybody's going mad. But why the death of Oswald? The recording did come out on the anniversary of the weekend when Lee Harvey Oswald killed a great ruler and then died himself. Maybe the Beatles are ironically saying that degraded, crazy Oswalds can change the course of the world. And maybe the Lear allusion explains that most men no matter what staggeringly infamous deeds they perform, will die insignificant deaths...