Truly great song lyrics



"Beasley Street"
By John Cooper Clark:

Far from crazy pavements
The taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
On a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
Are rendered obsolete
The legal term is "null and void"
In the case of Beasley Street
In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
A sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of Beasley Street
Where the action isn't
That's where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on Beasley Street
From the boarding-houses and the bedsits
Full of accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men's overcoats
You can't see their feet
A riff joint shuts, opens up
Right down on Beasley Street
Cars collide, colours clash
Disaster-movie stuff
For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache
Revenge is not enough
There's a dead canary on a swivel seat
There's a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
Silence is the code
Hot beneath the collar
An inspector calls
Where the perishing stink of squalor
Impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street
The hipster and his hired hat
Drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink cravat
Nothing, la-dee-dah
OAP, mother-to-be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shit-stoppered drains
And crocodile skis
Are seen on Beasley Street
The kingdom of the blind
A one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
The doorbells do not ring
A lightbulb bursts like a blister
The only form of heat
Here a fellow sells his sister
Down the river on Beasley Street
The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their common problem is
That they're not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can't keep it neat
It's a fully furnished dustbin
Sixteen Beasley Street
Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
But the smell of yesterday's cabbage
And the ghost of last year's wife
Through a constant haze
Of deodorant sprays
He says retreat
Alsations dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley Street
People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss
It's a sociologist's paradise
Each day repeats
On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy
Beastly Beasley Street
Eyes dead as vicious fish
Bugger round for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent Monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street
 
Last edited:
It was in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes and blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on a noneventful morn
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question, then, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation and she gave me a lethal dose
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country, but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
"Come in, " she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"
 
Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell
Extinguishing the fires in a private hell
Provoking the heartache to renew the licence
Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule
Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience
Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover
Baptised in the tears from the real
Drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly line, rat race
Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
Caress Ophelia's hand with breathstroke ambition
An albatross in the marrytime tradition
Sheathed within the Walkman wear the halo of distortion
Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation
She turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart
She hung herself around my neck
From the Time-Life-Guardians in their conscience bubbles
Safe and dry in my sea of troubles
Nine to five with suitable ties
Cast adrift as their side-show, peepshow, stereo hero
Becalm bestill, bewitch, drowning in the real
The thief of Baghdad hides in Islington now
Praying deportation for his sacred cow
A legacy of romance from a twilight world
The dowry of a relative mystery girl
A Vietnamese flower, a Dockland union
A mistress of release from a magazine's thighs
Magdalenes contracts more than favours
The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat
A son of a swastika of '45 parading a peroxide standard
Graffiti conjure disciples testaments of hatred
Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
This is Brixton chess
A knight for Embankment folds his newspaper castle
A creature of habit, begs the boatman's coin
He'll fade with old soldiers in the grease stained roll call
And linger with the heartburn of Good Friday's last supper
Son watches father scan obituary columns in search of absent school friends
While his generation digests high fibre ignorance
Cowering behind curtains and the taped up painted windows
Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door Belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens
Waiting, the season of the button, the penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes, for the fashionably, for the terminally insane, insane
Do you realise? Do you realise?
Do you realise, this world is totally fugazi
Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets
To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary
 
Dandy,you know you're moving much too fast
And Dandy, you know you can't escape the past
Look around you, and see the people settle down
And when you're old n grey you will remember what they said
That two girls are too many, threes a crowd and four you're dead.


Davies at his comedic best.
 
Mad Eyed Screamer said:
Belting tune. Have it in purple vinyl. A 7 inch pure 3 mins of kitchen sink drama.

Difford & Tilbrook - the second greatest songwriting duo after Morrissey & Marr
Click to expand...
I watched a crackin documentary the other night on these(from 2012) It seemed that Tilbrook wrote most of the songs and Difford constructed them into catchy tunes. Absolutely brilliant the pair of them. What else I took from that documentary is that Hooland is a bit of a twat!
 


Got me tanktop with the budgie front, party on at Vinny's
Oxford bags, so I looked a ****, but the party's nearly finished
Nowt to drink but Noilly Prat, Babycham or Snowball
Nowt to shag but something fat on holiday from Cornwall
The face that lunched on a thousand chips
Seventeen hairs in the wart on her bottom lip
But I knew I had to give it a shag, or she'd go home thinking I'm a screaming handbag.

