Clutching at Straws
Album - 12 giugno 1987 - Debaser id 23868

(Derek Dick, Steve Rothery, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas, Ian Mosley)

Hotel hobbies padding dawns hollow corridors
Bell boys checking out the hookers in the bar
Slug-like fingers trace the star-spangled clouds of cocaine on the mirror
The short straw took its bow

The tell tale tocking of the last cigarette
Marking time in the packet as the whisky sweat
Lies like discarded armour on an unmade bed
And a familiar craving is crawling in his head

And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen
Introducing characters to memories like old friends
Frantic as a cardiograph scratching out the lines
A fever of confession a catalogue of crime in happy hour
Do you cry in happy hour
Do you hide in happy hour
The pilgrimage to happy hour

New shadows tugging at the corner of his eye
Jostling for attention
As the sunlight flares
Through a curtains tear
Shuffling its beams as if in nervous anticipation of another day

On promenades where drunks propose to lonely arcade mannequins
Where ceremonies pause at the jewelers shop display
Feigning casual silence in strained romantic interludes
Till they commit themselves to the muted journey home
And the pool player rests on another cue
Last nights hero picking up his dues
A honeymoon gambled on a ricochet
She's staring at the brochures at the holidays
Chalking up a name in your hometown
Standing all your mates to another round
Laughing at the world till the barman wipes away the warm wet circles
The warm wet circles

I saw teenage girls like gaudy moths
A classrooms shabby butterflies
Flirt in the glow of stranded telephone boxes;
Planning white lace weddings from smeared hearts and token proclamations,
Rolled from stolen lipsticks across the razored webs of glass
Sharing cigarettes with experience
With her giggling jealous confidantes,
She faithfully traces his name
With quick bitten fingernails
Through the tears of condensation
That'll cry through the night
As the glancing headlights of the last bus
Kiss adolescence goodbye

In a warm wet circle
Like a mothers kiss on your first broken heart,
A warm wet circle
Like a bullit hole in central park,
A warm wet circle
And I'll always surrender to the warm wet circles

She nervously undressed in the dancing beams of the fidra lighthouse
Giving it all away before it's too late
She'll let a lovers tongue move in a warm wet circle
Giving it all away and showing no shame
She'll take a mother�s kiss on her first broken heart
A warm wet circle,
She'll realise that she played her part in a warm wet circle

(Fish, Steve Rothery, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas, Ian Mosley)

Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways
But when it gets right down to it it's the same drunken haze
I'm serving a sentence to write life's sentences
It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this

Just for the record I'm gonna put it down, down
Just for the record I'm gonna change my life around

Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym
Just a barroom dancer on my final fling
Just another writer paying off my dues
Just finding inspiration well that's my excuse

Just for the record I'm gonna put it down, down
Just for the record I'm gonna change my life around
Just another empty gesture with an empty glass
Just another comic actor behind a tragic mask

But I've got no discipline got no self control
Just a little less painful here when my back's against the wall

It's too late, I found, it's too far, I'm in two minds
Both of them are out of it at the bar

When you say I got a problem that's a certainty
But I can put it all right down to eccentricity
It's just for the record it's just a passing phase
Just for the record I can stop any day

(Fish, Steve Rothery, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas, Ian Mosley)

I'd be really pleased to meet you if I could remember your name
But I got problems of the memory ever since I got a winner in the fame game
I'm a citizen of Legoland travellin' incommunicado
And I don't give a damn for the Fleet Street afficionados

But I don't want to be the backpage interview
I don't want launderette anonymity
I want my handprints in the concrete on Sunset Boulevard
A dummy in Tussauds you'll see
Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

I'm a Marquee veteran, a multi-media bonafide celebrity
I've got an allergy to Perrier, daylight and responsibility
I'm a rootin-tootin cowboy, the Peter Pan, the street credibility
Always taking the point with the dawn patrol fraternity

Sometimes it seems like I've been here before when I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it Deja Vu I just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that I choose

But I don't want to be a tin can tied to the bumper of a wedding limousine
Or currently residing in the where are they now file a toupet on the cabaret scene
I want to do adverts for American Express cards talk shows on prime time TV
A villa in France, my own cocktail bar and that's where you're gonna find me

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

Sometimes it seems like I've been here before when I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it Deja Vu I just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that I choose

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado
It's the only way
Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

(Fish, Steve Rothery, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas, Ian Mosley)

Read some Kerouac and it put me on the tracks to burn a little brighter now
Something about roman candles fizzing out, shine a little light on me now
Found a strange fascination with a liquid fixation, alcohol can thrill me now
It's getting late in the game to show any pride or shame
I just burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now, yeah

Doctor says my liver looks like leaving with my lover, need another 'time out' now
Like any sort of hero turning down to zero still standing out in any crowd
Pulling seventeen with experience and dreams, sweating out a happy hour
Where you're hiding 29 you know it ain't a crime to burn a little brighter now
Burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now

Dr. Finlay: "And my advice is if you maintain this lifestyle you won't reach 30"

Torch: "Christ -- it's a romantic way to go really, it's part of the heritage, it's your round i'n'it?

