Song Information
The song is known for its upbeat tempo, its down-home feel, and a signature change in key and tempo towards the end. The song's lyrics, filled with colorful, dream-like imagery, led some to believe that the song was about drugs. According to the drug theory, the "flying spoon" in the song was a cocaine spoon, and the crazy animal images were an acid trip. Fogerty, however, has stated in interviews that the song was actually written for his then three-year old son, Josh. Fogerty has also said that the reference to a parade passing by was inspired by the Dr. Seuss book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. One of Fogerty's musical influences, Buck Owens, is also mentioned in the song.
"Lookin' Out My Back Door", along with "Long as I Can See the Light" on the flip-side, was released as a single in July 1970. The double sided single, counted as one entry by the methodology used by Billboard magazine at the time, eventually climbed to number two on the Billboard Pop Singles chart (by comparison, "Long as I Can See the Light" only reached number fifty-seven on the concurrent Cash Box singles chart, which still tracked the performance on both sides of a single separately). This marked the fifth (and final) time the group had a double sided single accomplish that feat on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. The single was held out of the top spot by Diana Ross's cover of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough ("Lookin' Out My Back Door" did top the Cash Box singles chart for one week). "Long as I Can See the Light" also reached #20 on the U.K. Pop chart.
In live performances, Fogerty sometimes changes "tambourines and elephants are playing in the band" to "tangerines and Elvis are playing in the band". In a recent show of Austin City Limits he added a fiddle, to give the song more of a country sound.
In April 2012, Fogerty appeared at the West Coast Blues `n' Roots festival in Australia, where he played songs from some of his most famous albums, such as 1970's Cosmo's Factory.
The song was featured in the Coen Brothers' movie The Big Lebowski and in the 2006 drama We Are Marshall.
Read more about this topic: Lookin' Out My Back Door
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“I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I’ll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.”
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