Amazing song, huh? That’s a young Ted Nugent playing guitar there.
Here are the lyrics of said song:
Amboy Dukes The – Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Come with us and find
The pleasures of a journey to the center of the mind
(CHORUS)
Come along if you care
Come along if you dare
Take a ride to the land inside of your mind
Beyond the seas of thought
Beyond the realm of what
Across the streams of hopes and dreams
Where things are really not
But please realize
Youll probably be surprised
For it’s the land unknown to man
Where fantasy is fact
So if you can, please understand
You might not come back
(CHORUS)
How happy life could be
If all of mankind
Would take the time to journey to the center of the mind
Would take the time to journey to the center of the mind
Center of the mind
***********************************
So, you know what this song is talking about, right? Pretty clear, no, at this late date? Funny, thing, when I heard this song in the early 80s (on Philly stations WYSP and WMMR), I had no idea what it was about. I liked the song, but it sounded like it was just a cool science fiction/fantasy piece. I heard it enough times back then to not forget it, so they must have played it quite a bit.
Anyway, what’s even funnier is that Ted Nugent himself claims he also had no idea what the song was about (!) Here’s a brief excerpt from an interview done by Allan Vorda with him:
” Do you want to know the most amazing thing in the world? When we put out Journey to the Center of the Mind in 1968 it had that pipe collection on the front cover and I didn’t have the faintest idea what those pipes were all about! Everybody else was getting stoned and trying every drug known to mankind. I was meeting women, playing rock and roll, and meeting girls. I didn’t have the faintest idea about dope. I didn’t know anything about this cosmic inner probe. I thought “Journey to the Center of the Mind” meant look inside yourself, use your head, and move forward in life.”
TN: I wrote the music. He wrote all the lyrics.”
“AV: To set the record straight, for the umpteenth time, you don’t do drugs, do you?
TN: I have never smoked a joint. I have never done a drug in my life. I’m the only human being who can make that statement. I’ve never had a cigarette in my mouth. I don’t drink. I had beers when I was fourteen or fifteen. I `ve never done a drug!
AV: Why not? If you’re at an age when most teenagers are impressionable I can see you trying drugs and saying you don’t like them, but why didn’t you even try drugs?
TN: There were a lot of reasons, but the decision was very easy by the time I was in the Amboy Dukes. I watched incredible musicians fumble, drool, and not be able to tune their instruments. It was easier to say no than to say, “Hey, gosh, that’s for me.” I’ve also seen my fellow musicians die. It was so obvious. The same reason you don’t run across certain highways during peak rush hours. I was first offered drugs by a beatnik in 1958 and he was slobbering. I just made a very simple conclusion early on. The man with a marijuana cigarette comes off as asshole next. Not me. I was therefore able to plunge into the depths of total irresponsibility with my music. Music over drugs was an easy choice for me.”
Sounds somewhat reasonable, no? Or, at least it would have sounded reasonable to me
for most of my teens and twenties, when I basically agreed with Nugent’s thesis that dope is for dopes. But I would have to agree with Allan Vorda’s question why didn’t he at least try LSD or mushrooms, or whatever, rather than be so diametrically opposed to these things? Certainly there
was misuse and abuse of drugs at that time (and now), people went crazy, offed themselves, were permanently traumatized, but as the song says,
“How happy life could be
If all of mankind
Would take the time to journey to the center of the mind
Would take the time to journey to the center of the mind
Center of the mind”
while at the same time acknowledging that “you might not come back.” Sure, it’s a risk, but the risk in this case is worth it, and if you think about it, any great achievement requires some degree of risk. Indeed, I might risk the thought that the greater the achievement, the bigger the risk required.
As Ken Kesey said (this is a paraphrase), “Sure, you get bruised, there’s a risk, but the insight you gain from doing these mind-expanding drugs is well-worth it.”
(BTW, For the entire fascinating interview with Nugent, go to a href=”http://web.wt.net/~duane/nugent.html; for Kesey’s comments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4ilnADvT2s)
Now, let’s look at another band, and not just any band, but the one considered to be the first band of the Psychedelic Era, ah yes, you know them well, the 13th Floor Elevators. First, watch this video:
These guys apparently played all of their music (live and on record) on LSD, that was part of their mission. If they’re trippin’ on this video, you’d be hard-pressed to prove it, except maybe for lead singer Roky Erickson’s eyes (!) If you look at the liner notes for the group’s break-out album, it’s a whole Psychedelic manifesto (though brief) explaining how each song really has a deeper meaning than the surface meaning. Here is a most telling quote from the liner notes:
Since Aristotle, man has organized his knowledge vertically in separate and unrelated groups — Science, Religion, Sex, Relaxation, Work etc. The main emphasis in his language, his system of storing knowledge, has been on the identification of objects rather than on the relationships between objects. He is now forced to use his tools of reasoning separately and for one situation at a time. Had man been able to see past this hypnotic way of thinking, to distrust it (as did Einstein), and to resystematize his knowledge so that it would all be related horizontally, he would now enjoy the perfect sanity which comes from being able to deal with his life in its entirety.
Recently, it has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view (that is, his own basic relation with the outside world which determines how he stores his information). He can restructure his thinking and change his language so that his thoughts bear more relation to his life and his problems, therefore approaching them more sanely.
It is this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of the songs on this album.
–Quote from the liner notes of The Psychedelic Sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators
It’s a pretty amazing album, very raw and real, and you can see how they must have influenced many of the bigger-name groups at the time like the Doors, Stones, and then later bands like REM.
There’s a new book out on the band, too, which I haven’t read yet, but which I plan to. But my main point is this: Who’s “right,” here? Nugent, or these guys? Well, Nugent obviously has had more success and staying-power, but from what I’ve seen and heard of him, he seems a bit dense. Yeah, it seems like who could have used a little more mind (and heart)-expansion. I can’t say I ever was into his music, either. I recall seeing pictures of him when I was a teen and being pretty freaked out by him for some reason, and though I knew he was this incredible guitarist, I wasn’t drawn to his music in any respect whatsoever. And when I listen to the “Elevators,” I feel like this is what rock music is really all about, namely an agent for inner and outer change. Not merely brilliant, virtuosic playing that separates the artist from the audience; but a message that breaks down the Walls of separation, that says, “I am you, and you are me, and you can do this, too…”
Another version of “You’re Gonna Miss Me”
The Ministry of Rock 