Songwriters From England

"New York City's very pretty in the night-time But oh, don't you miss Soho?"

"If you get tired of just hanging around Pick up a guitar, spin a web of sound And then you could be strung out all day With lovers and clowns Now I find myself still hanging around"

"I was a troubled teen Who put an advert in a magazine To the annoyance of my imaginary lover She doubted my integrity And this is what she said to me: She said, "Oh, you, you're green You don't know what love means Well, let me tell you"

"When she wakes up in the morning She writes down all her dreams Reads like the Book of Revelations Or the Beano or the unabridged Ulysses Oh, I really wanna know So tell me, Where does all the money go? Where does all the money go? Straight, straight up her nose"

"Music when the lights go out Love goes cold in shades of doubt The strange face in my mind is all too clear Music when the lights come on The girl I thought I knew has gone And with her my heart has disappeared"

"Her old man, he don't like blacks or queers Yet he's proud we beat the Nazis How queer..."

"Don't let the tide of your sorrow Drown your nights and flood your days"

"There are fewer more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap Yeah, we'll die in the class we were born That's a class of our own, my love"

"The red-faced president took afternoon tea With her majesty The Queen And they watched old films flicker Across the old palace movie screen Crying, "What a shame!" As she slipped in the rain Poor dancing girl Well, she won't dance again..."

"If you've lost your faith in love and music The end won't be long But if it's gone for you I too may lose it And that would be wrong..."

"The Thames and the Mersey, the Tyne and the Wear and the Clyde They spew slums like gravy on the banks of the poisonous tide They washed up a pale thin girl Alone in her ivory tower Scratching her skin with the thorns that grow On the stems of the wild flowers What became of the love we knew? We beat the swine black and blue You and I Me and you What became of the love we knew? What became of the working class? Nike, Reebok, Adidas Scratchcards, pitbulls, ecstasy Hooray for the 21st Century"

"But if I should fall Would you vow today to pay tomorrow the fucked off big debt I owe to sorrow"

"I knew she wasn't English Because she spoke it far too well The grammar was goodly, the verbs as they should be And the slang was bang on the bell So as the language barrier clanged and banged I couldn't hear--hear or see England, London, and Bow Crumbled into the sea."

"I may be a fool, but I'm not a f**ker."

"My idea of paradise is that period just before the sun rises and I’m at home painting or writing songs and everything is flowing. I pray that the sun won’t rise so I can paint and write for ever. That’s my ideal time."

"I got bitten last night actually. Just some bloke bit me. I wasn't doing anything and he just bit me. I was in a public telephone box in the centre of London and some fella came up and started biting me. Nah, I didn't bite him back. I hit him with a telephone, right on the hooter and it exploded like a ripe tomato"

"I’m vain because I’m imperfect."

"Mental-stability, I would say. I’d like to achieve a fluidity, where everything stays consistent – always doing shows, always with the chance to release records, meeting new people."

"No, because it's not like they're the only songs we have. They're like children; you shouldn't really have a favourite. Unless one of your kids develops into a pervert."

"I mean you look in the paper and you see the bodies of mutilated people, and that's controversy. Controversy isn't saying something like 'Oh I've fucked Noel Gallagher' or something. Which I have."

"I knew I was destined for London, so I came to live with my nan in her council flat. It was the summer after my A-levels. Got a job in Willesden cemetery. I was getting a man’s wage, filling in graves. Stood around while they did the last rites. Cut the grass. A lot of the time I’d just sit on the gravestones and read and write. Scribbling away."

"I fall in love with Britain every day, with bridges, buses, blue skies... but it’s a brutal world, man."

"Basically, too many other people made important decisions for us and we just wrote songs and worried about clothes and girls. In the early days he came round once with this girl who had convinced him that I was just a weirdo and that we had an unhealthy relationship. He sat me down and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t see so much of each other? Maybe we should knock the band on the head? It’s not really going anywhere, is it?" I was desperate for us to stick together and see it through because I never stopped believing. When we got signed, Carl was shocked. I had prepared myself and had been reading the NME since I was 16. Carl wasn’t like that."

"Probably Carlos"

"I got headbutted in Wolverhampton. You [Carl] get snogged in Northampton, head butted in Wolverhampton and I won't even tell you what happened in Southampton. Basically Carlos gets the love and I get all the head butts, it seems to be the way of things."

"Carl's all right. It's just like EastEnders really. He's still my kid."

"Yes, it was riveting. Despite everything, you knew there was goodness there. Something to believe in. Something which is good, pure and untainted by anything."

"They've been around me since day one, but so has corduroy. Know what I mean? Drugs don't create the sound - they might just change the pitch slightly. Or make you spell a word wrong."

"After years of entrenched drug abuse, you have a mourning period. I know it’s a bit sad, but I’m in mourning. I’m in mourning for an armful."

