'- Two things that have
haunted me most are the days when I had to collect the paybooks; and when I left Bill Hubbard in no-man's land.'
'I was picked up and taken into their trench. And I'd no sooner taken two or three steps down the trench when I heard a call,
' - Hello Razz, I'm glad to see you. This is my second night here,'
and he said
' - I'm feeling bad,' and it was Bill Hubbard, one of the men we'd trained in England, one of the original battalion. I had a look at his wound, rolled him over; I could see it was probably a fatal wound. You could imagine what pain he was in, he was dripping with sweat; and after I'd gone about three shellholes, traversed that, had it been...had there been a path or a road I could have done better. He pummeled me,
' - Put me down, put me down, I'd rather die, I'd rather die, put me down.' I was hoping he would faint.
He said '-I can't go any further, let me die.' I said '- If I leave you here Bill you
won't be found, let's have another go.' He said '- All right then.' And the same thing happened; he couldn't stand it anymore, and I had to leave him there, in no-man's land.'
Girl:
' - I don't mind about
the war, that's one of the things I like to watch, if it's a war going on, because then I know if our side's winning, if our side's losing...'
What God Wants, Part I
What
God wants God gets God help us all What God wants God gets The kid in
the corner looked at the priest And fingered his pale blue Japanese
guitar The priest said God wants goodness God wants light God
wants mayhem God wants a clean fight What God wants God
gets Don't look so surprised It's only dogma The alien prophet
cried The beetle and the springbok Took the Bible from its hook The
monkey in the corner Wrote the lesson in his book What God wants God
gets God help us all God wants peace God wants war God wants
famine God wants chain stores What God wants God gets God wants
sedition God wants sex God wants freedom God wants
semtex What God wants God gets Don't look so surprised I'm only
joking The alien comic cried The jackass and hyena Took the feather
from its hook The monkey in the corner Wrote the joke down in his
book What God wants God gets God wants boarders God wants
crack God wants rainfall God wants wetbacks What God wants God
gets God wants voodoo God wants shrines God wants law God
wants organized crime God wants crusade God wants jihad God
wants good God wants bad What God wants God gets
Perfect Sense, Part I
The monkey sat on a pile of stones And
stared at the broken bone in his hand And the stains of a Viennese
quartet Rang out across the land The monkey looked up at the
stars And thought to himself Memory is a stranger History is for
fools And he cleaned his hands In a pool of holy writing Turned his
back on the garden And set out for the nearest town Hold on hold on
soldier When you add it all up The tears and the marrowbone There's
an ounce of gold And an ounce of pride in each ledger And the Germans
killed the Jews And the Jews killed the Arabs And the Arabs killed the
hostages And that is the news And is it any wonder That the monkey's
confused He said Mama Mama The President's a fool Why do I have
to keep reading These technical manuals And the joint chiefs of
staff And the brokers on Wall Street said Don't make us laugh You're
a smart kid Time is linear Memory is a stranger History is for
fools Man is a tool in the hands Of the great God Almighty And they
gave him command Of a nuclear submarine And sent him back in search
of The Garden of Eden
Perfect Sense, Part II
Can't you see It all makes perfect sense Expressed in dollars
and cents Pounds shillings and pence Can't you see It all makes
perfect sense Little black soul departs in perfect focus Prime time fodder
for the News at Nine Darling is the child warm in the bed tonight Hi
everybody I'm Marv Albert And welcome to our telecast Coming to you
live from Memorial Stadium It's a beautiful day And today we expect a
sensational matchup But first our global anthem Can't you see It all
makes perfect sense Expressed in dollars and cents Pounds shillings and
pence Can't you see It all makes perfect sense And here come the
players As I speak to you now the captain Has his cross hairs zeroed in on
the oil rig It looks to me like he's going to attack By the way did you know
that a submarine Captain earns 200,000 dollars a year Oh that's less tax
Marv yeah less tax Uh thank you Emery you're welcome Now back to the
game he fires one yes There goes two both fish are running The rig is
going into a prevent defense Will they make it I don't think so Can't you
see It all makes perfect sense Expressed in dollars and cents Pounds
shillings and pence Can't you see It all makes perfect sense
The Bravery Of Being Out Of Range