Didn't know which way up she was, I said: 'Fart and give us a clue, love.'
She said back at hers she had some beer, 'and a bottle of Clandew, love.'
I got dead pissed, she looked quite fit, she looked like someone famous,
I fumbled about, but my aim was out, I stuffed it up her anus
She picked her arse as she lay bare, digging out bits of bogroll in her anal hair
I knew I had to give it a shag, now she'll go home thinking I'm a screaming handbag

Got out of bed to have a piss, and something really shocked us,
A yellow growth on my bell end, I legged it down the doctor's
This is what you get when you tunnel test, its yellow and deformed;
But it wasn't clap, or owt like that, but a fucking piece of sweetcorn

The face that lunched on a thousand chips
She had seventeen hairs in the wart on her bottom lip
 
Tuearts right boot said:
Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell
Extinguishing the fires in a private hell
Provoking the heartache to renew the licence
Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule
Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience
Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover
Baptised in the tears from the real
Drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly line, rat race
Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
Caress Ophelia's hand with breathstroke ambition
An albatross in the marrytime tradition
Sheathed within the Walkman wear the halo of distortion
Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation
She turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart
She hung herself around my neck
From the Time-Life-Guardians in their conscience bubbles
Safe and dry in my sea of troubles
Nine to five with suitable ties
Cast adrift as their side-show, peepshow, stereo hero
Becalm bestill, bewitch, drowning in the real
The thief of Baghdad hides in Islington now
Praying deportation for his sacred cow
A legacy of romance from a twilight world
The dowry of a relative mystery girl
A Vietnamese flower, a Dockland union
A mistress of release from a magazine's thighs
Magdalenes contracts more than favours
The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat
A son of a swastika of '45 parading a peroxide standard
Graffiti conjure disciples testaments of hatred
Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
This is Brixton chess
A knight for Embankment folds his newspaper castle
A creature of habit, begs the boatman's coin
He'll fade with old soldiers in the grease stained roll call
And linger with the heartburn of Good Friday's last supper
Son watches father scan obituary columns in search of absent school friends
While his generation digests high fibre ignorance
Cowering behind curtains and the taped up painted windows
Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door Belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens
Waiting, the season of the button, the penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes, for the fashionably, for the terminally insane, insane
Do you realise? Do you realise?
Do you realise, this world is totally fugazi
Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets
To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary
Click to expand...
What a tune. Also …

Sheltering her ego on the edge of a floodlit arc
She'll contemplate seduction, she'll calculate the catch
When she moved, her presence speared me
When she spoke, her words ensnared me
Watch the lizard, watch the lizard
Watch the lizard with the crimson veil

She crucified my heart in the depth of a satin grave
As I lay in sweating monologue I sensed the lovelight fade
Within the spiral of the cigarette
You betrayed your bedside etiquette
I saw the lizard, I saw the lizard
I touched the lizard with the crimson veil

I've seen a different doorway shut a million times before
The smiling she chameleon, the smiling vinyl whores

(Distinctly a casual affair)

They know what they want, they sing your name
And glide between the sheets
I never say no, in chemical glow we'll let our bodies meet
So was it just a fuck, was it just a fuck, just another fuck I said
Loving just for laughs, carnal autograph, lying on a lizard's bed
So was it just a fuck, was it just a fuck, just another fuck I bled
Degraded and alone, raped and still forlorn
Betrayed on a lizard's bed, on a lizard's bed
We chameleon, we chameleon, we chameleon (oui!)
 
You get a shiver in the dark
It's been raining in the park but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything
A band is blowing Dixie double four time
You feel all right when you hear that music ring

You step inside but you don't see too many faces
Coming in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down
Too much competition too many other places
But not too many horns can make that sound
Way on downsouth way on downsouth London town

You check out Guitar George he knows all the chords
Mind he's strictly rhythm he doesn't want to make it cry or sing
And an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene
He's got a daytime job he's doing alright
He can play honky tonk just like anything
Saving it up for Friday night
With the Sultans with the Sultans of Swing

And a crowd of young boys they're fooling around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles
They don't give a damn about any trumpet playing band
It ain't what they call rock and roll
And the Sultans played Creole

And then the man he steps right up to the microphone
And says at last just as the time bell rings
'Thank you goodnight now it's time to go home'
and he makes it fast with one more thing
'We are the Sultans of Swing'
 
Citizen of Legoland said:
What a tune. Also …

Sheltering her ego on the edge of a floodlit arc
She'll contemplate seduction, she'll calculate the catch
When she moved, her presence speared me
When she spoke, her words ensnared me
Watch the lizard, watch the lizard
Watch the lizard with the crimson veil

She crucified my heart in the depth of a satin grave
As I lay in sweating monologue I sensed the lovelight fade
Within the spiral of the cigarette
You betrayed your bedside etiquette
I saw the lizard, I saw the lizard
I touched the lizard with the crimson veil

I've seen a different doorway shut a million times before
The smiling she chameleon, the smiling vinyl whores

(Distinctly a casual affair)

They know what they want, they sing your name
And glide between the sheets
I never say no, in chemical glow we'll let our bodies meet
So was it just a fuck, was it just a fuck, just another fuck I said
Loving just for laughs, carnal autograph, lying on a lizard's bed
So was it just a fuck, was it just a fuck, just another fuck I bled
Degraded and alone, raped and still forlorn
Betrayed on a lizard's bed, on a lizard's bed
We chameleon, we chameleon, we chameleon (oui!)
Click to expand...
Not played that for absolute years....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top