Absent Friends

Absent friends, here's to them
And happy days, we thought that they would never end
Here's to absent friends

Little Jean Seberg seemed
So full of life, but in those eyes such troubled dreams.
Poor little Jean

Woodbine Willie couldn't rest until he'd
Given every bloke a final smoke before the killing
Old Woodbine Willie

Steve McQueen jumped the first one clean
But the great escape he'd tried to make was not to be
Maybe next time Steve

Laika flew through inky blue
Till Laika neared the atmosphere and Laika knew
Laika's life was through

Oscar Wilde was a lonely child
He fought and won acceptance from the world
They smiled, they laughed, they praised
They drove poor Oscar to his grave

Absent friends, here's to them,
And happy days, we thought that they would never end,
But they always end
Raise your glasses then to absent friends

You and I go together
Like the molar and the drill
Flesh is weak, but darling we know
That the ego's weaker still
I've been hung, drawn and quartered
Slowly slaughtered like a goat
By the tongue of a woman
Who just couldn't let it go

Sticks and stones may break my body
But words can tear me apart
So be careful what you tell me
Spare a thought for my heart

Broken bones fuse together
Bruises never last for long
But once they're said words stay spoken
And hearts stay broken from that moment on

Sticks and stones may break my body

But words can tear me all apart
So be careful what you tell me
Spare a thought for my heart

So suddenly awake
No light from yonder window breaks
No crowing cock
Just my old clock
Please make it stop
I try to wrestle free
But like the dew she clings to me,
"No way Jose, you don't get away that easily"

Leaving today, leaving today, leaving today

"Release me let me go.
I love you more that you could know.
All I can do is promise to come home to you"
I tip-toe from the bed
And put my head around the nursery door to say good-bye
It breaks my heart every single time

I'm leaving today, I'm leaving today, I'm leaving today

I could stay if you asked me
So for God's sake don't ask me to stay
My taxi has arrived
Good-bye sweet simple life, good-bye

The city's waking up
Dreams fizzle out like raindrops racing down the glass
They blur the street-lamps as we pass

William wakes with his clothes on
The morning call has been and gone
And he might not make the flight but he will try
Bit by bit it comes back to him
A bunch of Belgian business men
And a strange drinking game, oh God why?

Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller
Come home Billy Bird

He hails a cab but the driver sucks
He drives so slowly and he talks so much
That it hurts Billy Bird's aching brain
He runs from the cab to the check-in desk
She says, "no way??, but William begs
On his knees, "Please, please, please"
"Well ok"

Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller
Come home Billy Bird

Drenched in sweat he finds his seat
And with the luggage squeezed down beneath his feet
He begins to think that things can't get no worse.
But then a voice says, "bags that can't be stowed
In the overhead locker must go below in the hold
Please let go, thank-you sir"

Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller
Come home Billy Bird
Come home William
Come home

He runs on past the carousel
Screaming, "damn my luggage all to hell.
I can buy a new shirt and tie any day"
He rides from the airport into town
To the high-school football ground
Where his son has just begun his big football game

Come home Billy Bird, international business traveller
Come home Billy Bird

Would you like to meet my little friend?
Don't try to shake his hand he's just pretend
His name is Benjamin, that's his name
My Mamma says, "you're insane
Boy you really are the end
You and your imaginary friend"

Daddy drives the mobile library
He works peripatetically
He doesn't get much time to play with us
So we just read and make up stuff
And it drives him round the bend
Me and my imaginary friend

One day we're gonna play hide and seek
And Ben will be up the creek
Never to be seen again
He'll disappear the day that childhood ends
And reality descends
I'll never forget you my imaginary friend

When the Beautiful set sail back in 1970
She was state of the art, the flagship of our navy
But the salt sea took its toll and the rust began to show
And with a heavy heart we took her to the breaker's yard

I thought I heard her call
Maybe I heard nothing at all
I thought I heard her call
From the wreck of the Beautiful

