Gary Corben - This Is How It Was Lyrics

This is life like it was

1978
And the music's great
John Peel on the radio
Plays a dub plate

And despite the despair
Strikes everywhere
Its a brave new world
For those who care

They told us at school
We'd amount to nothing
Selling deckchairs on the beach
Success out of reach

Muggy Boneheads from London
With their casual's hair
Bank Holiday Monday
Better take care

Jimmy Savile at the Maison
Taking kids upstairs
Everyone knows
But nobody cares

The England Mascot
Was also a nonce
Made governor of my school
Despite prison once

Stealing our lunch from BHS
Gotta eat something
Get out of this mess

Chilling with the Mekon
A secret crush
Wanting to be Kerouac
But not be a lush

Opening for Bauhaus
And Killing Joke
Getting ready to move
Up to the Smoke
4AD records would sign my band
But I was only 14 and they didn't understand

But Revenge can be a very cold dish
I took the girlfriend off the guy from Modern English

Hearing Chet Baker on Radio 2
So I left my band to be a jazz man too
Escaping home at fifteen years old
Off to the City
In search of fame and of gold

Smoking reefer in a squat in Powys Square
Put me off pot I was really a square
On the All Saints Road you better beware
But if you were here for the stuff they didn't really care

Shopping every week on some stolen card
Back in those days it wasn't so hard
Ripping off the banks
We'll never pay them back
For any kind of scam
We sure had the knack

We bought luxury goods and classic cars
We got the cards by stealth
Then the money was ours
I even had a fake African child
Drove the Welfare insanely wild

This is what you get for being left behind
When the teachers called us dummies
And caned our behinds
Every day at school was like that movie NEDs
Getting whacked by teachers and then by skinheads

Living in squalor in an Earls Court squat
With a piss head cripple who did a coke a lot
He set fire to the flat when he was asleep
Firemen came and were freaked by the creep
Threw his bed out the top floor window
It was so covered in piss and the damage final
But the fire didn't reach my precious vinyl

Running off to Brazil in the early 90s
Living the high life with Rio celebrities
Felt so good to have a new identity

But reaching 30 with nothing done
Time to knuckle down stop all this fun
Gotta make some money so I won't care
I can't die broke its just not fair

Getting diagnosed with ADHD
And the autism bit made sense to me
If it wasn't for being on my med

Pretty sure my music would just be still in my head...