David Harley Words & Music

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

 

 

Backup:

Around the start of the 80s I wrote some dialogue and monologues and most of the original music for the ‘Nice (if you can get it)’ revue, directed by Margaret Ford. At the time it was put together and (briefly) toured, I was working by day for a company that built staircases (mostly). This song is based on my personal experience of working in the woodworking industry, though I was a wood machinist, not a carpenter.

In a recent conversation, I expressed some regret that I never got to do something like the radio ballads put together by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker et al, then realized that the revue was actually quite near to that concept.

Ian Campbell also wrote some songs in that idiom, including one called The Apprentice’s Song, but it’s about gas fitters. Mine is about an apprentice carpenter, and I’ve changed the title to avoid confusion with Ian’s song.

Originally a poem of sorts, but re-recorded as a song after a discussion about that harsh little joke in the third verse. I honestly can’t remember if it was used in the revue – it was written around that time, but maybe not soon enough to be included. Like ‘Long Stand‘, it touches on the uneasy relationship between the old hand and the apprentice – while hazing or snipe-hunting is a particularly unpleasant way of keeping the young ‘uns in their place, it’s not always considered the duty of the master to encourage the apprentice.

The tune is now mostly associated with ‘Tramps and Hawkers’, a song that seems to have been written by ‘Besom Jimmy’ in the late 19th century, though the tune is far older than that. (Ewan MacColl used the same tune for England’s Motorways, from the radio ballad ‘Song of a Road’, about the people who built the M1.)

Fetch the rolls: make the tea: then grab the end of that
And sand it till your fingers bleed, if you think you’ve planed it flat.
Call yourself apprentice? Lad, I’d be ashamed
If I knew so little, to be called by such a name

Never mind the splinters: In a year or two
You’ll have quite forgotten that they ever bothered you.
Hands as hard as English oak, muscle, skill and guile:
That’s what makes a craftsman; but not you, for a while

Cut yourself, you silly sod? Take care, if you please,
And don’t bleed on the timber: do you think it grows on trees?
Call yourself a craftsman? No, lad, never you.
Though if you try your hardest, one day you might scrape through

So you’ve got your piece of paper? I hope I’ve taught you well,
And I won’t deny you’re willing: no doubt time will tell.
Call yourself a craftsman? That’s as may well be…
Another year, or five, or ten, and then perhaps we’ll see…

David Harley