Talk:The Battle of Evermore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of the Led Zeppelin WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Led Zeppelin. If you would like to participate please visit the project page. Any questions pertaining to Led Zeppelin-related articles should be directed to the project's talk page.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the assessment scale
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Songs, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to songs on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
Middle-earth Wikiproject This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien, his legendarium, and related topics. Please visit the project talk page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.
Note: Though it states in the Guide to writing better articles that generally fictional articles should be written in present tense, all Tolkien legendarium-related articles that cover in-universe material must be written in past tense. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards for more information about this and other article standards.

Contents

[edit] Um, Music, anyone?

It is an absolute disgrace that 3/4 of this article is about f**king Tolkien. Interpretation is part of a good article, sure, but music criticism should actually discuss, you know, music.

I agree completely. I added the Cold War stuff, but am no musicologist or critic, so please add something. Looking forward to it! Malnova 08:32, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I've removed all of the tokien cruft - it is taken from the linked page, which remains in place. --Tagishsimon (talk)

[edit] Cold War

I heard that this song is actually a metaphor of the Cold War-"The tyrants face is red. The sky is full of good and bad, mortals never know."

I used to be in love with this song and always just assumed it was a song about nuclear war sung as an epic fairy tale. The line "the pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath" comes to mind. Coming here and reading I was amazed to find no mention of the Cold War/Nuclear Aftermath interpretation. Could just be me though. Malnova 10:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] plow or bow

Someone changed the first line of the song from to "the queen of light took her BOW" to the "took her PLOW". I think the line is actually the original BOW. I looked it up on my CD, but the lyrics for Evermore aren't listed. Googling if comes up with a quite significantly larger number of hits for "took her bow", but that is not saying it is definitely right of course. It's not that big of an issue for me to change it back. What's anybody else think? Malnova 09:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I was actually wondering that myself. It would not make sence if he said plow because she is a queen and queens usually don't work in the fields. But the way he says bow sounds like plow. It is muffled but it sure as hell doesn't sound like bow.

http://www.angelfire.com/nm/zeppelin/b.html
Great place


[edit] Why it is "Bow"

"The Queen of Light, took her bow, and then she turned to go." The last thing an actor does before he/she leaves the stage for good is bow. The elves, at the time of The War of the Ring, were fading in power and importance from Middle Earth. Some of them stayed to fight Sauron, but may left the continent to join the Valar (gods) in what could be effectively called heaven. The elves, being immortal beings (except when cut to pieces) had an invitation to join the gods that men, hobbits, dwarves and other races did not receive. In the midnight meeting with Frodo in Lothlorien, Galadriel (who is the Queen of the Lothlorien elves) is tempted to take the One Ring when Frodo offers it to her. She has a vision that she would become an evil queen, and so rejects the One Ring.

You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night!...She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunked: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. "I pass the test," she said. "I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel." -The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 7, The Mirror of Galadriel.

Frodo is initially disheartened at this, but then accepts his fate as the Ring-bearer. "The prince of peace, embraced the gloom, and walked the night alone." After trying to give away the ring to both Gandalf and Galadriel, Frodo finally accepts that the task of destroying the ring is his alone. Boromir counsels and pleads with him to take the ring to Minas Tirith, to use it in battle against Sauron's forces. However the counsel of Elrond agreed that the ring should be brought back to Mt. Doom, where it was made, and destroyed there. The song mentions "bring it back" many times. "Magic runes, writ in gold, to bring the balance back...bring it back!" The One Ring was golden, inscribed with runes.Tsarevna (talk) 13:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Avalon

"Curiously, though, there is no mention of Avalon in any of Tolkien's works." That's not actually true, read the Silmarillion and there is an island known as Avallone, don't remember more about it and don't have access to my book so can't look it up, but Tolkien does indeed mention Avalon (with a different spelling). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.214.117.28 (talk • contribs) 11:47, 27 June 2006

In Tolkien's work "The Silmarillion" Avalonne was the elven haven in the blessed realm, in effect the entrence to Tolkien's version of heaven. This may be what Avalon refers to in The Battle of Evermore. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.142.130.23 (talk) 16:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC).

The problem with this interpretation is that The Silmarillion was not released until 1977 and this song was written in 1971. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.116.39.103 (talk • contribs) 19:24, 6 February 2007

Very true, and although Tolkien experts were aware of certain aspects of The Silmarillion prior to 1977, the word Avallonë was not published in any of his works until 1977. So I have removed the reference to it in this article. — Lawrence King (talk) 07:55, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tolkien

The page states that the song heavily references Tolkien. Does it? What parts of the song reference what parts of Tolkien? Edelmand 15:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Seconding this request. I think people assume this song is all about Tolkien because they mention ringwraiths in the lyrics and it sounds vaguely fantasy-oriented. Zeppelin makes use of Tolkien's imagery in several of their lyrics (e.g. in Ramble On and Misty Mountain Hop) but that in no way means any of their songs are ABOUT Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Frodo or anything else. The song also mentions Avalon for instance.. does this mean it "heavily references" Arthurian legend? 64.252.167.134 05:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

No. The Avallone reference is above. There are specific refs to Tolkien's work in the song. Allusiion mostly, which means speculation, but he doesn't say Avalon (compare the accent of Avalon to Ride On. They don't rhyme, had it been Avalon, it should. Ignoring Tolkien's or Spence's influences altogether is a mistake, IMHO.

71.127.177.254 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for the Reversion

The Tolkien references belong in the article, and do not represent original research. The Tolkien reference interpretation is found widely in the J.R.R fan community. Once mentioned, the references become obvious to any person who has read The Lord of the Rings. (Because the Peter Jackson films follow the original story so closely, even film fans can understand the references.) For this reason, I have re-inserted the deleted portion of the article. I can understand why a person would think this could be original research, but in fact it is the widely-accepted view of a fan-base of millions. Furthermore, quotations from The Lord of the Rings could validate all of the references listed here, but it would clutter the article. The fact that the characters are linked to other wiki articles about them validates the reference. For example, a piece of the song lyric from "Ramble On" follows as "in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair...but Gollum, the evil one, crept up and slipped away with her..." Click on the links to Mordor and Gollum, and there can be no doubt that Led Zeppelin references Tolkien's works. Tsarevna (talk) 12:34, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

To demonstrate that it is not original research, you must cite reliable sources that provide information directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented. No such sources are currently cited. Edelmand (talk) 12:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
No citations have been provided so I have removed the information. Edelmand (talk) 00:43, 6 June 2008 (UTC)