Flower Power = Bread
Lead track on Leon's 1968 album, this song parodies the then current 'Summer of Love' idyl, homing in on The Beatles' 1967 hit, "All You Need Is Love". The Beatles' single commences with a brass quotation from La Marseillaise, and Leon signals his intent straight away with a corresponding passage on acoustic guitar. The lyric unfolds into an absurd series of scenarios in which evictions, sackings and imprisonment are responded to by those on the receiving end only with the sentiment, "I love you".
More than just parodying the philosophy itself, it seems Leon was targeting The Beatles in particular, with lines referencing the hit parade, the opening of boutiques and the setting up of companies all echoing what the group was up to in 1967-8, with the creation of their Apple label/shop/business. More generally though, these sections point towards the commercialisation of the counter-culture, and what Leon later referred to as the idiom of the song being "appropriated by the market".
More than just parodying the philosophy itself, it seems Leon was targeting The Beatles in particular, with lines referencing the hit parade, the opening of boutiques and the setting up of companies all echoing what the group was up to in 1967-8, with the creation of their Apple label/shop/business. More generally though, these sections point towards the commercialisation of the counter-culture, and what Leon later referred to as the idiom of the song being "appropriated by the market".
"It was nice of the Beatles to discover, after all these years, that love (and flowers) would solve all our problems. Pity it doesn't work. But if you all sing the chorus loudly enough, you never know." - LR (Look Here (songbook) p91)
Recordings
Version 1 (1968) Live recording