“Please step back from the window ledge”
A blue-black voice in the dark
Chilled her down to her hollow legs
There, alone and apart
Two or so blocks from where she fell
He beat his fist on the wall
Yelled for anyone, anything
The phone rang out in the hall
I’ll tell the tale from the start
Lifting a weight from your heart
It’s strange to relate how it was
I’ll tell the tale from the top
It left her wondering all that way
It’s there whenever she wakes
Sin at leisure, repent at haste
The guilt all over her face
They looked like somebody else’s words
Streamers up in the sky
Reels of tape and a razorblade
I don’t know why
I don’t know why
I’ll tell the tale from the start
Lifting a weight from your heart
It’s strange to relate how it was
I’ll tell the tale from the top
Could this be the great depression?
I wrote this song in desperation in a rehearsal room in Blackheath. It was a couple of days before my first ever gig playing my own songs at the piano (at the delightfully named Tatty Bogle Club in Soho). I’d put a set together of all the piano songs I’d written, but when I played them all together as a unit, I realised I was missing a pop song to liven the mood. So this one was hastily concocted to fit the bill. The way it’s arranged stems from the process we went through to put this album together: extended jams with lots of wigging out. We would never have got to all these tempo changes and stops and starts doing it any other way. Even in the studio it was still running at seven minutes plus (what you hear here is something of a radio edit).
