You’re almost certainly taking the piss with this one, and if so I applaud that - but just in case there’s any confusion, the line is “But jumping queues…”

“I like to do just like the rest, I like my sugar sweet.But guarding fumes and making haste,It ain’t my cup of meat.”

Means he likes getting high like everyone else but hiding the pot fumes so that no one smells it out in an open space or else just splitting when the cops come around isn’t the way he rolls. Also:

“Just tell me where it hurts yuh, honey,
And I’ll tell you who to call.
Nobody can get no sleep,
There’s someone on ev’ryone’s toes
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here,
Ev’rybody’s gonna wanna doze.”

Obviously means whatever kind of high suits your fancy he’ll tell you who to call [he knows where to get anything you want]. And No one can sleep before Quinn gets there! Of course not! did you ever try to sleep coming down off coke or acid and people get really irritable when they’re coming down!

But when Quinn gets there everybody’s gonna wanna doze?? He’s got the downers! Haha its hilarious that people think this is a cute little kids song.

My latest interpretation of the song is that it really is about that Anthony Quinn film after all.

Which is, perhaps, the reason for building all those ships and boats. A good way to leave those Arctic climes behind.

singing…..

I like the added visuals. I’d never have made the connection regarding “Quinn”–I’m surprised I’d never heard of this film as my family rather liked that sort of thing–otherwise.

I’m trying to recall if I ever heard anyone claim any sort of meaning for this song–can’t recall ever figuring it out. (I thought the line was “everybody’s gonna wanta doze”–guess I was quite innocent then, really.) But it was great fun, and one of my favorite Manfreds recordings before the Earthband era, which I think, in retrospect, was really the best period for the band–even if few of the originals remained by then.

Looking back at the psychedelic era now, I think the lack of any determinate meaning was part of the appeal–and how many of us who spent hours trying to impose some sort of meaning on these lyrics didn’t end up studying literature at the university as a result. And now the middle-aged English professor (c’est moi) looks at these lyrics and thinks it really doesn’t matter–in this case, that heavy-handed thing called meaning was probably beside the point all along.

Perhaps this is a sort of precursor to Manfred Mann’s Earthband and their motley selection of covers. Better than anything they did, though.

I wonder - how many other number ones have really featured such pure nonsense as lyrics? Not “Doo Wah Diddy” type nonsense - but pure rambling Dylanism? Did this glide by on people reading it as “deep, maaan” - Quinn as Christ figure, drug dealer (”everybody gonna wanna dose”)? It’s a heck of a tune with a great hook, but hands up, does anybody relate to this song?