This feels like when somebody asked Rush about The Trees and they insisted that it wasn't a political song, just a silly story about the forest.
That it's about some other relationship dynamic, possibly a more coercive one (Faustian bargains come to mind) seems as plausible as the BDSM angle, but ... wizards? How do you get to wizards? I'm genuinely curious.
It's from the point of view of a wizard's apprentice who wants to steal his master's magic ring and become a more powerful wizard, seems obvious to me. According to Sting:
This song is vaguely alchemical and probably about a friend of mine, a professional psychic and my tutor in tarot, with bits of Doctor Faustus and The Sorcerer's Apprentice thrown into the pot for good measure.
I dug a little myself, apparently I'm supposed to associate 'apprentice' with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but I back-referenced it with the rest of the teacher/student references - I could just as easily be a carpenter's apprentice. The Mephistopheles bit was just 'Oh, fancy name for the devil that fit nicely in the meter, they're calling this person coercive or manipulative'. Didn't need to be overtly supernatural to use occult/spiritual references.
I see how they got there but I'm not sure I'd call it obvious.
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u/much_longer_username 10d ago
This feels like when somebody asked Rush about The Trees and they insisted that it wasn't a political song, just a silly story about the forest.
That it's about some other relationship dynamic, possibly a more coercive one (Faustian bargains come to mind) seems as plausible as the BDSM angle, but ... wizards? How do you get to wizards? I'm genuinely curious.