08-11-2005, 07:55 AM
I've got an e-mail from somebody looking for an explanation of: "Blow At High Dough." I haven't found much direct info from the band on the song, so I just added what I could and then recommended she stop by here. Please feel free to add anything to the accumulated rumours I've got below... or even better, perhaps somebody has old interviews from the horses mouth:
"On my website, I've only got the literal reference to Elvis listed, since it's the only sure thing. But for years, the feeling I've heard on "Blow" has been this: The song deals with the way a woman can hold a certain sway over a man. There's the phallic imagery "get it out, stretch that thing," "the further it's gonna go" and the "blow" itself, but there's also the fact that the taxi driver is "thrown off" by passion. Some feel the "blow at high dough" to mean once a man is tempted (a woman presenting herself, or a boat load of money) all his reason goes out the door.
Elvis himself was said to truly love Anne Margaret (Gord often adds her name to the song live) and was believed to always harbour regret that he didn't marry her when he had the chance. What he did do however, was marry a very young Priscilla: "How'd she move so fast, move so fast, into that wedding ring." The fact that the preceding lyric is the somewhat cruder: "Whoever fits her usually gets her, it was the strangest thing" suggests that perhaps the song was inspired by an... easygoing... girlfriend who once wronged Gord, hence inspiring the "femme fatale" view of women in the song.
The Elvis stuff may have worked it's way into Gords thinking as the band wrote and recorded "Up To Here" in Memphis in 1988. It's also interesting to note that in the case of Elvis (marrying at the drop of a hat) and the "Taxi Driver," (Deniro's "Travis Bickle" -Gord was a film student remember) both were willing to do (or inspired others to do) irrational things for women."
"On my website, I've only got the literal reference to Elvis listed, since it's the only sure thing. But for years, the feeling I've heard on "Blow" has been this: The song deals with the way a woman can hold a certain sway over a man. There's the phallic imagery "get it out, stretch that thing," "the further it's gonna go" and the "blow" itself, but there's also the fact that the taxi driver is "thrown off" by passion. Some feel the "blow at high dough" to mean once a man is tempted (a woman presenting herself, or a boat load of money) all his reason goes out the door.
Elvis himself was said to truly love Anne Margaret (Gord often adds her name to the song live) and was believed to always harbour regret that he didn't marry her when he had the chance. What he did do however, was marry a very young Priscilla: "How'd she move so fast, move so fast, into that wedding ring." The fact that the preceding lyric is the somewhat cruder: "Whoever fits her usually gets her, it was the strangest thing" suggests that perhaps the song was inspired by an... easygoing... girlfriend who once wronged Gord, hence inspiring the "femme fatale" view of women in the song.
The Elvis stuff may have worked it's way into Gords thinking as the band wrote and recorded "Up To Here" in Memphis in 1988. It's also interesting to note that in the case of Elvis (marrying at the drop of a hat) and the "Taxi Driver," (Deniro's "Travis Bickle" -Gord was a film student remember) both were willing to do (or inspired others to do) irrational things for women."
