"Ride My See-Saw"

This morning, I watched this live performance of "Ride My See-Saw" in France in 1969:

I realized two things about the instrumental section (which starts at ~1:50 in this performance but at ~1:40 in the studio recording).  Years ago, I figured out two of the vocal parts.  They're something like:

The higher part generally descends, and the lower part ascends.  This simultaneous up-and-down illustrates the confusion that's mentioned in the lyrics that come before and after this section.  The preceding line is "But by now that answer just ain't true," and the next lyrics are "My world is spinnin' around / Ev'rything is lost that I've found."  The vocal parts' going two different directions provides a sense of this disorientation.

Alternatively, this simultaneous up-and-down gives a musical picture of that see-saw.  It's like each vocal part is an end; as one goes up, the other comes down.

"Ride My See-Saw"

I listened to In Search of the Lost Chord yester-day.  This morning, I was thinking about "Ride My See-Saw" and realized something about the melody to which the title phrase is sung.  The notes there are C D C E, so musically there's an alternating, up-and-down feel that matches the movement of a see-saw.

"Ride My See-Saw"

Compared to the first verse of "Ride My See-Saw" ("I worked like a slave for years..."), the chord progression for the second verse ("Left school with a first class pass...") is different.  The first verse is

|: C major | Bb major | F major | G major :| Bb major | C major

but the second verse is

|: C major | Bb major | F major | G major :| Bb major | D minor

Part of this difference seems to be because the first verse transitions into a different iteration of the chorus ("Run, run my life's race...") while the second verse transitions into an instrumental section, but putting a D minor where a C major is expected is also something of a musical representation of the lyric there: "School talk one and one is two / But by now that answer just ain't true."  It's as if the song goes to a different chord (and a minor chord, at that, where everything up to this point has been a major chord) because "by now that answer just ain't true."