Pete Townshend - English Boy (Reprise) lyrics

rate me

I was an English boy

I was brought up right

You could hold me down

And I would bite

I knew no fear

I served with joy

I was proud to be here

An English boy

You spray like a tomcat

Piss like a stray dog

Swear like a sailor

Speaking in gang tongues

Kicking in chorus

Stabbing to order

Slashing like a blind man

Lost like a soldier

I was an English boy

Precisely made

You could pin me down

I was not afraid

I showed no fear

And I served with joy

I was so proud to be here

An English boy

Blurred like a movie

Gray under streetlights

Gray in the sunshine

So black on the tube line

White on the touchline

Moving like a fever

Spreading like an oil slick

Thicker than a house brick

I was an English boy

I was brought up right

If you raised your dress

And I would bite

My voice was clear

I had perfect poise

Was good to be down here

With all the English boys

And I don't know where I am now

Or where I'm gonna go

I keep going round and round on the circle line

Like some demented kind of commuta

Trying to avoid paying for my ticket

I'm a lost soul

I read about myself in the newspapers

I'm a pig

I'm a thug

I've got nowhere to go but down

(guitar solo)

Stand up, when I'm talking to you boy

Stand up, when I'm talking to you boy

Stand up! stand up! stand up!

Stand up!

Stand up!

Slow like a prejudice

Broken like hatred

Kicking at a dead man

Cut pieces to pieces

Marking your territory

Freezing the future

Stopping the stopwatch

I am despairing

I was an English boy

I was brought up right

You could hold me down

And I would bite

I knew no fear

And I served with joy

I was proud to be here

An English boy

I was an English boy

Yes I was

I was an English boy

I was an English boy

I was an English boy

I was an English boy

I was an English boy

I was an English boy

I was an English boy

Ray addresses the audience

RAY: "Gridlife" was a vision, a real vision. Not a fiction, not a fairy tale, a glimpse of the future. Today, twenty years later, the apocalypse it foresaw is nearer. But, whatever you read in the newspapers, we still don't have any alternative reality. It's all games now: all lies and deceit. What happened to the truth? What happened to the dream? What happened to all that lovely hippy shit?