THE FATIMA MANSIONS--Valhalla Avenue [Lyrics attempt]
All songs written by Cathal Coughlan, published 1992 Mucho Loco Music.
Originally compiled by Aaron Giles.
Updated and edited by Dave Watson/SHLF. Send further updates and corrections to him here.
Thanks to Adam Ball for a few corrections and explanations. More corrections gleaned from The Hive archives at the now-missing Valhalla Avenue web site.
Samples are in ("round brackets and parentheses.").
Questionable phrases are in [square brackets].
To avoid an empty feeling of mild irritation and pensiveness, it is recommended that the listener refrain from reading the lyrics as the album plays. However, it's your excessive sum of money that's been paid...
SONGS:
Evil Man
Something Bad
Valhalla Avenue
1000%
North Atlantic Wind
Purple Window
Go Home Bible Mike
Perfumes of Paradise
Greyhair
C^7/Breakfast With Bandog
Ray of Hope, Hoe of Rape
Be Dead
Evil Man
Born to refuse, and raised to exclude
Fed myths to disprove by post-colonial prudes:
The city was evil, some country was evil, the hippies were evil, the writers were evil, the homeless were evil, the workers were evil, the summer was evil, independence was evil
Grown and released with the heart of a thief
Wanting only to seek the very gentlest of streets where
nobody's evil, nobody's evil....
So easy to hate
Just look at the face
The nose in the clouds
The bulge in the brow
and the head on backwards
The need to escape all visible space
Continuous drift to depend and dismiss
and the head on backwards
(Evil, evil, weak and now feeble, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, we who would kneel, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, man we'll get even, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, we all know the reason, evil, evil) Evil man!
Here comes the fun
Blink and it's gone
See what you've won
The end's just begun
I am the demon, I am the demon...
The morning is hell
The night full of blood
Each sickening smell announces a flood
in a human holiday
No wall at the back
No light on the map
No fiction, no fact
No fibre now...chaff
in the human holiday
(Evil, evil, weak and now feeble, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, we who would kneel, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil demon, quit while you're even, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, we all know the reason, evil, evil) Evil man!
I'm clearing my desk
It's time for a rest
Tomorrow is dead, so the worms have been fed
with the head on thatwards
The washing of hands
The kissing of feet
The failure which brands
Nightmare without sleep
To any fool with a grievance, it's open season!
(Evil, evil, weak and now feeble, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, we who would kneel, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, quit while you're even, evil, evil) Evil man!
(Evil, evil, we all know the reason, evil, evil) Evil man!
Something Bad
I was raised to expect continuity. Instead I get this...
The monster has red hair
The monster has green eyes
She laughs and bites her quarry's nose
as she pulls herself astride
Her double-jointed hips now do their tricks
and you can hear his plaintive yells
from the plane-crash craters in the Scottish hill
to the burning oil wells
CHORUS:
Something bad is giving birth
to a thing which won't melt to your touch
Something bad is giving birth
to something worse and it's gonna hurt
His Reebok shoes let in the rain
and he coughs into the dawn
as he searches for space on the synagogue wall
to draw swastikas on
Job descriptions change on the firing range
All generals are friends
So it's down to the dole with the Molotovs
It's problem time again--CHORUS
You built the metal birds who [shrink] the skies
and bring [in weakness?] from the other side of a world
All these birds bringing death
You find all of our good, there's only death left
Big black hawk swinging low
over the rat-run streets of the English ghetto
Clean spirit of the island, home at last
Come on, come on, come on--crash!
One man felt ashamed running guns and cocaine
for his short-term gain, so every one of us must pay
In his New World Order, you can have some nerve gas with your air
Thanks to the CIA pussy in the President's chair!
Something bad is giving birth
See, in the sky its belly bursts!
Something bad is giving birth
and calls for wounds to slake its thirst
Something bad is giving birth
No more decay, no more dirt
Something bad is giving birth
In therefore's name it stalks the earth
Do you feel you can deal?
Can you fuck!*
* Yes, it's supposed to be an exclamation mark. It basically means, "There's no fucking way that you can."
Valhalla Avenue
You awake, lying still
while light makes landfall
in the steel suburban room
The windows show, row on row, all the same:
More people are summoned round to chase to blue
Your lips still work, you know your name
but know not why nor whence you came
You have no past, you have no guilt
You've arrived, you've arrived
Dreams, nightmares are through
You've arrived, you've arrived on Valhalla Avenue
You were a drunk, you kept a filthy home
and you hated hard with confusion in your heart
The barren weeks, the amnesiac years
You'd put the world off till tomorrow and let despair tear you apart
Well, now they're breaking down the door
Your hideaway is safe no more
Scream as they drag you from your bed
When you recount from a bleeding head
You've arrived, you've arrived
but redemption was not for you
You've arrived--goodbye to Valhalla Avenue
So long! Cheerio! Bye bye!
