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However, at face value, the song describes perceived effects of space travel at relativistic speeds.
According to BHM, who wrote it:
"It’s a science fiction story. It’s the story about someone who goes away and leaves his family and because of the time dilation effect, when you go away, the people on earth have aged a lot more than he has when he comes home. He’s aged a year and they’ve aged 100 years so, instead of coming back to his wife, he comes back to his daughter and he can see his wife in his daughter, a strange story.
I think, also, I had in mind a story of Herman Hesse which I think is called ‘The River’. A man leaves his hometown and has lots of travels and then comes back and observes his hometown from the other side of the river. He sees it in a different light having been away and experienced all those different things. He sees it in a very illuminating way, cause I felt a little bit like that about my home at the time as well having been away and seen this vastly different world of Rock music. Totally different from the way I was brought up and I had those feelings about Home.
So usually the song, I think people generally usually won’t admit it, but I think when most people write songs there are more than one level to them. They’ll be about one thing on the surface but underneath they’re probably, even unconsciously, trying to say something about their own life, their own experience. I know in my own stuff there is something like that."
- Brian May - Guitar Greats BBC Radio 1, 1983
BHM quote courtesy of ogre t raylot
More at: link link
ohh!! thank you so much!!!
When i saw the title my first thought was about the Second World WarXD
Then mentioning milky seas made me think it could be a space ship, and because Brian's passion is space and skies, i thought it would be very probable.. And then remembered physic laws about the timeXDD
THank you so much!!XD I was thinking the right way..
You are welcome, glad to be of assistance.
However, I think that the song might well include a (more or less conscious) reference to WWII:
over just a few years, the war obviously caused such dramatic and irreversible changes
in the social and demographic structures of all the countries involved,
that probably veterans coming back to the (new and different) post-war normality
would feel as if time had passed much faster for people at home.
On the Return Of The Champions CD and DVD Brian explains before he plays it:"It's about a man who goes off in a silver spaceship to discover new lands and when he comes back he feels like he's only a year older but to the people back on earth his planet is a hundred years older"
the song '39 is also coincidentally the 39th Queen song.
Yeah Gnomo i agree with you! When i wasn't carefully listening to words, only heared "volunteers" i also thought it's perhaps about WWII. Then i checked lyrics on the webXD
Now when you explained, this topic fits to the song XD
DanielvZ, nnoooo to be honest i don't have any of their DVD's yet. I'm just starting here:]
WAha so funny so he predicted that people will find quite difficult to understand itXD
Heafo18, wow, cool, it's also an 39th Queen song..