CLOWNS (1985) 3'30: Mark Saunders Adventures in Music (FoH)
14
Published 2024-02-09
My feelings as a teenager of being an outsider who found it hard to enjoy superficial things that contemporaries just did and took pleasure from. It was also about people who follow the herd. So, it summed up my state of mind at the time of not belonging but wanting to, but simultaneously not wanting to.
Lyrically it was partially inspired by one of MAD Magazine’s features, the “Primer”, where they took the mickey out of various American cultural behaviours in the form of a childlike rhyme, usually beginning something like “See the man, he is unhappy…”.
There was also, back in the early 1970s, a Marvel comic called “Warlock” (starting in their Strange Tales #178 and quickly moving to his own comic as it quickly became popular). This was a new take on the character, written and drawn by Jim Starlin, a writer-artist I admire. The comic introduced me to way out cosmic concepts, and one issue featured the Magus (Warlock’s main enemy) trying to get him to join the “dark side” using a helmet that subjected him to brainwashing, but Warlock’s mind twisted what he was being presented with into the nonsensical activities of bizarre clowns, allowing him to break free from the conversion. One of the stories was, I think, called “1000 Clowns”, and this is another influence on this song.
Lyrics:
See the funny clowns
They are so happy
They’re all too busy
They don’t see everyone crying
See the merry clowns
The happy, grinning clowns
Laughing, laughing
Everyone smile
What are the clowns?
What do they want?
What are they here for?
Why are they happy?
Why do they smile?
What do they seem to know?
We are clowns
We’re all the same
Everyone’s a clown
We have like mind
We are clowns
No more the men
Only the clowns
Everyone’s a clown
Searching never finding
Hurting never healing
Needing never loving
Wanting never getting
Trying to be at peace
On his mind a blank screen
Never knowing, never certain
Whether life has passed him by...