Lyrics German Overalls - Peter Hammill

German Overalls

Manheim;
rainy Saturday with no money nor friend,
only Tequila can end the boredom.
Try to reach London for a pocket of hope;
we’re children, we grope in the dark.
Hugh spends his last Mark on coffee and cheese…
I feel just like a refugee…
Rathaus-keepers and traffic police,
middle-aged maids with rotting teeth
industrial magazines and old Sunday Times;
reading material/bleeding lines.
What are we doing here?
Memorial manace, eager for revenge,
has begun to bend our minds.
Shower-curtain imperative in the presence of acid;
now, feeling placid is death.
I try to hold my breath as the P.A.
comes down…
here we all are in Ktown!
The Big Wheel never fails to grind around;
it drags me up/drags me down
Seven sentenses wonder 'Can this be real,
or am I become a performing seal?'
Why are we dying here?
I walk the streets alone, try to find a sign of love,
I’ve crushed the plaster-bone in the freaky clubs,
I have bit the fruit
but all I live for is to play
and I’m tired of the nights and the days
of airports, taxis and motorway showers,
grooping for a key in the afterhours.
David takes to travelling in the van,
He knows that we all can understand;
we’re at the mercy of the Kosmos Tour,
making a pilgrimage to the German Lourdes…
but we’re still crippled here.
Cathedrals spiral skywards, I think I’m getting vertigo,
I think I don’t know what is real.
On a more sudden spotlight, one more madness is over…
I must not show a sign of fear.
Words echo round my ears, I think I’m going to laugh…
think I’ll just go and take a bath, Guess I’ll wash my clothes,
don’t you know I’ll grow to go and make my name,
maybe a servant in the Fame game;
stake my sane and rest my life on the line…
Now lay me asunder and rend my mind;
at the fall of the curtain let this be my ghost…