You have a natural
tendency To squeeze off a shot You're good fun at parties You wear
the right masks You're old but you still Like a laugh in the locker
room You can't abide change You're at home on the range You
opened your suitcase Behind the old workings To show off the
magnum You deafened the canyon A comfort a friend Only upstaged
in the end By the Uzi machine gun Does the recoil remind
you Remind you of sex Old man what the hell you gonna kill
next Old timer who you gonna kill next I looked over Jordan and what did
I see Saw a U.S. Marine in a pile of debris I swam in your pools And
lay under your palm trees I looked in the eyes of the Indian Who lay on the
Federal Building steps And through the range finder over the hill I saw the
frontline boys popping their pills Sick of the mess they find On their
desert stage And the bravery of being out of range Yeah the question is
vexed Old man what the hell you gonna kill next Old timer who you gonna
kill next Hey bartender over here Two more shots And two more
beers Sir turn up the TV sound The war has started on the
ground Just love those laser guided bombs They're really great For
righting wrongs You hit the target And win the game From bars 3,000
miles away 3,000 miles away We play the game With the bravery of
being out of range We zap and maim With the bravery of being out of
range We strafe the train With the bravery of being out of range We
gain terrain With the bravery of being out of range With the bravery of
being out of range We play the game With the bravery of being out of
range
Late Home Tonight, Part I
Standing at the
window A farmer's wife in Oxford shire Glances at the clock it's nearly
time for tea She doesn't see The phantom in the hedgerow dip its
wings Doesn't hear the engine sing But in the cockpit's techno
glow Behind the Ray Ban® shine The kid from Cleveland In the
comfort of routine Scans his dials and smiles Secure in the beauty of
military life There is no right no wrong Only tin cans and cordite and white
cliffs And blue skies and flight flight flight The beauty of military
life No questions only orders and flight only flight What a beautiful sight
in his wild blue dream The eternal child leafs through his War
magazine And his kind Uncle Sam feeds ten trillion in Change into the
total entertainment Combat video game And up here in the
stands The fans are goin' wild The cheerleaders flip When you wiggle
your hip And we all like the bit when you take The jeans from the
refrigerator and Then the bad guy gets hit And were you struck by the
satisfying Way the swimsuit sticks to her skin Like BB gun
days When knives pierce autumn leaves But that's okay see the children
bleed It'll look great on the TV And in Tripoli another ordinary
wife Stares at the dripping her old man hadn't Time to fix Too busy
mixing politics and rhythm In the street below
Late Home Tonight, Part II
Hark the wire service sing Clear the satellite
link Check the fax machine Hold the lead story boys There's some
great pictures coming in Now the pilot's heartbeat slows Palms dry
out No questions only orders And the F-1 glides in nose-up Through
the cloudbase and the Ground crew cheers as he puts down His landing
gear Hey boy you're a hero take this cigar Back home in
Cleveland All the papers and local TV stations Will be calling your
ma And the farmer's wife Shoos the cat off the chair She says sit
down my dear Was the milking all right Our American friends are late
home tonight
Too Much Rope
When the sleigh is
heavy And the timber wolves are getting bold You look at you
companions And test the water of their friendship With your toe They
significantly edge Closer to the gold Each man has his price Bob And
yours was pretty low History is short the sun is just a minor star The poor
man sells his kidneys In some colonial bazaar Que sera sera Is that
your new Ferrari car Nice but I'll think I'll wait for the F50 You don't have to
be a Jew To disapprove of murder Tears burn my eyes Moslem or
Christian Mullah or Pope Preacher or poet who was it wrote Give any one
species too much rope And they'll fuck it up And last night on TV A
Vietnam vet Takes his beard and his pain And his alienation twenty
years Back to Asia again Sees the monsters they made In
formaldehyde floating 'round Meets a gook on a bike A good little
tyke A nice enough guy With the same soldier's eyes Tears burn my
eyes What does it mean This tearjerking scene Beamed into my
home That it moves me so much Why all the fuss It's only two
humans being It's only two humans being Tears burn in my eyes What
does it mean This tender TV This tearjerking scene Beamed into my
home You don't have to be a Jew To disapprove of murder Tears
burn in my eyes Moslem or Christian Mullah or Pope Preacher or poet
