Geschrieben am 1. September 2020 von für Crimemag, CrimeMag September 2020

Krimigedicht – von „Chicago“

25 Or 6 To 4

Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say
Flashing lights against the sky
Giving up I close my eyes
Sitting cross-legged on the floor
25 or 6 to 4

Staring blindly into space
Getting up to splash my face
Wanting just to stay awake
Wondering how much I can take
Should I try to do some more
25 or 6 to 4

Feeling like I ought to sleep
Spinning room is sinking deep
Searching for something to say
Waiting for the break of day
25 or 6 to 4
25 or 6 to 4

Constable Paul Hirsch hört in „Hope Hill Drive“, dem neuen Roman von Garry Disher, immer Musik, wenn er im Polizeigeländewagen in der australischen Pampa unterwegs ist. Einmal ist es Chicagos ‚25 or 6 to 4′, geschrieben von Robert Lamm, was er einen der größten Songs nennt, die je geschrieben wurden – „and Hirsch didn’t make these claims lightly“.

Robert Lamm, keyboard player and singer for Chicago: “ It’s about trying to write a song, with the title referring to the time of day: either 3:35 a.m. (25 to 4) or 3:34 a.m. (26 to 4). I was living with a bunch of hippies up above Sunset Strip. One of the advantages of this particular house was that it was in the Hollywood Hills and I could look out over the city late at night. I wanted to try to describe the process of writing the song that I was writing. So, ‚waiting for the break of day, searching for something to say, flashing lights against the sky‘ – there was a neon sign across the city. That song came from the fact that it was 25 or 6 to 4 a.m. in the morning when I looked at my watch – I was looking for a line to finish the chorus.
Most songs that were written, especially in the early days, whenever I got them to the band and we started rehearsing them, that’s when the songs took shape – once these guys got hold of them. There was definitely a lot of raw material, I thought it was a song when I wrote the words down, I wrote the changes down and I brought the charts to rehearsal, but it wasn’t really a song until they all played it.“

There are a lot of unsubstantiated rumors regarding the meaning behind this song’s lyrics. A popular rumor is that „6 to 4“ was a nickname for LSD, because if you dropped acid at 6 p.m., the effects of the drug would wear off by 4 a.m., 10 hours later.

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