The pipe of dreams was creatively passed down from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other British dope champions to the rockers of the Age of Aquarius.
“Pipe Dream” is one of those terms that gets totally misunderstood. We live in a time of piping and dreaming, so naturally many people believe the term is inspired by drugs.
Though the drug reference is probably the more enticing, for years the phrase itself had little to do with inhaling and/or inebriation. In fact a pipe dream was pretty innocent.
It radiated—hope. Like the definition from the Cambridge English Dictionary:
An idea or plan that is impossible or very unlikely to happen: “Her plans are not realistic - they'll never be more than a pipe dream.”
Still, the roots of calling out a pipe dream for what it really is, have basis in history. According to the Grammarist website:
A pipe dream is an unrealistic and unattainable goal, an impossible hope. The pipe alluded to in this term is a smoking pipe, but the substance being smoked is not tobacco. Pipe dream stems from the practice of smoking opium, and though many English writers turned to opiates for inspiration, the term pipe dream originated in the United States. In the mid-1800s to the late 1800s, the western United States was rife with opium dens, places where opium from China was sold and smoked.
So there it is. The pipe dreams that became subjects of various drug songs, especially in the hallucination we know as The Sixties, were grounded in this tradition. It involved touching a flame to something that grew in poppy fields. In those woozy times, dreams of rock and roll stardom rode side by side with rampant munchies and urges to tie dye the curtains.
This episode includes A-Listers (Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Donovan), faded flames (Spooky Tooth, The Blues Magoos), art rockers (Procol Harum, Soft Machine, Lamb), and those obscured by the years and stale smoke (The Sound Sandwich, World Column.)
Still, there is hope this Old School podcast will get a zillion downloads and ultimately elevated by Apple, Spotify, or Disney.
No matter what definition grabs you🎸
PIPE DREAM The Blues Magoos (1967)
LOST IN MY DREAM Spooky Tooth (1969)
QUEEN OF DREAMS The Strawbs (1972)
IN ANOTHER LAND The Rolling Stones (1967)
MIND GARDEN The Byrds (1967)
LANTERN GOSPEL World Column (1968)
SONG FOR A DREAMER Procol Harum (1971)
APOTHECARY DREAM The Sound Sandwich (1967)
SLEEPWALKERS Lamb (1971)
HEMPSTEAD INCIDENT Donovan (1967)
WHY ARE WE SLEEPING The Soft Machine (1968)
I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT The Electric Prunes (1967)
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