What does “keeps his fire engine clean” mean?
One of The Beatles' most celebrated pieces of pop, Paul McCartney's 'Penny Lane' has triggered debate as to the meaning of its clean, fireman's machine line.
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Music » From The Vault
Mon 3 February 2025 2:30, UK
When attempting to highlight the differing songwriting approaches between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, The Beatles‘ 1967 double A-side ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ is often presented as the exemplar that encapsulates the supposed adverse dimensions to the Lennon-McCartney duple creative sensibilities. Both singles explore the nostalgic end of psychedelia, wistfully wandering the hazy terrain of childhood and kaleidoscopic reminisce.
The idea that Lennon was the arch-experimentalist at odds with McCartney’s conservative musical tastes is an unfortunately common misconception, McCartney was just as immersed in the artistic vanguard as his later avant-garde partner, introducing The Beatles to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s musique concrète, keenly embracing the nascent Moog synthesizer on the Abbey Road sessions, and flexing his art-school style filmmaking chops heading the Magical Mystery Tour TV feature.
But an unabashed love for the pop-cultural whimsy of his post-war youth certainly beamed from his psychedelic contributions, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ and ‘Your Mother Should Know’ colourful echos of the old working-class music halls.
McCartney’s affection for the brighter, more eccentric end of surrealism is perfectly captured in the quaintly offbeat ‘Penny Lane’. The song paints a Richard Scarry-esque overview of his ode to the Mossley Hill street, exploring the peculiar characters that shape the skewed social mosaic of the bustling south Liverpool suburb.
”‘Penny Lane’ was kind of nostalgic, but it was really a place that John and I knew,” McCartney told Clash in 2009. ”I’d get a bus to his house and I’d have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place that we both knew, and so we both knew the things that turned up in the story.”
Allegedly, a sudden burst of inspiration pulled McCartney’s pen to notepad and scribbled the everyday cast before him while waiting for Lennon on Penny Lane’s bus shelter, jotting down the barber’s shop with pictures of his clients, a nurse selling poppies in the run-up to Remembrance Day, and triggering eternal debate as to its dual meaning, the fireman taking price in his well-kept fire engine.
So, what does “keeps his fire engine clean” mean?‘Penny Lane’ on the whole, is another slice of charming, baroque Anglo-pop that’s overwhelmingly innocent in nature, just as ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ or ‘Rocky Raccoon‘ exist as excuses to indulge in vaudeville, raconteur storytelling. Scrutiny of some of ‘Penny Lane’s lines has pointed toward subtle innuendo, however. “A four of fish and finger pies” is not only a pleasing alliterative roll off the tongue but also a barely concealed punchline of sexual slang. “A four of fish” refers to the four pennyworth in pre-decimalised money, and “finger pies” is a juvenile euphemism for digital fingering.
The fireman with an hourglass is shrouded in speculative ambiguity as to its possible double entendre. Keenly keeping “his fire engine clean”, it’s often been posited as a sly reference to masturbation. It could be a stretch, as McCartney’s fondness for his gallery of Penny Lane eccentrics is largely centred on the wholesome side, but it’s repeated emphasis on the “clean machine”, and the prior “portrait of the Queen” in his pocket raises eyebrows.
Whatever the level of its innuendo, ‘Penny Lane’ stands as one of The Beatles’ finest works, gifted with McCartney’s knack for God-given melody and artful arrangement.
Related Topics
Paul McCartneyThe Beatles
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