There’s nothing you can do or feel when you’re broken hearted. You’re expected to move on, and you want to, but you’re still in love.

There are so many pop songs that cover this feeling, from The Beatles‘ “You Won’t See Me”:

Yes, it seems so long
Girl, since you’ve been gone
And I just can’t go on
If you won’t see me

to Lana Del Rey’s “Dark Paradise”:

All my friends tell me I should move on
I’m lying in the ocean, singing your song
That’s how you sang it
Loving you forever, can’t be wrong
Even though you’re not here, won’t move on

This is very similar to a line from ‘Village Ghetto Land’ by Stevie Wonder:

Broken glass is everywhere
It’s a bloody scene

Both songs deal with inner-city poverty, so it’s not surprising to see them both bring up crime. The broken glass implies either vandalism, or smashed windows from burglaries – or at the very least, an accident that nobody has bothered to clean up. This is an extremely evocative image, rich with implications.

James Q. Wilson’s “broken-windows theory” says that by fixing small problems like broken windows, you fix the larger culture of crime. This was put into practice in New York, but it didn’t do any good.

Definition of ‘excitation’ according to Merriam-Webster:

the disturbed or altered condition resulting from stimulation of an individual, organ, tissue, or cell.

She turns him on. And she’s good at it.

Also, the electrotheremin played on this track illustrates the good vibrations through sound. It was played by its inventor, Paul Tanner. The instrument is played without touching it. The weird noise produced by this instrument was a major contributor to the song’s success, as it provided a psychedelic effect.

Brian came over to me and sang such and such a thing, and I said “Well, write it down and I’ll play it,” and he said “Write it down? We don’t write anything down.”
- Paul Tanner, Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop by Mark Brend.

Some interpret these lines as being about JFK, MLK and RFK, or Hendrix, Morrison and Jones, but it seems most likely that they are a call back to the deaths of Holly, Valens and Richardson to bookend the song.

If the train was taking them to the Pacific Coast, then they were heading West – a common euphemism for death.

The girl who sang the blues is almost certainly Janis Joplin, who died in 1970.

In the song “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”, Leonard Cohen independently used similar language to talk about her death.

But you got away didn’t you babe?
You just turned your back on the crowd

It’s interesting to note the juxtaposition of “blues” and “happy” – if the girl sang sad songs, he should’ve expected her to not have anything happy to say.

Dylan’s disappearance coincided with The Beatles asserting themselves as the best band in the world rather than mere hitmakers. However, by 1966 The Beatles grew tired of touring and officially halted their live performances to focus more on experimenting in the studio. The band played their final live performance during this period on August 29th, 1966 in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, which only lasted for about 30 minutes. Those who became fans after this period never got to experience them live, having to wait 2 and half years for The Beatles to give their last live performance on the roof of their Savile Row ‘Apple Corps’ head office in London on January 30th, 1969.

After this and Dylan’s motorcycle crash, The Beatles released Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road in a little over three years. They also had a seemingly never ending string of hit singles. No other acts had a chance to become leading figures, because The Beatles were relentlessly great.

The giveaway line is the reference to “sergeants” – a clear allusion to Sgt Pepper’s.

In late July 1966, Bob Dylan had a serious motorcycle accident, cracking at least one vertebra. He was growing weary of being heralded as a leader of the protest movement – a view he expresses in “Maggie’s Farm” – and used the accident as an excuse to stay out of the limelight. Although he recorded The Basement Tapes in 1967, they were not released until 1975. Dylan seemed a spent creative force.

Other musicians weren’t though. From Moody Blues’s orchestral interludes and the psychedelia of Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane, to the boundary-pushing guitar work of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and Frank Zappa and Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys redefining what a record could sound like, it was a time of widespread musical creativity, even if you ignore The Beatles, who were having a huge burst of creativity with The White Album and Abbey Road.