But like the fattened cow can smell the butcher's knife
She knew where she was bound, a sad end to a proud life
That's when I heard her cry and the waves rose five miles high
And the men who did not drown watched as the Beautiful went down

I thought I heard her call
Maybe I heard nothing at all
I thought I heard her call
From the wreck of the Beautiful

No matter how I try
I just can't get her out of my mind
And when I sleep I visualise her
I saw her in the pub
I met her later at the night-club
A mutual friend introduced us
We talked about the noise
And how it's hard to hear your own voice
Above the beat and the sub-bass
We talked and talked for hours
We talked in the back of our friend's car
As we all went back to his place

On our friend's settee
She told me that she really liked me
And I said "cool, the feeling's mutual"
We played old 45's
I said "it's like the soundtrack to our lives"
And she said "true, it's not unusual"
Then privately we danced
But couldn't seem to keep our balance
A drunken haze had come upon us
We sank down to the floor and we sang
A song that I can't sing any more
And then we kissed and fell unconscious

I woke up the next day
All alone but for a headache
I stumbled out to find the bathroom
But all I found was her
Wrapped around another lover
No longer then is he our mutual friend

"The lonely road you choose to travel on
It must seem awfully long
Innocence all gone
It must be wrong to hide your lovely face away
That music you play, I'm not saying it's bad
It just seems terribly sad
Is everything all right?
I'd like to think you'd tell me if something was wrong"

Well her clothes are blacker than the blackest cloth
And her face is whiter than the snows of Hoth
She wears Dr. Martens and a heavy cross
But on the inside she's a happy goth

"Don't worry Mum, don't worry Dad
The hours that I spend alone are the happiest I've ever had"

That's what she'd say if she ever spoke to you
But it's something she can never do
'Case it's only by herself that she'll find out
What makes her different from the rest

Well her clothes are blacker than the blackest cloth
And her face is whiter than the snows of Hoth
She wears Dr. Martens and a heavy cross
But on the inside she's a happy goth

Well her clothes are blacker than the blackest cloth
And her face is whiter than the snows of Hoth
She wears Dr. Martens and a heavy cross
But on the inside ...

It's early morning on I-19
I ain't got much for company,
A pick-up truck, a brown Volvo
And a couple of jokers on the radio

I wish that it could stay like this
But soon I'll have to put up with
The whole world and his Uncle Joe
Cluttering up my freedom road

When I was a boy I'd fantasize
About the freedom road. I'd drive
A thousand miles before sundown
Father a child in every town

But a hundred thousand miles have passed
Between me and iconoclastic images
Of the freedom road
I wanna shed this heavy load

Well I've seen the power of the lightning storm
I've seen the endless ears of corn
I've seen the lakes at the break of day
And that shit takes my breath away

But if I were to even start
To tell them how it melts my heart
Never more would my truck-stop friends
Look me in the eye again

It's early morning on I-19
A dreamer's waking from his dream
A driver who has lost his way
Parks up his rig and walks away

Instrumental

When I hold you in my arms
And look back on my charmed life, my charmed life
I hope, I hope if nothing more
That one day you'll call your life a charmed life

Well I've never really worried that much
About making lots of money and such
And I always seem to land upon my feet
And though there's been some difficult times
The good times were never far behind
I've snatched all of my victories from the jaws of defeat

When I hold you in my arms
And look back on my charmed life, my charmed life
I hope, baby I hope if nothing more
That one day you'll call your life a charmed life

Well, the course of true love never ran smooth
They broke my heart and I broke theirs too
And breaking up is so very hard to do
But I knew I'd find the one
And sure enough she came along
And not long after that along came you

Well sometimes this life is like being afloat
On a raging sea in a little row-boat
Just trying not to be washed overboard
But if you take your chances and you ride your luck
And you never, never, never, never, never give up
Those waves will see you safely to a friendly shore

When I hold you in my arms
I know that this is a charmed life
A charmed life