I'll see you later on! Next time, I hope it's fun!
1000%
("What do we have for you, sir? What would you like?"
"What do ya got?")
Let me in, let me in, let me in, oh please,
please, please, please
I might die but I don't care
You get dumped from the train and then run for two days
through the end of all ghettos, a junkyard in the rain
She appears in a halo of carbon and steam
with a hissing of brakes and a fire-alarm scream
Her headlamp eyes are on you
She sees behind, beside and around you
There is nowhere you could run to,
even if you wanted--and it's too late now!
CHORUS:
Let me in, let me in, let me in, oh please
1000%, 1000%
Let me in, let me in, let me in, right now
1000%
She was dangled from windows
She has lived in a transit
She has killed for her pleasure
She makes you look slow and stupid
and you cannot escape her (no creator)
and her frantic behaviour (no creator)
and at dawn through a bricked-up window
you see a mangled tree and a rainbow
Rough ground to a dim horizon
and you're a world away from the half-lived life
which protected you, then rejected you--CHORUS
Thigh quiver, groin shake, head shake, head shake, head shake, leg shake, quiver, quiver, quiver, quiver, shudder, shudder, shudder, shudder.......
Resolve! Resolve!
Let me in, let me in, let me in, oh please
1000%, 1000%
Let me in, let me in, let me in, right now
1000%
I'll tell you lies about all my obsessions
just to get what I want
and get you all to do what I want
I'll do anything I want with anybody I like
I'm free
I tell, I tell you, I tell you it's true....
North Atlantic Wind
He sits in the light of the carousel
with his children running 'round his knees
While the wind howls down through the fishing boat mast
the lights sway and the barkers freeze
Well, his clothes are ragged and his smile is bright
and the world he's in is only his
so let no fool come up and look at him and say,
"How'd you get to be like this?
Not even 30 yet and you're like this!"
North Atlantic wind will warp our resting veins
It will dissolve you finally
and naked you'll die, under the black sky, lost and alone
In the all-night party at the chemical plant
everybody's feeling grand
The Irish peasants haven't had this much fun
since their ancestors fled the land
A man with a hammer smashes down a wall
and everybody shouts, "Hooray!"
and the virgins get taken in the shower stalls
where the cyanide comes up the drains
Don't call an ambulance if you can't pay
North Atlantic wind will warp our resting veins
It'll put you back down in your place
and take that arrogant look off your face
North Atlantic wind will cut through bone and brain
Oh, be glad that you can still feel pain
because naked you'll die, under the black sky, lost and alone
Purple Window
He and she, their empty house
He's awake, she sleeps
His eyes are for one sight alone--the purple window
Now his desires, his secret wish
he never lets her see
'cause he keeps it here for the shape that lives
in the purple window
The purple window
Celebrations and perspiration
and exploration are gone for good now
The end is sometimes hard to see
The way is wide and clear
but with contrition here, remission there
well, it could take weeks or years
and there's the purple window
The purple window
You know where his love goes
and he can see the girl dance
Every move, every line
and he can see his own funeral
in the purple window
Go Home Bible Mike
("One was taking the gate down today and one reads the Bible.")
Welcome to Apeville, now you're a citizen, too
Meet Mrs. Doreen Pompidou
She'd like to do the shimmy on top of you
The wall is coming down
The one which holds the house up
A brass band playing in a dumptruck
is visible through clouds of brick-dust
as people dressed as cows form an orderly queue
for a drug that makes you dead for a second or two
I raise myself from my punchbowl, drowning
The Yakuza are singing: it can't be true!
Go home Bible Mike, go home Bible Mike
Go home Bible Mike, go home Bible Mike
Her hand squeezes mine and I shudder
She says, "That was one shock, now here comes another
You really don't remember, do you?"
I said, "Why? Am I supposed to?
Me, the slut of dishevelled women
whom fun has made sad and careless?"
and she's knocked me onto the greasy floor
and her eunuch is barring the only door
Pilar, in her room above the farmacia,
smiles as she pictures your little thing
Imagine her surprise when she looks through the window
and sees you riddled with bullets while the cops all sing:
Go home Bible Mike, go home Bible Mike
You preach without a right
Go home Bible Mike!
You don't make me laugh, you don't make me horny,
so what the hell are we doing here?
Gasping all night in this Nazi city
You bit it, I'm bleeding, we're sliding in my blood
Fucking with my blood
Market my blood! Market my blood!
