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tris mccall - 2008-10-04 20:40:45
at rock school we were taught that jet was a david bowie diss. or maybe even a bowie tribute. thinking back on it, i cannot see why.
i always thought that jet was about an underage girl who'd grown up fast (like a jet) and has upset her parents by being sexually precocious. and paul mccartney is taking her side in typically avuncular fashion. or more likely he's the older guy who she's going off with, and he's pleading his case before her family. the major is the mater, right? she's like a salvation army type: super progressive, until it hits her own family. then she gets uptight and drops her usual ladylike reserve.
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Paula - 2008-10-04 22:06:59
Interesting..."I thought the major was a lady suffragette" always threw me, but in your reading it makes sense.
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2fs - 2008-10-04 22:27:12
What? The Jestaplero hasn't addressed this yet? I'm pretty sure "Jet" is the second Paul song written about one of his sheepdogs - "Martha My Dear" is the first. Which doesn't rule out its also being about what Tris says...or about not much at all, in the manner of lots of McCartney (that's not a criticism: aboutness is oppressive sometimes, and there's no reason to drag it screaming, kicking, and pontificating into pop songs as well). Live a little, be a gypsy - get around!
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2fs - 2008-10-04 22:27:54
Awesome! My captcha was "favorite excuse"!
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2fs - 2008-10-04 22:32:36
Sorry to be serially dominating this forum - but thanks, Paula, for putting this song in my head. Gotta agree about its genius. Also, I think it's a great example of McCartney's brilliance as a singer. He's very playful in this one - I'm thinking of the way he messes around with the consonants sometimes ("wass a lady...suvverizhett!"), and the tag near the end ("my lady...my lady, yeah...woo!"). Plus the way the main melody doubles as that closing sax tag.
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Paula - 2008-10-04 23:04:39
Agreed--the whole thing is like a tiny symphony.
Sheep dog! Well that would explain "with the wind in your hair of 1000 laces." Kinda.
I guess I shoulda just googled it--multiple Jet/dog stories abound.
B.t.w., Jestaplero and Holte-rox Steve are down at the shore with Our Janet. Someone needs to write a song about this.
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eli - 2008-10-06 00:50:03
Man. Don't have any idea what that song is about but it sent me way back to laying in my old canvas pup tent pitched in the backyard listening to my perfectly round red plastic am radio on a chain that I hung from the canvas peak. Those were the days. No worries. Just laying there staring at the milky way and wondering why the major was a real lady and did it have anything to do with I'm a man I'm a a man but so was Lola?
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MacGregor - 2008-10-06 01:56:11
Eli--I had totally figured you for the guy with the 8-track player that looked like the TNT plunger! Oh no... that was me. I admit that I had regular problems with Paul McCartney lyrics... JoJo was a man who thought he was a woman, but he was another man, or something like that.
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Paula - 2008-10-06 13:07:27
Nota bene: I have two readers named Eli--the Eli commenting above lives in San Francisco. The one you know, MacG, is in NYC.
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MacCorrected - 2008-10-06 14:41:41
I stand... Two Elis? What hath G_d wrought?
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Flasshe - 2008-10-06 20:04:31
Man, I remember when the song first came out, it was no big secret it was about a dog. The dj's loved reminding us listeners of that. BTW, "rosebud" was a sled.
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Paula - 2008-10-06 20:06:45
Well, I'm a little confused on this point. Perhaps Paul had a lab named Jet, and he named the heroine of the song after her, but the song isn't really "about" the dog.
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Flasshe - 2008-10-06 21:43:06
I don't want to speculate on Paul and his pet issues.
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