Son & Daughter: Meaning & Thoughts

rhyeking wrote: He said he wrote it in school? As in Imperial College? If that's accurate, it's very interesting. "White Queen" he confirmed to have written in IC about a girl he pined for and said that Smile never worked on it. If he wrote S&D around the same time, it's another song Smile has no record of working on it either during that period.

According the Concertography, it was one of Queen's earliest original tracks (as in not having been a pre-Queen song from Smile or Ibex/Wreckage, or a rock and roll cover).

I'd love to hear that interview. When and how artists wrote songs, lyrically anyway, has always fascinated me.

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I thought White Queen was about the moon ...

Re: White Queen

From Brian May.com, via Queen Vault.com:

Brian May: "White Queen - back in time again - I wrote this at College, where I led a relatively sheltered life, even though the University on the whole was a pretty rampant pace! I had been reading "The White Goddess" by Robert Graves, which explored the role of the idealised Virgin/Mother/Queen/ figure in art through history, and the name for our group, decided just around that time, fitted in with this perfectly - which was one of the reasons I was convinced to go with the name. The personal side is bound up with a girl (of course!) whom I saw every day at College, and was to me the ultimate goddess. It's incredible in retrospect, but because I held her in such awe, in three years I never had the courage to speak to tell her, or even speak to her. The song found its way on to tape much later, on our second album"

If he said he wrote it at school he was probably referring to Hampton Grammar School as, unlike in the USA, the word 'school' isn't used to refer to college / university in the UK but secondary or high school.

The guitar solo seems to have its roots in the Smile song 'Blag', if not earlier, evolving as part of the live version of 'Son And Daughter' before finding its eventual home in 'Brighton Rock'.

As for the meaning there seem to be some potential pseudo-religious references in there:
"Tried to be a teacher and a fisher of men"
"What'll you think of heaven if it's back from where you came?"
"...I'm gonna save the world"

Was the teenage Brian May at least in part wrestling with the concept of God, perhaps even the traditional depiction of the deity as male?

FAIK, he did talk about that once on the radio. He said that it was about what happened if people treated boys and girls the same. He then briefly explained that a man and a woman are equals, but they're not the same.

[QUOTE] [b]GratefulFan wrote:[/b]


I think one take on the song is that it reflects the feminist movement raging at the time and how he perceived it to have propelled women, or perhaps one woman, to places he didn't like or was uncomfortable with.  'Son and Daughter' to me is just 'Man and Woman', and he feels resentment or disquiet or sadness or something surrounding some of the aggressive social changes of the time.  His was the first generation of 20 something men that had to deal directly with a fairly radical and new face of feminism. He wants his woman to be a woman, whatever that meant to him.  Lots of clear and fairly literal references to this possibility I think.   Themes too of cautioning that a woman might feel disillusioned with where she finds herself at the end of it all, - the references to shovelling shit and wondering what she'll think if she finds that she was happier before in the 'what will you think of heaven if it's back from where you came'.
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Well put..........that;s always how I viewed the song.......never seemed autobiographical.............just cus he says 'you' and not 'I' in the song I guess.............

[QUOTE] [b]rhyeking wrote:[/b]



According the Concertography, it was one of Queen's earliest original tracks (as in not having been a pre-Queen song from Smile or Ibex/Wreckage, or a rock and roll cover).
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The story is that it was the first song that they had John Deacon play at his audition to join the band............

^ interesting. Where'd you read that?

I know the question's not directed at me but as far as I remember, that's what 'As It Began' implies.

I believe I read that in the "Queen The Early Years" book..........possibly somewhere else as well................

Yeah, probably in As It Began............but I havent read that in eons......

never liked this song,it's too rip off from Led Zeppelin,so...don't care for the lyrics.Although I Gotta admit that it worked good on stage,it helped Queen in their beginninh

Lol, I always thought Freddie is deeply in love with a guy, but he feels its wrong, you know he didn't admit being gay then, so he says "I, want, you, to be a woman".
Oh and btw "Tie Your Mother Down"'s meaning in my opinion :
Brian wanna go out with this girl but her parents disapprove of him cause he's a musician, so he tells her to tie her mother down, to ignore her or whatever so she could be with him

son and daughter is a song about how before Brian was born his parents lost their daughter in a miscarriage (Sail Away Sweet Sister) and they still hadn't quite fully recovered from it yet. So they had treated brian like a little girl when he was younger, and he was fine with it. but when he got older he was expected to be an ideal man by the rest of the world and had no idea how to present himself.

Brian grew up as both a girl and a boy, so he struggled with how to present himself both internally and externally.

[QUOTE] [b]cyndagoaway wrote:[/b]

son and daughter is a song about how before Brian was born his parents lost their daughter in a miscarriage (Sail Away Sweet Sister) and they still hadn't quite fully recovered from it yet. So they had treated brian like a little girl when he was younger, and he was fine with it. but when he got older he was expected to be an ideal man by the rest of the world and had no idea how to present himself.

Brian grew up as both a girl and a boy, so he struggled with how to present himself both internally and externally.[/QUOTE]

Yes and Brian was particularly nonplussed on his when his parents bought him a bra for his 13th birthday.

That's when he wrote Bra-ton Rock

Only child syndrome