who was it wrote Give any one species too much rope And they'll fuck it
up
What God Wants, Part II
Do you believe in a
better day Do you have faith in a golden way If you do then we must come
together this day Come together as one united Television
audience Brought together by the sound of my voice United united
financially united socially United spiritually and all possible ways Through
the power of money And the power of prayers What God wants God gets
God help us all God wants dollars God wants cents God wants
pounds shillings and pence God wants guilders God wants
kroner God wants Swiss francs God wants French francs Oui il veut
des francs francais God wants escudos God wants pesetas Don't send
lira God don't want small potatoes God wants small towns God wants
pain God wants clean up rock campaigns God wants windows God
wants solutions God wants TV God wants contributions What God
wants God gets God help us all God wants silver God wants gold God
wants his secret Never to be told God wants gigolos God wants
giraffes God wants politics God wants a good laugh What God wants
God gets God help us all God wants friendship God wants fame God
wants credit God wants blame God wants poverty God wants
wealth God wants insurance God wants to cover himself
What God wants God gets God help us all
What God Wants, Part III
Don't be afraid it's only business The alien prophet sighed The
vulture and the magpie took The cash box from its hook The monkey in
the corner wrote The figures in his book Crazed the checkout lady's
fingers Flash across the till And the captain posts The menu of the
day And in banks across the world Christians Moslems Hindus
Jews And people of every Race creed colour tint or hue Get down on
their knees and pray The racoon and the groundhog Neatly make up bags
of change But the monkey in the corner Well he's slowly drifting out of
range Christ it's freezing inside The veteran cries The hyenas break
cover And stream through the meadow And the fog rolls in Through
his bottle of gin So he picks up a stone That looks like a bone And
the bullets fly And the rivers run dry And the fat girls sigh And the
network anchor persons lie And the soldier's alone In the video
zone But the monkey's not watching He's slipped out to the
kitchen To pile the dishes And answer the phone
Watching TV
I've been watching In Tiananmen Square Lost
my baby there My yellow rose In her bloodstained clothes She was a
short order pastry chef In a Dim Sum dive on the Yangtze tideway She had
shiny hair She was the daughter of an engineer Won't you shed a
tear For my yellow rose My yellow rose In her bloodstained
clothes She had perfect breasts She had high hopes She had almond
eyes She had yellow thighs She was a student of philosophy Won't
you grieve with me For my yellow rose Shed a tear For her
bloodstained clothes She had shiny hair She had perfect breasts She
had high hopes She had almond eyes She had yellow thighs She was
the daughter of an engineer So get out your pistols Get out your
stones Get out your knives Cut them to the bone They are the lackeys
of the grocer's machine They built the dark satanic mills That manufacture
hell on earth They bought the front row seats on Calvary They are
irrelevant to me And I grieve for my sister
People of China Do not
forget do not forget The children who died for you Long live the
Republic Did we do anything after this I've a feeling we did We were
watching TV Watching TV We were watching TV Watching
TV She wore a white bandanna that said Freedom now She thought
the Great Wall of China Would come tumbling down She was a
student Her father was an engineer Won't you shed a tear For my
yellow rose My yellow rose In her bloodstained clothes Her grandpa
fought old Chiang Kai-shek That no-good low-down dirty rat Who used to
order his troops To fire on the women and children Imagine that imagine
that And in the spring of '48 Mao Tse-tung got quite irate And he
kicked that old dictator Chiang Out of the state of China Chiang Kai-shek
came down in Formosa And they armed the island of Quemoy And the
shells were flying across the China Sea And they turned Formosa into a shoe
factory Called Taiwan And she is different from Cro-Magnon
man She's different from Anne Boleyn She is different from the
Rosenbergs And from the unknown Jew She is different from the unknown
Nicaraguan Half superstar half victim She's a victor star conceptually
new And she is different from the Dodo And from the
Kankanbono She is different from the Aztec And from the
Cherokee She's everybody's sister She's symbolic of our failure She's
the one in fifty million Who can help us to be free Because she died on
TV And I grieve for my sister
Three Wishes
Reached back for the bottle And rubbed against the
