All You Need Is – Roy Harper – A Song About Women’s Lib!

Posted on by Opher
I think this is a song that is a reaction to the Beatles – All You Need is Love. Roy was never going to come out with sentiments like that. It would have been too simplistic and naff.
I first wrote out the lyrics for this song with Roy when we were doing his lyric book. It took a lot of doing. They are not too clear to make out on that 1968 CBS album – a lot clearer on the CD that came out a lot later. It is amazing how you can now just go on line and all the lyrics are there at your finger tips.
I’d always thought the song was about an acid trip he’d taken with Mocy, his first wife (not too much of a leap given the opening lines) but Roy denied that and said that the song was the result of one of those deep, late-night conversations.
Whatever. I still think there are shades of acid about it.
It was a song that I loved. It was a pop at the shallowness of the culture. Everyone dressed up to kill with their latest hairstyle, trendy clothes drunkenly out on the pull.
Every time I see a gaggle of girls out around town wearing next to nothing, with their incredibly short dresses, tottering around on high heels squealing and giggling, clutching at each other drunkenly, I think about this song. Nothing changes.
There’s a made infinite universe out there. There’s a life to be lived. There are a million questions to be answered and a million things to absorb and experience.
All you need is…………..
But then nothing really matters in the everything surrounding us.
All You Need Is

This song is by Roy Harper and appears on the album Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith (1968).

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I gave my love a daisy
A third eye in my mind
We turned the crazy day around
To see what we could find
And went onto a journey
Reflecting us so deep and wide
That we could see the other side
Of knowing nothing matters
In the everything surrounding us
Surrounding everything itself
Surrounding

I saw my love gaze into
A swelling sea of life
She turned onto my shoulder
And terribly she cried
Until her eyes were closing
And asked me if she really was
A woman like the rest because
The rest she saw as empty vessels
Looking ripe and dressed to kill
But really very far away from
Freedom

She sobbed and put her head down
And walked into the night
Saying that she was as wrong as any
And that the rest were right
That they were proper women
Existing in a stupid mess of
Vegetable thoughtlessness
Made up as if to please the men
But making life a drag for them
Rejecting all communication
Giggling

I put my arm around her
And told her from my heart
That she was of a new world
Of which they weren’t a part
And told her not to bother
For she was free, as free as me
To do the things she wanted to
With more respectability
Than all the shallow painted faces
Twittering into emptiness
Together

Pretty woman walking down the street how can you
Expect to be loved with so much selfish arrogance?

Pretty woman your nose in the air, how can you
Expect me to love you knowing so much about you?

Why do you always have to receive love first?
Why are you unable to give some without being asked?

All you need is
All you need
Is all
You
Need is all
You need
Is