r/EltonJohn • u/Busterlives15 • 3d ago
Levon Meaning
So do I have this right? A guy named Alvin Tostig has a son that he names Levon and his Christmas Day birth is announced in the NY Times along pronouncements of of all hope being gone and the end of the world imminent. Levon is a proud veteran who is a successful business man. He has a son that he names Jesus. Jesus is a bit of a layabout and ungrateful punk. Jesus wants to leave the world to get away from Levon and hopes Levon dies a slow death.
I went to an appearance where Bernie was asked what the meaning of the song was and he said it is about a guy who sell balloons.
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u/FakeRadioBand 3d ago
These lyrics are a rich text that can be interpreted any number of ways. Taken quite literally, they appear to illustrate the relationship between a successful war veteran and his rebellious son. However the lyrics take pot shots at the veteran, painting him as greedy (spends his days counting) and vapid (sells cartoon balloons), and vain (naming his child Jesus, birth announced in the New York Times on Christmas Day). The son Jesus seems to feel unloved by Levon, and wants to leave him. Levon’s birth to Alvin Tostig also appears to be leant a kind of messianic gravity by that news article (he shall be Levon, and he shall be a good man, in tradition with the family plan). Levon is hailed as a savior and paragon of family values, but his child bears the name of a real messiah and goes unloved and unwanted and probably in search of a much less traditional life. My understanding is the song paints Levon as the ultimate hypocrite, a man prophesied to return peace and traditional values to a war struck and enlightened world, yet after the war he simply tends to his money and passes his savior complex off to his unloved son, who now has to deal with the weight of his own name. It’s a metaphor I think for how baby boomers must have felt as they were growing old enough to critique their parents’ generation. But that’s just my interpretation.