Ian Anderson
Baker Street Muse
('Baker Street Muse', take one)
(Shit shit shit, take two)
Windy bus-stop. Click. Shop-window. Heel
Shady gentleman. Fly-button. Feel
In the underpass, the blind man stands
With cold flute hands
Symphony match-seller, breath out of time -
You can call me on another line
Indian restaurants that curry my brain
Newspaper warriors changing the names
They advertise from the station stand
With cold print hands
Symphony word-player, I'll be your headline
If you catch me another time
Didn't make her - with my Baker Street ruse
Couldn't shake her - with my Baker Street bruise
Like to take her - I'm just a Baker Street muse
Ale-spew, puddle-brew - boys, throw it up clean
Coke and Bacardi colours them green
From the typing pool goes the mini-skirted princess
With great finesse
Fertile earth-mother, your burial mound
Is fifty feet down in the Baker Street underground
(Oh, what the hell?)
I didn't make her - with my Baker Street ruse
Couldn't shake her - with my Baker Street bruise
Like to take her - I'm just a Baker Street muse
Walking down the gutter thinking, "How the hell am I today?"
Well, I didn't really ask you but thanks all the same
[Pig-me and the Whore]
"Big bottled Fraulein, put your weight on me,"
Said the pig-me to the whore
Desperate for more
In his assault upon the mountain
Little man, his youth a fountain
Overdrafted and still counting
Vernacular, verbose
An attempt at getting close
To where he came from
In the doorway of the stars
Between Blandford Street and Mars;
Proposition, deal. Flying button feel
Testicle testing, wallet ever-bulging
Dressed to the left, divulging
The wrinkles of his years
Wedding-bell induced fears
Shedding bell-end tears
In the pocket of her resistance
International assistance
Flowing generous and full
To his never-ready tool
Pulls his eyes over her wool
And he shudders as he comes -
And my rudder slowly turns me into the Marylebone Road
[Nice Little Tune — instrumental]
[Crash-Barrier Waltzer]
And here slip I, dragging one foot in the gutter
In the midnight echo of
The shop that sells cheap radios
And there sits she —
No bed, no bread, no butter —
On a double yellow line
Where she can park anytime
Old Lady Grey; Crash-barrier Waltzer -
Some only son's mother
Baker Street casualty
Oh, Mr. Policeman - blue shirt ballet master
Feet in sticking plaster - Move the old lady on
Strange pas-de-deux - His Romeo to her Juliet
Her sleeping draught
His poisoned regret
No drunken bums allowed
To sleep here in the crowded emptiness
Oh officer, oh let me send her to a cheap hotel -
I'll pay the bill and make her well —
'Like hell you bloody will!'
No do-good over kill
We must teach them to be still more independent
[Mother England Reverie:]
I have no time for Time Magazine or Rolling Stone
I have no wish for wishing-wells or wishing bones
I have no house in the country; I have no motor-car
And if you think I'm joking, then I'm just a one-line joker in a public
Bar
And it seems there's nobody left for tennis; and I'm a one-band man
And I want no Top Twenty funeral or a hundred grand
There was a little boy stood on a burning log
Rubbing his hands with glee
He said, "Oh Mother England did you light my smile
Or did you light this fire under me?"
One day I'll be a minstrel in the gallery
And paint you a picture of the queen
And if sometimes I sing to a cynical degree
It's just the nonsense that it seems
So I drift down through the Baker Street valley
In my steep-sided un-reality
And when all's said and all's done
Couldn't wish for a better one —
It's a real-life ripe dead-certainty
That I'm just a Baker Street muse
Hopping through the gutter-stinking, winking in the same old way
I tried to catch my eye but I looked the other way
Indian restaurants that curry my brain
Newspaper warriors changing the names
They advertise from the station stand
Circumcised with cold print hands
Windy bus-stop. Click. Shop-window. Heel
Shady gentleman. Fly-button. Feel
In the underpass, the blind man stands
With cold flute hands
Symphony match-seller, breath out of time -
You can call me on another line
Didn't make her - with my Baker Street ruse
Couldn't shake her - with my Baker Street bruise
Like to take her - I'm just a Baker Street muse
I'm just a Baker Street muse
Just a Baker Street muse
Just a Baker Street muse
(Well I'm just a Baker Street muse…
I can't get out!)