"Drugs don’t work. They don’t even make you forget – only momentarily, because if something’s that painful, nothing’s going to make you forget it. You think they’ll fill the hole, but the hole just gets deeper… It’s like trying to fill in a hole without a spade."

"I realise it’s proved to people that I don’t love them. It’s dawning on me now that if I say I love someone… it’s like lying, really. As long as I’m taking it, the lie continues. I’ve got a lot of proving myself to do."

"I was so, so lost and unhappy. If you listen to the songs on the first album, you can hear it. They’re really sad songs and they come from a lonely place. The relationship broke up, and I went into free fall. I saw drugs as a way of avoiding…the darkness."

"That’s right, but I’m not sure it’s my place to talk about drugs. I’d rather take them or not take them - but not talk about them."

"Sometimes I feel really guilty complaining about it because there are some amazing things happening around me but the darkness has prevailed, to be honest, in extremis. Yesterday, man, I went to buy a pint of milk and I got stopped in the street and searched. They found a crumb of rock in the lining of my coat that I didn’t even know was there and I spent all day in fucking Charing Cross [police] station. They’re taking the piss, mate."

"I'd say exercising self-control is very important for a dissolute life. You don't need to control your drug intake to lead a free life. Whether you take no drugs at all or everything you can get your hands on, a free life is separated from that."

"With drugs, I think the sort of person that would die from an overdose is gonna die soon enough anyway, because they’ve got that will to destroy what’s left of their life."

"If I want drugs, I don't have to do a gig to get them. I do a gig when I feel shit, because I need to be playing. There's no drug in the world that can compare with playing music"

"It's not people in bands, is it? Why do people who take drugs, why are they in bands? 'Cos they're trying to prove themselves. To make themselves blank and numb and not able to communicate with other people."

"With Oasis stepping up a gear and proving they've still got it, they need to be shown there are people out there who can surpass them. Can we match them? The quality is good (in Oasis), but there really is no competition because my band is the greatest in the world and we're going to prove it."

"“Yeah, well, I subscribe to the Umberto Eco view that Noel is a Poet and Liam is a town crier.”"

"I think I only needed something to hold on to. It has never been about depravity. It's always been about melody. But melody and I met in many depraved situations. Meeting melody is the victory of the empty spiralling nightmare."

"I’ve got a fierce passion for politics but I can’t stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country. I’m up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets."

"They left me, by the side of the road, with a plastic bag and all kinds of bitterness Well, in my mind, and I can say this forever I suppose, and people might laugh at it, but I don't think I ever really left The Libertines, nor can I ever leave The Libertines, you know, having been a founder of the band with Carl, but that sounds silly, doesn't it, seeing as they played all the festivals without me and made it difficult, no - impossible, for me to play live with them."

"I think it's woken me up to a few things, and you do become complacent. As well as being anti something, you've got to be pro something. So you're anti racism, so what are you pro? You're pro community. I would put my hand on my heart and I'd attach myself to socialist ideas. Because I believe in society. And it's bollocks that black people have any less worth in society than white people, which is basically what people like the BNP say."

"You can't get that feeling anywhere else. It's communion. It's like being washed away in the ocean, carried aloft on a wave."

"There's a point you reach before you're perverted and tainted by all the things that drag you into the music business, like avarice or a lust for fame. The original reason why I started was some feeling of community, equality, wanting to fight for things you believe in. Any kid who's gone to a state school knows what it's all about - bullying, racism. And you've just got to make a stand."

"Has there ever been a musician of cultural significance who's been aware they're significant? Maybe it's a generation whose parents came from a working class environment and because they were rootless in a way, like me and him, they latched onto that as an identity. Maybe we romanticise what our parents wanted to escape from. We're, like, fantasising out a living."

"I still do. It's changed a lot. It started off as something ancient and forgotten; and became something modern and real. I just couldn't swim. The tunnels get narrower and narrower."

"Just when you get really wound up, you turn a corner and you're somewhere else completely. You find an Arcadian glade - a glimpse of paradise in the middle of it all. And that's why you persevere. That's why you don't chuck yourself off a building or shoot yourself at the same time as someone else, like he [Carl] wanted us to."

"Arcadia? The realm of the infinite? It's a poet's corner... It's not a cult or a religion – it's an awareness of your surroundings; you're not going to force yourself on anyone and, equally, no one's going to force themselves on you. And it's about community and pleasure. It came from a whisper through the trees. It came from a crack in the pavement. It can also come when you open a bag of crisps, or when you kick a football against a goalpost. Even if I was winding you up, it would still be true, because Arcadia and the Arcadian Dream is so deep, is so true to our hearts... It can be as powerful as your imagination can allow it to be. But, it can also be as dark and twisted as your soul... Arcadia encompasses the infinite, and that's why it comforts me."