This Is England lyrics

[Marky Dread]

This Is England :

Four for a pound your face flannels
Three for a pound your tea towells
Four for a pound your face flannels
Three for a pound your tea towells

I hear a gang cry on a human factory farm
Are they howling out or doing somebody harm
On a catwalk jungle somebody grabbed my arm
A voice spoke so cold it matched the weapon in the palm

This is England
This knife of Sheffield steel
This is England
This is how we feel

Time on his hands the freezing mohawk strolls
He won't go for the carrot
He's beaten by the pole
Some sunny day confronted by his soul
His eye will see how fast you can grow old

This is England
Who I'm supposed to die for
This is England
We're never gonna cry no more

Black shadow of the Vincent
Falls on a Triumph line
I got my motorcycle jacket
But I'm walking all the time
A South Atlantic wind blows
Ice from a dying creed
I see no glory
And when will we be free

This is England
We can chain you to the rails
This is England
Or we can kill you in a jail

(Walk on walk on / Walk on walk on)

Hear British boots go kick Bengali in the head
Police sit watching a newspapers being read
All deaf to protest and after the attacker fled
Out come the batons and the biggest one then said

This is England
The land of illegal dances
This is England
Land of one thousand stances
This is England
This knife of Sheffield steel
This is England
This is how we feel
This is England
This is England

[Inder]

Nice! Some suggestions:

"His eyes they seek a path that can't go home" = "His eyes can see / how fast you can grow old"

"Police sit watching a newspapers been read" = "Police sit watching / newspapers being read"

"Who dares to protest it acts to the eyes like a flare / Out come the batons and the biggest one they send" = "All deaf to protest / and after the attacker fled / out come the batons / and the biggest one then said"

[Marky Dread]

Nice! Some suggestions:

"His eyes they seek a path that can't go home" = "His eyes can see / how fast you can grow old"

"Police sit watching a newspapers been read" = "Police sit watching / newspapers being read"

"Who dares to protest it acts to the eyes like a flare / Out come the batons and the biggest one they send" = "All deaf to protest / and after the attacker fled / out come the batons / and the biggest one then said"

Excellent Inder, so many sites/Youtube etc with the wrong lyrics. It would be real nice to get them as correct as possible then hopefully when new bands do cover versions they sound so much better.

[Marky Dread]

OK so I've edited the lyrics above and they seem pretty spot on now. The lyrics can be heard a bit clearer on the Dutch alt. mix.

[Heston]

We nailed this years ago...

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8101&p=293601&hilit=bengali#p293601

There's still a few gaps on the album where the lyrics are open for conjecture, the Complete Clash songbook gets them ridiculously wrong.

[Low Down Low]

Really is a terrific lyric by Joe. That second last verse is sublime and the last not far behind. Still cant comprehend how he could write like this for one song and then, the odd flourish aside, basically write mostly gibberish for the rest of the album.

[Silent Majority]

Really is a terrific lyric by Joe. That second last verse is sublime and the last not far behind. Still cant comprehend how he could write like this for one song and then, the odd flourish aside, basically write mostly gibberish for the rest of the album.

His grief and personal tragedy were knocking him into a meaningless fantasyland lyricwise that he'd stay in until way past Earthquake Weather. A real shame we didn't have an on-his-game Strummer for the mid to late eighties. A more focused go at something like Three Card Trick is a really interesting signpost of how Joe may have written about Thatcher's Britain. Joe gets a little lost in Three Card Trick, pulls back too far into vague unspecifics, but its a great, flawed lyric about the miner's strike, Orgreave, right-wing nationalism and its being propped up by the moral majority style activism of the likes of Mary Whitehouse, the evils of globalisation, hopelessness (particularly its place in resistance), wage slavery and the complicity of the press.

North & South is a noble but undercooked and hamfisted grasp at some of the same issues.

[Silent Majority]

Oh shit, do I seriously want to annotate the words of a talented but lost man in a mohawk?

