Category: David Harley

This was a rehearsal for a gig happening in July, to see if the song would sound OK on electric guitar instead of acoustic, to save me lugging multiple guitars. But I like the harp-like quality of the arpeggios so much I thought I’d try recording it that way. This was a Taylor T5Z using the under-fretboard humbucker and the body sensor (similar to but not the same as a transducer). My setting of a poem by William Butler Years. My tune has no resemblance to the reel of the same name.

Backup:

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Around the start of the 1980s I went through a very theatrical phase (perhaps influenced by an uncomfortable amount of drama in my personal life!)and even did most of the original music (and a few other things) for a revue directed by Margaret Ford: those songs are the core of the Hands of the Craftsman EP. While a couple of my best songs were written for that project, this one is less serious and probably not my best, but I quite like it anyway, so it’s finally crept into my repertoire.

In fact, it wasn’t written for the revue, but at the same time, which is no doubt why it sounds strangely theatrical.

Backup:

I can write the first line at 2.45
And finish the song by 5 to…
I can write an opera in an hour and a half
But what do I do about you?

I can play the Minute Waltz
In 35 seconds flat
But I can’t seem to get you out of my head
So what do I do about that?

Sometimes I fly gliders or water-ski
Before making breakfast for two
From my own recipes

(of course you’ve read my books?)
But what do I do about you?

I can make cocktails like you’ve never seen
Ask anyone – I can do
Things with an olive you’d never believe
– But what do I do about you?

I can build a cocktail with a sting like an asp
Pernod, tequila and lime
Crushed ice and soda – now it’s almost done
Buddy where’s the grenadine?

I can build furniture, drive racing cars
I’ve painted a mural or two
But I can’t seem to get you to remember my name
So what do I do about you?
What do I do about you?

 

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