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Perhaps a reference to King Solomon’s temple which had two huge pillars on either side of the east entrance. This would also tie in with the previous line: Solomon was known to judge wisely, as his famous “split the baby” judgment suggests.
He may have created this couplet when reading JUDGES 16 where Samson, one of the last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Judges chapters 13 to 16), died when he grasped two pillars of the Temple of Dagon, and “bowed himself with all his might” (Judges 16:30, KJV).
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What is this?
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When the only pull you got is the wool over your eyes Black Star (Ft. Common) – Respiration
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To have “pull” in the streets is to have power and influence; cats claim they have pull, but are really having the wool pulled over their eyes (an idiomatic English phrase meaning to be tricked or bamboozled) by those in power. The context here: blacks are fighting one another for power and influence in minor fields like drugs and rap, while the real levers of financial and military power are held by others who keep them in check.
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“The Paradise” was a hippie coffee house and club in Los Angeles on Sunset Boulevard at the corner of Laurel Canyon Drive. Joni lived (and still does) up in Laurel Canyon. Developers tore down the much loved Paradise and paved it over, then put up a hideous multi-plex theater, which is what stands there today. The double meaning is of course paradise as a noun (an idea) and Paradise as a proper noun (an actual place).
In an interview Joni actually says that the song was inspired by the view of her hotel on a trip to Hawaii where she could throw open the windows and see paradise right there, but there was a huge parking lot built right in the middle of it.
7
Invented anecdote contrary to fact
The “Paradise” coffee shop story is completely fake. Here’s what Ms. Mitchell told journalist Robert Hilbern about writing the wong:
“I wrote ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart… this blight on paradise. That’s when I sat down and wrote
the song.”
Source: Hilburn, Robert (December 8, 1996). “Both Sides, Later”. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA: Tribune Company.
For the record, there is no Laurel Canyon Drive in LA. There is a Laurel Canyon Boulevard which intersects Sunset. But there is not now, nor has there ever been, a multiplex theater there.
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There’s a large, pink hotel on Honolulu’s Waikiki beach called the Royal Hawaiian. Can you imagine taking a pristine beach in a paradise like Hawaii, paving it over, and building on it a pink hotel? But that’s exactly what was done and Joni is pointing out that painful fact.
this is incorrect she wrote the song when visiting Hawaii