Another look at Homburg

Peter Kuppers

Some thirty years ago, when I was age eighteen, a fellow student told me this remarkable story: “So you’re a Procol fan and you like Homburg? It’s all about LSD, you know. LSD is a psychopharmacological agent developed by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories. It was manufactured at a larger scale in its Sandoz plant in Homburg (in the German federal state of Saarland). In 1966, Sandoz ended its distribution of the drug and closed its Homburg plant. That’s what the song is about.”

Let’s have a look at the words. Pretty obvious, aren’t they? “Your multilingual business friend has packed her bags and fled.” The multilingual business friend must be a multinational. And the “she” in this story must be a friend, since she provided the drug (cf for example Eric Burdon’s A Girl Named Sandoz).

She packed her bags and fled. By the mid-60s LSD was criminalized in many countries and Sandoz ended its distribution.

The use of LSD leads to dizziness and visual disturbances:“The mirror on reflection has climbed back upon the wall, for the floor she found descended and the ceiling was too tall.”

The experience of time changes. Remember how the town clock in the market square behaves and what it threatens to do to any fool who dares to tell the time.

A beautiful explanation, isn’t it? At that day in October 1975 all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

Only … I never found any traces of a Sandoz plant in Homburg. Nor in Bad Homburg, in the federal state of Hesse.  

And yet, it makes sense, somehow …

Thanks, Peter