David Harley Words & Music & Pictures &…

This is about the paranoia of living in London in the 1980s. It’s not a literal historical account. It used to be called London 1983, but it turns out some streaming services don’t like song titles that include dates. Go figure.

I originally recorded it in the early 80s, but wanted to make some significant changes to the lyric. This version is really a demo, as I’m really not happy with the vocal, but it does at least represent the lyric the way I sing it now.

Backup:

There’s a heatwave in the city, and the day drags on forever
The tarmac burns through patent leather, clear through to the soul
Ice tumbles through glass as the temperature soars
And the dayshift leaves the nightshift to take over for a while
The city sings at midnight to the well-fed and the civilized
While waiters mop their faces in the kitchen, out of sight
Small change pours in torrents over counters in the bistros
And the moon hangs red and sullen in the dustbowl of the sky

The city is on heat – barelegged girls in summer dresses
Dodge the lechery of workmen laying cable through the day
But the night turns on the body to sheer pornography
Passions feed on darkness and the body mutes the mind
The city squeals at midnight in its pain and ecstasy
The life-force surges through the veins and soaks the sheets
The couples claw and couple and feed upon each other
And still the hunger rages through the streets

I saw a refugee from Galway with a faceful of stubble
Singing sentimental songs in the Underground today
He’s going back to Mother Ireland and the Mountains of Mourne
And he only needs a bob or two to help him on his way
The city whimpers at midnight in its apathy and squalor
From a bench on the Embankment, from a derry in Barnes
From a squat in Deptford, from the winos and the junkies
From the homeless and the helpless, from the hopeless and the lost

A refugee from Calvary is preaching anarchy and anger
Through his multi-megawatt PA
And when the concert’s over, he packs his guitars and prophecies
And goes back to his hotel to drink the night into the day
But out there in the streets, the word is out all over
The cops are out for action in New Cross and Ladbroke Grove
The temperature is dropping but the tempers are at flashpoint
And no one lingers on streetcorners if they’re walking home alone
The city screams at midnight in the agony of anger
The rocksteady revolution pays its homage to its dead
Where dreadlocks meet deadlock, the shock tears up the flagstones
And on their righteous anger the riot squads are fed

The Klan charts fiery crosses, cloistered in an upstairs room
The architects of reaction spin their bitter webs
Black and white scrawl their frustrations in blood across the charge sheets
And no one dares explain the chaos in their heads
The city burns at midnight, and the blood runs down the gutters
In the ghettos and the side-streets where the patriots have been
Squad cars and an ambulance cut through the aftermath
And tomorrow’s front pages unfurl to set the scene