After learning guitar at the age of 12, Scaggs met Steve Miller at St. Mark's School of Texas in Dallas. In 1959, he became the vocalist for Miller's band The Marksmen. The pair later attended the University of Wisconsin together, playing in blues bands like The Ardells and The Fabulous Knight Trains. Leaving school, Scaggs briefly left Texas to join the burgeoning rhythm and blues scene in London. After singing in bands such as The Wigs and Mother Earth, he recorded his first solo album Boz in 1965, which was not a commercial success. He traveled to Sweden as a solo performer and did a brief stint with the band The Other Side with fellow American Jack Downing and Brit Mac MacLeod.
Returning to the US, Scaggs promptly headed for the booming psychedelic music center of San Francisco in 1967. Linking up with Steve Miller again, he appeared on the Steve Miller Band's first two albums Children of the Future and Sailor, which won over critical reviews. After being spotted by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, Scaggs secured a solo contract with Atlantic Records in 1968. Despite good reviews, his first Atlantic album was met with lukewarm sales, as were followup albums on Columbia Records. In 1976, he linked up with session musicians who would later form Toto and recorded his smash album Silk Degrees. The album reached number 2 on the US charts and number 1 in a number of countries across the world, spawning three hit singles: "Lowdown", "Lido Shuffle", and "What Can I Say", as well as the MOR standard "We're All Alone", later a hit for Rita Coolidge. A sellout world tour followed, but his follow-up album, the 1977 Down Two Then Left, lacked the cohesion of Silk Degrees.
Scaggs' 1980 album Middle Man would spawn two top 20 hits, "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "Jojo," and Scaggs would enjoy two more hits over 1980 and 1981 ("Look What You've Done to Me" from the Urban Cowboy soundtrack, and "Miss Sun" from a greatest hits set).
Scaggs continued to record and tour sporadically throughout the 1980s and 1990s, although he semi-retired from the music business and turned owner of the San Francisco nightclub Slim's. His lengthy hiatus from the music industry slowed his chart career down dramatically.
Scaggs recorded Other Roads in 1988, took another hiatus, and then came back in 1994 with Some Change. In the late 190s he released Come On Home, an album of blues, and My Time, an anthology. He garnered good reviews with Dig, although the CD, which was released on September 11, 2001, was lost in the post-911 melée. In May, 2003, Scaggs released But Beautiful, a collection of jazz standards that debuted at number 1 on the jazz charts.
In 2013 he released the album Memphis
Illusion
Boz Scaggs Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Is turn the other way
Although he'd love to love you
Your eyes deceive
Your lovers leave
And you go crawling again
Into your shadows and then
Run away
Why don't you just run off
And hide once again
In your damned illusion
Nights so sweet
The perfume beats
Into your veins and then
It's all insane again
Feelings burn
The blues return
Those lips are calling
And you go falling and falling and falling
Run away
Why don't you just run off
And hide once again
In your damned illusion.. yeah
Run away
Why don't you just run off
and hide once again
In your damned illusion
You can run off baby but you know that
You just can't hide no more
From your lowdown ways
Can't get away from your damned illusions
Ooh ain't it hard babe just to get through the night
When you can't see the light for your damned illusion
You can run off babe
Once again your fooling around
In your damned illusion yeah yeah
Once again you will fall into you damned illusion
You take one part Buddha
And two parts cat
Run them through your computer
And that's where he's at
Some say he's ruthless
And some say he's a saint
They tell you he's innocent
I tell you he aint
I hear him think
I follow his flight
I'd know that footstep
In the darkest of nights
I follow that man
He's a creature of stealth
Don't run with the mob
Won't stop at nothing
Till he finishes the job
I hear him out there laughing
When he knows I'm closing in
I feel the desperation
Of the fool within
He's like your shadow
You can stop it dead
But when you go to take him
He's a step ahead
I follow that man
[I follow from a distance
As he appears
Between the darkness and the light
Meeted curtains part
He takes a drink
He takes a smoke
Takes a paper
He takes me along for the ride
I snatch his bag
We go deeper
Into the quarter
Through a rain slaked dampness into an alley
The smell of garbage and perfume
Brick by brick
His woman meets me
But it doesn't matter
Anyway, whose chasing who
I'm just holding the bag]
I hear him out there laughing
When he knows I'm closing in
I feel the desperation
I hear him think
I follow his flight
I'd know that footstep
In the darkest of nights
I follow that man
I follow that man
I watch him smoke
I watch him drink
I follow that man
I follow that man
The song "Illusion" by Boz Scaggs seems to be about a woman who is disillusioned and struggles with relationships. The singer in the song tells her to run away and hide again in her "damned illusion" because her eyes deceive and her lovers leave. The woman seems to be caught in a cycle of chasing feelings and running away when they burn her. The singer cannot love her because she cannot see through her illusions and needs to face her lowdown ways.
The song has a dreamy, jazzy vibe to it with smooth guitar riffs and a bluesy sound. Boz Scaggs' vocals are soulful and expressive, conveying the pain and longing that the singer feels for the woman who is trapped in her illusion. The lyrics seem to be a warning of sorts to the woman, but also a lament for the singer's unfulfilled love.
Line by Line Meaning
All he can do
Is turn the other way
Although he'd love to love you
He is unable to confront you despite the love he feels for you.
Your eyes deceive
Your lovers leave
And you go crawling again
Into your shadows and then
Your eyes mislead everyone, your lovers abandon you, and you retreat to your dark hiding place.
Run away
Why don't you just run off
And hide once again
In your damned illusion
After falling for the same illusion over and over again, why don't you escape and hide in your imaginary world?
Nights so sweet
The perfume beats
Into your veins and then
It's all insane again
The sweet nights and the aromatic perfume intoxicate you once again, and everything becomes crazy.
Feelings burn
The blues return
Those lips are calling
And you go falling and falling and falling
The feelings of love are intense, the sadness returns, and you continue to fall deeper and deeper for the same lips.
You can run off baby but you know that
You just can't hide no more
From your lowdown ways
Can't get away from your damned illusions
Ooh ain't it hard babe just to get through the night
When you can't see the light for your damned illusion
You can run away from reality, but you can't escape your flawed self, and it's difficult to find the way out of your distorted reality.
Once again you will fall into you damned illusion
You will again believe in your fabricated reality.
You take one part Buddha
And two parts cat
Run them through your computer
And that's where he's at
Some say he's ruthless
And some say he's a saint
They tell you he's innocent
I tell you he aint
He is a perplexing person made up of various traits, and people have different opinions of him, while I know he is guilty.
He's a creature of stealth
Don't run with the mob
Won't stop at nothing
Till he finishes the job
He is sly, independent, and relentless when he is on a mission.
I hear him out there laughing
When he knows I'm closing in
I feel the desperation
Of the fool within
He's like your shadow
You can stop it dead
But when you go to take him
He's a step ahead
As I try to catch him, he enjoys and taunts me, and I feel the foolishness within me. He is just like a shadow that disappears whenever you try to grasp it.
I watch him smoke
I watch him drink
I follow that man
I follow that man
I observe his every move closely and chase him persistently.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sentric Music, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: MARCUS MILLER, WILLIAM R. ROYCE SCAGGS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind