LoVE: You I'll Be Following

[silentseason]

"You I'll Be Following"
From: LoVE, side two, song one
-Running time: 2:25
-Recorded: January 25, 1966 Sunset Sound
-Written by: Arthur Lee
-Lead vocal: Arthur Lee
-Lead guitar: Johnny Echols
-Rhythm guitar: Bryan MacLean
-Bass: Kenny Forssi
-Drums: Alban 'Snoopy' Pfisterer
-Quotable: Just minding your own business you never know who you might meet as Michael relates in this story:

"Kenny and I were great car enthusiasts, and we used to spend many evenings out in the garage of my pad on Kirkwood...him working on his restored black XKE Jag and me on my old '59 356 Porsche, while smoking joint after joint of the relatively low-grade weed of the times.
Which is exactly what we were doing one hot summer night when a beat yellow XKE, with a rusty and dented right front fender and the front bumper hanging catywhampus on the frame, pulled up and stopped a few feet away. "That's a nice Jag," the stranger said. "Do you fellows happen to know where Stanley Hills Drive is? I'm lost."
So Kenny told him it was off Lookout Mountain and how to get there. And as the stranger pulled away and headed back down to Laurel Canyon, Kenny says, "Poor Charlton Heston, he could lead the chosen people to the promised land, but he can't find Stanley Hills Drive."

-IMHO: This song has it all: great harmonies, driving bass that rocks, and Arthur at his cryptic best lyrically. The interpretation to the lyrics on this song are wide open on any of the stanzas. What were Johnny and Conka holding? What was in the shoebox behind the icebox? It has an endless supply of possible meanings which aids it rather than hinders. Seemingly simple yet brilliant.

-Fun Fact: This is a song where Arthur may have taken many "trips" to the areas listed (Florida, Georgia, Baghdad) but he did not physically travel to any of the areas at the time he wrote this song. The same can be said for "She Comes In Colors" in which Arthur claims to have been in "England Town" when in fact at the time of it's creation he had never left the USA.

Lyrics:

I went to Georgia
I went to Florida
I went to Missi
Tripped in Missippi, but now
You I'll be following

I went to Baghdad
I went to Laurel
Tripped in the canyon
My head is still bent, but now
You I'll be following

I went to Johnny
I went to Conka
One of them told me
That he was holding, but now
You I'll be following

I went to Frisco
Bumped into Cisco
He had a shoebox
Behind his icebox, but now
You I'll be following