[Low Down Low]

Really is a terrific lyric by Joe. That second last verse is sublime and the last not far behind. Still cant comprehend how he could write like this for one song and then, the odd flourish aside, basically write mostly gibberish for the rest of the album.

His grief and personal tragedy were knocking him into a meaningless fantasyland lyricwise that he'd stay in until way past Earthquake Weather. A real shame we didn't have an on-his-game Strummer for the mid to late eighties. A more focused go at something like Three Card Trick is a really interesting signpost of how Joe may have written about Thatcher's Britain. Joe gets a little lost in Three Card Trick, pulls back too far into vague unspecifics, but its a great, flawed lyric about the miner's strike, Orgreave, right-wing nationalism and its being propped up by the moral majority style activism of the likes of Mary Whitehouse, the evils of globalisation, hopelessness (particularly its place in resistance), wage slavery and the complicity of the press.

North & South is a noble but undercooked and hamfisted grasp at some of the same issues.

Three Card Trick is a good lyric, one of the very odd flourishes I referenced. I agree the intense grief of this period, among other things, hobbled Joe as a songwriter. Of course lots of artists rise critically to grief - Nick Cave's latest album for example - but we know Joe could never be that kind of writer. I have an alternate take on Earthquake Weather, though. I like it lyrically, it's interesting and I believe it hints at the future direction Joe can take - ambitious, worldly, more nuanced, slightly playful - though it will take him another decade of personal discovery to finally work it out. The Joe of 84/85 is the ultimate contradiction for me, all the talk of going back to basics, revisiting the past when what he needed was to move forward and find a new way of expression. Until he realised that, I don't think he had much chance artistically or of effectively capturing the society changing rapidly around him.

[Marky Dread]

We nailed this years ago...

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8101&p=293601&hilit=bengali#p293601

There's still a few gaps on the album where the lyrics are open for conjecture, the Complete Clash songbook gets them ridiculously wrong.

I always like to go through the looking glass on groundhog day.

[Heston]

I really love this...

Land of illegal dances
Land of one thousand stances

The first line became even more relevant in the UK a few years later, and a nice Wilson Pickett reference in the second.

[Marky Dread]

I really love this...

Land of illegal dances
Land of one thousand stances

The first line became even more relevant in the UK a few years later, and a nice Wilson Pickett reference in the second.

I suppose you are referencing the acid house scene. It's a great little couplet for sure but way before acid house and raves there were illegal blues parties. The land of one thousand stances is indeed a great referance to Wilson Pickett and to all the various youth cultures we had then.

[Kory]

I really love this...

Land of illegal dances
Land of one thousand stances

The first line became even more relevant in the UK a few years later, and a nice Wilson Pickett reference in the second.

I suppose you are referencing the acid house scene. It's a great little couplet for sure but way before acid house and raves there were illegal blues parties. The land of one thousand stances is indeed a great referance to Wilson Pickett and to all the various youth cultures we had then.

[Marky Dread]

I really love this...

Land of illegal dances
Land of one thousand stances

The first line became even more relevant in the UK a few years later, and a nice Wilson Pickett reference in the second.

I suppose you are referencing the acid house scene. It's a great little couplet for sure but way before acid house and raves there were illegal blues parties. The land of one thousand stances is indeed a great referance to Wilson Pickett and to all the various youth cultures we had then.

Exactly and thanks for posting that track Kory haven't heard it for some time.

[Kory]

I really love this...

Land of illegal dances
Land of one thousand stances

The first line became even more relevant in the UK a few years later, and a nice Wilson Pickett reference in the second.

I suppose you are referencing the acid house scene. It's a great little couplet for sure but way before acid house and raves there were illegal blues parties. The land of one thousand stances is indeed a great referance to Wilson Pickett and to all the various youth cultures we had then.

Exactly and thanks for posting that track Kory haven't heard it for some time.

I've been digging UK reggae almost more than Jamaican lately. The first 3 Aswad albums, The first 5 Steel Pulse, LKJ, etc. It's got a certain militancy that I find appealing.