I Do Not Like Mondays

(Lead image by Pixabay, Pexels)

This is “Are You Gonna Go My Way” by Lenny Kravitz. It was the first single released from Kravitz’s album of the same name in 1993, and it may be the most well-known of his hits along with others like “Fly Away” and “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over.”

And there may be something you don’t realize about its meaning.

This is another song I consider neo-classic rock, since it’s modern, harder rock but has throwback elements such as its electric guitar perfectly fuzzed like it’s straight from 1967-1969.

It’s the kind of song I loved to blast in the car (and it still works for that purpose). Looking back at it, there are a few elements I notice, and people may be missing some key things regarding how it was recorded and how it’s meant to sound. It is an intensely stereo recording, so this is one where headphones or a good sound system that’s got solid left-right separation is best. Forget anything like a single Bluetooth speaker, which won’t do it justice.

It’s good to know who’s doing what. I had this album on both disc and tape (and still have the CD), and according to its information, Kravitz wrote the music and lyrics, and he’s on lead and backing vocals and drums in this recording. Craig Ross is delivering that excellent guitar work, and Tony Breit has bass; it’s important to know, since all those pieces stand out. It’s Ross who rips in from your left speaker at the start with that commanding guitar riff that is the song’s backbone, and then it’s almost like dueling guitars as a similar but different riff comes in from the right to broaden the sound.

Those roles aren’t quite what you see in the official music video, which is pretty amazing in itself and, incidentally, includes a chandelier being lowered as though “crowning” Kravitz at the beginning.

This is one of those songs that I like to say gets cool right from the start, which is rare. The stereo recording element is right at the core, since the song builds and fills throughout in the differences that are happening and sort of “talking” to each other very notably from the left and right, including a swirling moment where Kravitz’s vocals spin around from side to side.

Got an odd question for you: Have you ever crowd surfed?

You know, like when you’re at a packed concert and someone — usually from among the performers — falls back or jumps into the crowd, who with many hands hold the person up and move him or her around like a wave?

I actually did that… on one particular occasion. It was right in the middle of the 1990s in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., I believe, and I was accompanied by a longtime partner in crime and great friend. It was at this pretty big concert called H.O.R.D.E. (Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere) Festival that toured around the country for seven years until it ended in 1998. It’s seen a few revivals since.

Lenny Kravitz and bands like Blues Traveler (who originated H.O.R.D.E.) and Rusted Root were a large part of why we’d chosen to hit this concert in 1996. The lineup was incredible. Once we got there, the crowd was packed in densely and you had to push hard to make your way up toward the stage, which I’m pretty sure was a mosh pit in there. Some in the audience tried to get up on the stage and jump off into the crowd.

I figured, hey, why not?

So I fought my way up to the stage, climbed up on it and launched myself headlong into the crowd. They caught me and I was just floating up there for a bit — let me tell you, it’s a very interesting feeling. Then all of a sudden, the magic stopped and I got dropped, just sort of banging down onto the ground. It hurt.

The right thing to do, I reasoned, was to get back to the stage and try that little stunt again. If at first you don’t succeed…

I tried again, and it worked — only this time, it was perfect; it was all the way perfect. It was surreal, and it was something like five minutes I got the crowd to propel me around up there that second time. And I was let down easy, not dropped. I have to say, this is something I wouldn’t really recommend because it’d be easy to get hurt, but at the same time I’d be hoping you’ve done it, just once, just to see.

When Kravitz was playing, he and the band did “Are You Gonna Go My Way” last. And everyone wanted to hear it! We all kind of waited and waited and waited, and I remember this one guy next to me yelled, “Play something I know, Lenny!” And of course, the band did at last, and they managed to pull it off very well live, which is something.

Meaning

I’ve thought about the song’s lyrics and message and considered them. There is something interesting going on, including how it opens:

“I was born long ago
I am the chosen, I’m the one
I have come to save the day
And I won’t leave until I’m done”

That sounds like someone immortal who’s been around for centuries, or at least has come as some sort of savior. But being “the chosen” and “the one” is more like something from The Matrix. The purpose of the person in Kravitz’s song is to allow people to “breathe and have some fun,” which you hear next, and this person pledges to complete the mission:

“So that’s why
We’ve got to try
We’ve got to breathe and have some fun

Though I’m not paid
I play this game
And I won’t stop until I’m done”

The other verse in the song points to a world renewed and united and calls for an end to violence and/or war:

“I don’t know why we always cry
This we must leave and get undone
We must engage, and rearrange
And turn this planet back to one

So tell me why we got to die
And kill each other one by one
We’ve got to love and rub-a-dub
We’ve got to dance and be in love”

There’s a standout part in there right on “and kill each other one by one” where Kravitz screams like a primal scream, apparently at that thought of violence, and that’s the part I mentioned is recorded as swirling around in a circle left-right-left-right as you listen. That’s an admirable message — end killing, war and violence — followed by an almost ridiculous suggestion to, I guess, take baths together and play rub-a-dub with duckies (though it could also be innuendo).

But I’ll move past that, Lenny, and just focus on the call to “dance and be in love” instead of doing bad things to each other. That’s got a bit of a Garden of Eden feel to it, if you think about it.

The song’s title and the question it contains are also a bit strange. “Are you gonna go my way” might mean something like “will you do as I suggest” or “will you support me and join us.” It’s just not really something you would say, so I wonder at it a little.

Kravitz has said that the song was written from the perspective of Jesus Christ, so there’s that whole messianic message — the “crowning with arms spread” in the video’s beginning provides that image. But I will also note this: all the stuff that’s said in the song pretty much comes true when you play it. You can additionally see it as Kravitz being “the one” who delivers this great song, and if even for a few short minutes, people breathe and have some fun and just kind of dance and be in love.

That’s not so bad. I wish people were always like that. And I remember that back in the day, I nearly always extended the song’s effect — once I had the album, that is, I used to let it play most of the way through and then hit that “back” button to put it at the beginning, over and over. I do that with favorites sometimes.

And on the surface, I think it’s just good music. It took me maybe five or six seconds to like it the first time I heard it, so that tells you something.

But why would Lenny Kravitz write this song about Jesus Christ? It turns out he had an extraordinary religious experience as a child, as he explained in Oprah Winfrey’s 2015 documentary series Belief. Here’s an excerpt from the series below.

Content © Aaron G. Marsh