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Song: Going To California
Album: Untitled [released Nov 8, 1971 (US) | Nov 12, 1971 (UK)]
Single: N/A
Credited to: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant
Related Songs:
Go Your Way My Love - Bert Jansch (music)
Joni Mitchell (muse)

Lyrics:

Spend my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind, make a new start
Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart
Someone told me there's a girl out there
with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

Took my chances on a big jet-plane
Never let 'em tell ya that they're all the same
Hoh, the sea was red and the sky was grey
I wonder how tomorrow could ever follow today
Mountains and the canyons start to tremble and shake
The children of the sun begin to awake
Watch out

It seems that the wrath of the gods got a punch on the nose and it's startin' to flow, I think I might be sinkin'
Throw me a line, if I reach it in time, meet you up there where the path runs straight and high

Find a queen without a king
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings, la-la-la-la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born
Standin' on a hill in the mountain of dreams
Tellin' myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems

Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ahh

Influences: The subject of this song seems to be focused on the beauty of the hippie capital - Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, as idealized by the song titled San Francisco that John Phillips (of The Mamas And The Papas) wrote for Scott McKenzie to sing at the time of the Monterey International Pop Festival in the summer of love, 1967. This song (Going To California) is also recognized to be sort of a tribute to folkie sweetheart Joni Mitchell. Although not necessarily directly influencing this song, Joni Mitchell wrote a song of her own praising California on her album Blue, which was also released in 1971. The actual music of Going To California is very reminiscent of a Bert Jansch song titled Go Your Way My Love.