You got a tourist mind
Deaf, numb and blind to all the pain you bring
This is more than just sin
"Am I really such a nightmare? If I had a home I'd go there."
Anytime you like
This court says, "Take a hike"
The slate will not be wiped
Just go home Bible Mike
Go home Bible Mike....
Perfumes Of Paradise
Somebody's threatened you, well, you know why
Time now to pay for misdeeds you deny
Life can be cheerless in intensive care
Keep a cool head and you won't know you're there
You won't need a shot when you sniff just a drop
of the perfumes of paradise
("Then we're dead!")
Bulldoze the street where they said you were born
Take a new name and before it put "Lord"
Tranquil and slow, nostrils aglow with the perfumes of paradise
From my bed to the street it is 30 paces (and getting nearer)
and I sniff and repent in all the right places
and a speeding truck crashes into the front door
and the telephone rings and says, "Have you no conscience?"
When planning a genocide, starting a war
say that it's gentler than others before
It sells lots of TV's and ribbons and flags
and makes all the doubters look spineless and bad
Even big heads of state should spray in their wake
The perfumes of paradise
Greyhair
Greyhair fool, shoes undone
The fields ahead
Leaves black as coal
Landmark-free, no walls, no trees
to greet him on this night of his return
CHORUS:
So who will love this lie on legs
who can't change skin and is not yet dead?
The universal foreigner
The homeless greyhair son
Scrambles blind up muddy slope
then silent shakes before rusty gates--CHORUS
There's a house, its roof caved in
A rusty wreck of car
A lightning-blasted tree
and a man who says, "So here you are--
the boy who broke the plough,
who struck his father down,
who told us to be damned
and betrayed us to the Englishman!"
"Who will love this lie on legs?
On paving-stones I've made my bed
Not a living soul now speaks my name
but here at least I have my shame
I thought to come and taste once more
what the priestly fables all ignore:
the un-eternal consequence," says the greyhair son
Greyhair fool, shoes undone
Hilltop at dawn
Now hews his plough
Wind blows on
The soil is poison
He sets to work, he and his plough
Final union--He and his plough
C^7/Breakfast With Bandog
I just survive any way I can
No guru, no method, no pension plan
Your luck's just as plain as I'm not paying attention
I'm gonna take her with me in my satanic stretcher
They call me the [...?] to Islam's plan
I am! I fucking am!
and now you say I'm a reprobate, well that's okay
but you wouldn't if I, say, got paid
They said you really should come with me
to [...?] and [...?]
And now they call me the [...?]
That's me!....
On Christmas Day the sky is full
Babies wail through the wafer wall
We penetrate a steepless face
Lies now in who know's flat
This is the one possible mystic act
Breakfast with Bandog
Morning coffee with [Khali? Collie?]
Golden gutters where we can beg
You run to the cupboard
with your hacknail and drown
Wish me dead
Ray Of Hope, Hoe Of Rape
A glass ravine
The low clouds which wink
The boughs burnt diesel and burning pig
Wide rutted streets
"666 Park Avenue", yells a big red sign
as if some Anglo-Saxon in love with his doom
left such a cheeky shrine
Then all at once the daylight came
The river lay ahead
In it stood a wooden horse so tall
the water reached but half its leg
A sign nearby read "Damn your law--this horse's hollow core
contains the means for your destruction!"
This all passersby ignored
"Save us, save us...."
When the great explorers, fortune hunters
Slave men, conmen set their sails
They dreamed of monsters without brains
Great hulks to block their treasure trail
Well, they got by with homicide
but here's the end to the magic spell:
Now the monsters lie in mouths, in veins
In genitals, in empty bellies
Baby, baby, won't you treat me kind?
I'm only a white man who longs to die
To end I need the power that you must give me
Send the children outside! Don't resist! Don't cry!"
The ray of hope as hoe of rape
reflecting light from tractor headlamps into the victim's face
We bleat about our pain and how we lost and feel defiled
and we cry all night for Santa Claus to make our blizzard mild
The poor kind European white man never hurt a fly
We were friends to all the races, every woman, every child
"Save us, save us...."
So back in the dirty hotel I lay in my clothes and I slept. I dreamed that I was face-to-face with an amorous dragon who wanted to kill me and beckoned. I approached, unsheathed, and said, "Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!"
Let me be at one with my destruction
Won't you please acquaint me with your beautiful loss?
Let's go!
Be Dead
("The way to keep people in line is to scare the shit out of 'em.")
Be dead
Be dead....
("There isn't anybody left.")
("No no no!")
("Everything is running out.")
("No no no!")
Be dead
Be dead....
("Everything is running out.")
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