The story goes that Paul McCartney wrote "Penny Lane," which is full of memories of his growing up years, as a result of having heard John Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever," which is full of memories of HIS growing up years, assuming John's youth was spent in a Tourettes-like burst of non-sequiturs and verbal bulimia.
Music critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler characterized the "Penny Lane" lyric as describing "Liverpool-on-a-sunny-hallucinogenic-afternoon."
Some of the phrases DO bear a bit of explaining...
On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain, very strange
I'm guessing we are meant to assume the children think it's funny for a banker to own a car but apparently not a raincoat ("mac"). I prefer to think the humor lies in the banker having repossessed a car but needing to park it on the street during a rainstorm because his underground garage is flooded.
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Road grit and gravel may be causing permanent damage to both Paul's hearing and visual acuity.
In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the queen
A low-tech Luddite is in charge of fighting fires. Help!
Fish and finger pies
This is just plain gross and needs to stop.
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway
If she IS in a play, why the word "though"? It's like saying, "She's in a play, however, she thinks she's in a play."
Darn Brits...don't know how to speak plain English.
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