I'm not quite sure why I put certain songs on my mixtape. It was always a two-second decision without much thought behind it. "The Mighty Quinn" by Manfred Mann was one of those songs. I think I was intrigued by how little sense it made to me at the time with lyrics like "Let me do what I want to do / I can't decide on my own."
I had no idea what any of it meant…which in 1968, often meant drug references. I almost never got them, as opposed to some kids at school then who could find drug references in any song ever written, including instrumentals. I did not know at the time that Bob Dylan had written "The Mighty Quinn" and had described it as just a "fairy tale" he made up, perhaps inspired by Anthony Quinn's role as "…an Eskimo in the 1960 movie The Savage Innocents," as I just learned on Wikipedia.
Fine. Whatever. It's kind of nice now to read that listing and find out that it probably never meant anything. Which just leaves me with the riddle of why I put it on my mixtape since I never liked it that much. Here — see if you do…