We burn a little brighter now, yeah
Read some Kerouac and it put me on the tracks to burn a little brighter now
It was something about roman candles fizzing out, shine a little light on me now
Found a strange fascination with a liquid fixation, alcohol thrill me now
Getting late in the game to show any pride or shame burn a little brighter now
We burn a little brighter now, yeah

Burn a little brighter now, we burn a little brighter now

(Fish, Steve Rothery, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas, Ian Mosley)

A hand held over a candle in angst fuelled bravado
A carbon trail scores a moist stretched palm
Trapped in the indecision of another fine menu
And you sit there and ask me to tell you the story so far
This is the story so far

Shuffling your memories dealing your doodles in margins
You scrawl out your poems across a beermat or two
And when you declare the point of grave creation
They turn round and you to tell them the story so far
This is the story so far

And you listen with a tear in you eye
To their hopes and betrayals and your only reply
Is Slàinte Mhath

Princes in exile raising the standard Drambuie
Parading their anecdotes tired from old campaigns
Holding their own last orders commanding attention
We sit here and listen to all of the story so far
This is the story so far

Take it away
Take it away
Take it away
Take me away
Take me away
Take me away
Take me away
Take me away

From the dream on the barbed wire at Flanders and Bilston Glen
From a Clydeside that rusts from the tears of its broken men
From the realisation that all we've been left behind
Is to stand like our fathers before us in the firing line

Waiting on the whistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow
They promised us miracles, and the whistle still blows
Broken promises but the whistle still blows
Waiting on the wistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the wistle to blow

I was flicking through the channels on the TV,
On a Sunday in Milwaukee in the rain.
Trying to piece together conversations,
trying to find out where to lay the blame.

But when it comes right down to it,
there's no use trying to pretend.
For when it gets right down to it,
there's no one here that's left to blame.
Blame it on me, you can blame it on me,
We're just sugar mice in the rain.

I heard Sinatra calling me down through the floorboards,
where you pay a quarter for a partnership in rhyme,
to the jukebox crying in the corner,
while the waitress is counting out the time.

For when it comes right down to it,
there's no use trying to pretend.
For when it gets right down to it,
there's no one really left to blame.
Blame it on me, you can blame it on me,
We're just sugar mice in the rain.

I know what I feel, I know what I want,
I know what I am, daddy took a rain check.
Cos I know what I want, know what I feel and I know what I need,
daddy took a rain check, your daddy took a rain check.
Ain't no one in here that's left to blame but me,
blame it on me, blame it on me.

Well the toughest thing that I ever did,
was talk to the kids on the 'phone.
When I heard them asking questions,
I knew that you were all alone.
Can't you understand that the government left me out of work.
I just couldn't stand the looks on the faces saying what a jerk.

So if you want my address it's number one at the end of the bar
Where I sit with the broken angels,
clutching at straws and nursing our scars.
Blame it on me, blame it on me.
Sugar mice in the rain,
Your daddy took a rain check
Your daddy took a rain check

(Fish, Steve Rothery, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewavas, Ian Mosley)

Hotel hobbies padding dawn's hollow corridors
A typewriter cackles out a stream of memories

Drying out a conscience, evicting a nightmare
Opening the doors for the dreams to come home

We live our lives in private shells
Ignore our senses and fool ourselves
To thinking that out there that someone else cares
Someone to answer all our prayers, all our prayers...

Are we too far gone, are we so irresponsible
Have we lost our balls, or do we just not care
We're terminal cases that keep talking medicine
Pretending the end isn't quite that near
We make futile gestures, act to the cameras
With our made-up faces and our PR smiles
And when the angel comes down, down to deliver us
We'll find out that after all, we're only men of straw

But everything is still the same
Passing the time and passing the blame
We carry on in the same old way
We'll find out we left it too late one day
to say what we meant to say

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the water
Those problems seem to arise the ones you never really thought of
The feeling you get is similar to something like drowning
Out of your mind, you're out of your depth, you should have taken soundings
Clutching at straws, we're clutching at straws, we're clutching at straws

And if you ever come across us don't give us your sympathy
You can buy us a drink and just shake our hands
And you'll recognise by the reflection in our eyes that deep down inside we're all one and the same

We're clutching at straws
We're still drowning
Clutching at straws
We're still drowning, yeah Clutching at straws
I'm still drowning
We're clutching at straws
I'm still drowning