This piece, Starless, was released in '74.
On Debaser, of course, it's already been talked about a lot.
But at thirteen today I see these reviews
that talk exclusively about individual songs:
I'll quickly say my piece and be out of here.
The description of the universe in music becomes understandable. The haunting melody of a dark melancholy, without light, because the light of the stars is absent.
The linear path is destined to go mad and explode in a big bang, the only way to blend simple technique with complex taste.
An odd time. So elementary yet so complex it makes you cry.
This harsh, dark, yet equally colorful image, this genesis, is the birth of the sun and its death. Red has triumphed. I've never received such a great gift.
Lady Supermarket with an apple in her basket
Knocks in the manager's door;
Grooning to the muzak from a speaker in shoe rack
Lays out her goods on the floor;
Everything she's chosen is conveniently frozen.
"Eat it and come back for more!"
Lady Window Shopper with a new one in the hopper
Whips up a chemical brew;
Croaking to a neighbour while she polishes a sabre
Knows how to flavour a stew.
Never need to worry with a tin of 'Hurri Curri':
"Poisoned especially for you!"
No use to complain
If you're caught out in the rain;
Your mother's quite insane.
Cat food cat food cat food again.
Lady Yellow Stamper with a fillet in a hamper
Dying to finish the course;
Goodies for the table with a fable on the label
Drowning in miracle sauce.
Don't think I am that rude if I tell you that it's cat food,
"Not even fit for a horse!"
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Lady Supermarket with an apple in her basket
Knocks in the manager's door;
Grooning to the muzak from a speaker in shoe rack
Lays out her goods on the floor;
Everything she's chosen is conveniently frozen.
"Eat it and come back for more!"
Lady Window Shopper with a new one in the hopper
Whips up a chemical brew;
Croaking to a neighbour while she polishes a sabre
Knows how to flavour a stew.
Never need to worry with a tin of 'Hurri Curri':
"Poisoned especially for you!"
No use to complain
If you're caught out in the rain;
Your mother's quite insane.
Cat food cat food cat food again.
Lady Yellow Stamper with a fillet in a hamper
Dying to finish the course;
Goodies for the table with a fable on the label
Drowning in miracle sauce.
Don't think I am that rude if I tell you that it's cat food,
"Not even fit for a horse!"
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Fingers reaching
Linger shrieking
Jump at a scream
Goodnight honey
You're all alone
Baby breathing
They come better looking
But they don't come mannered
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Fingers reaching
Linger shrieking
Jump at a scream
Goodnight honey
You're all alone
Baby breathing
They come better looking
But they don't come mannered
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
Lady Supermarket with an apple in her basket
Knocks in the manager's door;
Grooning to the muzak from a speaker in shoe rack
Lays out her goods on the floor;
Everything she's chosen is conveniently frozen.
"Eat it and come back for more!"
Lady Window Shopper with a new one in the hopper
Whips up a chemical brew;
Croaking to a neighbour while she polishes a sabre
Knows how to flavour a stew.
Never need to worry with a tin of 'Hurri Curri':
"Poisoned especially for you!"
No use to complain
If you're caught out in the rain;
Your mother's quite insane.
Cat food cat food cat food again.
Lady Yellow Stamper with a fillet in a hamper
Dying to finish the course;
Goodies for the table with a fable on the label
Drowning in miracle sauce.
Don't think I am that rude if I tell you that it's cat food,
"Not even fit for a horse!"
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Lady Supermarket with an apple in her basket
Knocks in the manager's door;
Grooning to the muzak from a speaker in shoe rack
Lays out her goods on the floor;
Everything she's chosen is conveniently frozen.
"Eat it and come back for more!"
Lady Window Shopper with a new one in the hopper
Whips up a chemical brew;
Croaking to a neighbour while she polishes a sabre
Knows how to flavour a stew.
Never need to worry with a tin of 'Hurri Curri':
"Poisoned especially for you!"
No use to complain
If you're caught out in the rain;
Your mother's quite insane.
Cat food cat food cat food again.
Lady Yellow Stamper with a fillet in a hamper
Dying to finish the course;
Goodies for the table with a fable on the label
Drowning in miracle sauce.
Don't think I am that rude if I tell you that it's cat food,
"Not even fit for a horse!"
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
If I only could deceive you forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you, you laugh just the same
'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down...
We lay cards upon the table, the backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people, the boys in the band
Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds...
All completeness in the morning, asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen, banana-boat ride
She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday...
There's the succour of the needy, incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future, your life and death dreams
As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen...
You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to choose...
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Fingers reaching
Linger shrieking
Jump at a scream
Goodnight honey
You're all alone
Baby breathing
They come better looking
But they don't come mannered
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Health-food faggot with a bartered bride
Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride
Once had a friend with a cloven foot
Once he called the tune in a chequered quit
Great Deceiver
In the door on the floor in a paper bag
There's a shoe-shine boy with a gin-shop slag
She raised him up and she called him son
And she canonised the ground that he walked upon
Great Deceiver
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, cadillacs blue jeans
In the night he's a star in the Milky Way
He's a man of the world by the light of day
A golden smile and a proposition
And the breath of God smells of sweet sedition
Great Deceiver
Sing hymns make love get high fall dead
He'll bring his perfume to your bed
He'll charm your life 'til the cold winds blow
Then he'll sell your dreams to a picture show
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary
Cadillacs, blue jeans, dixieland playing on the ferry
Cadillacs, blues jeans, drop a glass full of antique sherry
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black
Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that omens to be
Starless and bible black
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...