lamp Genie came out smiling Like some Eastern tramp He said hey
boy what's happening What is going on You can have three wishes If
you don't take too long I said well I wish they all were happy in the
Lebanon Wish somebody'd help me write this song I wish when I was
young My old man had not been gone Genie said consider it
done There's something in the air And you don't know what it is You
see someone through a window Who you've just learned to miss And the
road leads on to glory but You've used up your last wish Your last
wish And you want her to come home Genie said I'm sorry But that's
the way it goes Where the hell's the lamp sucker It's time for me to
go Bye There's something in the air And you don't know what it
is You see someone through a window Who you've just learned to
miss And the road leads on to glory but You've used up your last
wish Your last wish And you want her to come home
It's A Miracle
Miraculous you call it babe You ain't seen
nothing yet They've got Pepsi in the Andes McDonalds in
Tibet Yosemite's been turned into A golf course for the Japs The
Dead Sea is alive with rap Between the Tigris and Euphrates There's a
leisure centre now They've got all kinds of sports They've got Bermuda
shorts They had sex in Pennsylvania A Brazilian grew a tree A doctor
in Manhattan Saved a dying man for free It's a miracle Another
Miracle By the grace of God Almighty And the pressures of the
marketplace The human race has civilized itself It's a miracle We've
got warehouses of butter We've got oceans of wine We've got famine when
we need it Got designer crime We've got Mercedes We've got
Porsche Ferrari and Rolls Royce We've got choice She said meet
me In the Garden of Gethsemane my dear The Lord said Peter I can
see Your house from here An honest man Finally reaped what
he had sown And a farmer in Ohio has just repaid a loan It's a miracle By
the grace of God Almighty And pressures of the marketplace The
human race has civilized itself It's a miracle We cower in our
shelters With our hands over our ears Lloyd-Webber's awful
stuff Runs for years and years and years An earthquake hits the
theater But the operetta lingers Then the piano lid comes down And
breaks his fucking fingers It's a miracle
Amused To Death
Doctor Doctor what is wrong with me This supermarket
life is getting long What is the heart life of a colour TV What is the shelf
life of a teenage queen Ooh western woman Ooh western girl News
hound sniffs the air When Jessica Hahn goes down He latches on to that
symbol Of detachment Attracted by the peeling away of feeling The
celebrity of the abused shell the belle Ooh western woman Ooh western
girl And the children on Melrose Strut their stuff Is absolute zero cold
enough And out in the valley warm and clean The little ones sit by their
TV screens No thoughts to think No tears to cry All sucked
dry Down to the very last breath Bartender what is wrong with
me Why am I so out of breath The captain said excuse me
ma'am This species has amused itself to death Amused itself to
death Amused itself to death We watched the tragedy unfold We did
as we were told We bought and sold It was the greatest show on
earth But then it was over We oohed and aahed We drove our racing
cars We ate our last few jars of caviar And somewhere out there in the
stars A keen-eyed look-out Spied a flickering light Our last
hurrah And when they found our shadows Grouped 'round the TV
sets They ran down every lead They repeated every test They checked
out all the data on their lists And then the alien anthropologists Admitted
they were still perplexed But on eliminating every other reason For our sad
demise They logged the only explanation left This species has amused itself to
death No tears to cry
No feelings left This species has amused itself to
death Amused itself to
death
Alf Razzell:
'-Years later, I saw Bill Hubbard's name on the memorial to the missing at Aras. And I... when I saw his name I was absolutely transfixed; it was as though he was now a human being instead of
some sort of nightmarish memory of how I had to leave him, all those years ago. And I felt relieved and ever since then I've felt happier about it, because always before, whenever I thought of him, I said to myself, 'Was there something else that I could have done?' '-I'd rather die, I'd rather die...' '-And that always sort of worried me. And having seen him, and his name in the register, as you know in the memorials there's a little safe, there's a register in there with every name and seeing his name and his name on the memorial, it sort of lightened my heart, if you like.' Woman: '-When was it that you saw his name on the memorial?' 'Ah, when I was eighty-seven, that would be a year, nineteen eighty-four, nineteen eighty-four.'