John Cale
Fear Is A Man's Best Friend - John Cale

Lyrics

Honi Soit

Honi Soit

  1. Dead Or Alive
  2. Strange Times In Casablanca
  3. Fighter Pilot
  4. Wilson Joliet
  5. Streets Of Laredo
  6. Honi Soit (La première Leçon De Français)
  7. Riverbank
  8. Russian Roulette
  9. Magic & Lies

Dead Or Alive

Sooner or later she said she'd be my friend
Honest and faithful till the very end
Well enough of that I'm tired of hearing it anyway
She turns and smiles says goodbye in her inimical way

Happy to see her in the back of a magazine
Lying there nude sporting that stupid grin
So get on with it straight on and porno bound
Just leave me out of it I'm not proud

It would have taken you a long long time

Happy to see her in the back of a limousine
Laughing and crying at everything she'd seen
Well enough of that she should have known better anyway
When I told her what I'd seen she was so ashamed

It would have taken me a long long time

The a year from Monday everything I said came true
That's when the D.A. called me he said dead or alive for you
They found her
Dead or alive
I want you dead or alive she said

[top]

Strange Times In Casablanca

Strange times in Casablanca when people pull down their shades
And its easy enough for us to look at each other and wonder why
We were to blame
Blame comes remorselessly transfixed
Like the sound of slamming doors
And doors have doors have doors have doors have doors
Like companions have pets they sleep in each other's mattresses
Like maggots in despair
And bleed in each other's nests and make a mess of each other's snares
Strange times in Casablanca
Strange times
They make some striking couples
They make some frustration of the call
And only those who are satisfied by friendship would even pay
Attention to it all
It comes like mail or telegrams
It comes expectant as a widow in heat as a widow in the searing heat
And that contentment of depression that delivers most of the time
But cannot help the styling of the horns in the shape of gargoyle
Broken prints savage fingers
Undertaken catamaran
Strange times in Casablanca
We've turned our back on it once before
And we can hear from across the waters what damage it will cause us
And you can smash once more
And they can smash once more
But I don't think anybody wants to smash anymore

[top]

Fighter Pilot

Fighter pilot you're losing the war again
When will you ever learn
Fighter pilot you're making a big mistake and setting a bad example

Fighter pilot tell me about your life and are the children well
Fighter pilot what do you do with yourself at night
When will you ever learn

Fighter pilot it's a summer of thunderstorms
The sky is black and blue you're a hero now
But you're a terrible man fighter pilot

Bandits here bandits there angels at ten o'clock
You're going down
Fighter pilot you're never coming in to land

[top]

Wilson Joliet

She was so afraid of everything she said
Since her mother told her why once upon a time
There was no rhyme
Before the clock slammed another door
On the weary hours we were facing a second hand Shylock
Shylocked in, in on us

I saw what it had taken
Playing back that old brigade of mine
Everything was dirty,
Everything was dirty,
Everything was without rhyme

'Cause me and Nigger marched
Yes, me and Nigger blasted our way outta here
Blasted our way out of here just like yesterday
Yesterday's streets burnt down,
burned out buildings reduced to shells

And mothers weep while children sleep
Like ancestors in the ground
In the ground
The misery of nuns crouched together like some
Who do not have the taste for the battle

We are shuffled like a pack of cards, like the dead of night
Like the lovers below Bataan, below the senses
'Cause the senses smell of tears
They smell of tears
Like me and Nigger

Me and Nigger marched
We and Nigger blasted
We and Nigger marched, one two
Me and Nigger blasted our way, one two three
We and Nigger blasted our way out
Close the door and let's have some private light
Me and Nigger one two three four five six seven
eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen
fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen
twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four
twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven

[top]

Streets Of Laredo

Words: Francis Henry Maynard (1876)

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,
As I walked out in Laredo one day,
I spied a young cowboy wrapped up in white linen,
Wrapped up in white linen and cold as the clay.
"O beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly;
Play the Dead March as you carry me along.
Take me to the green valley and lay the sod o're me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I done wrong."

"I see by your outfit that your are a cowboy."
These words he did say as I boldly stepped by.
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story;
I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die."

"My friends and relations they live in the Nation:
They know not where their dear boy has gone.
I first came to Texas and hired to a ranchman,
O I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong."

"It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing:
It was once in the saddle I used to go gay.
First to the dram house and then to the card house,
Got shot in the breast and I'm dying today."

"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin;
Get six pretty maidens to sing me a song.
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
Put roses to deaden the cods as they fall."

"Go gather around you a group of young cowboys,
And tell them the story of this my sad fate.
Tell one and the other before they go further,
To stop their wild roving before it's too late."

"Go bring me a cup, a cup of cold water
To cool my parched lips," the young cowboy said.
Before I returned the spirit had left him
And gone to its Maker--the cowboy was dead.

We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly,
And bitterly wept as we bore him along.
For awe all loved our comrade, so brave, young, and handsome,
We all loved our comrade although he'd done wrong.

[top]

Honi Soit (La première Leçon De Français)

Ecoutez, écoutez, s'il vous plait...
Merci
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Merci

Honi soit qui mal y pense (psst, wcch)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (psst)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Tout ce qu'on dit et tout ce qu'on fait,
Tout le monde doit écouter
Ecoutez...
Merci, écoutez
Ecoutez...

Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Tout ce qu'on dit et tout ce qu'on fait...
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense

Tout ce qu'on dit et tout ce qu'on fait,
Tout le monde doit écouter.
Honi soi qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Tout le monde...

Qu'est-ce que c'est? Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Quoi? qu'est-ce que c'est?
Un coup d'état? Qu'est-ce que c'est un coup d'état?
Mais oui, le voilà...

Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Merci...

Honi soit qui mal y pense
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (ooh)
Tout ce qu'on dit et tout ce qu'on fait,
Tout le monde doit écouter...
Honi soit, qui mal y pense

Et le voilà
c'est fini!

Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense (doo ooh)
Honi soit qui mal y pense

[top]

Riverbank

All along the riverbank nobody seems to know
They heard nothing, saw even less of the hunger in their souls
Safety first or safety last I wish I could have helped
Those poor unfortunate widows standing waiting for their sailor boys

Madame Nhu, yes madame knew
Down they came to look around that riverbank
For names or numbers or anything they could find written there
On the wall

Cause somebody seemed to know but no one was prepared to tell
Anything they'd learnt to love about long ago
And the cold people getting colder
Like babysitters in their graves

Satisfying heretic vicars passing on
Send them running on ahead picking up the wendy trash instead
Like foulmouth people open heart surgery creatures
Crawling back inside of you

All along the riverbank nobody will ever know
What fools and their monies sailors and their honeys
Got stung one evening there
Cause the stones around their necks are the stones on the Riverbank

[top]

Russian Roulette

The Russian bear is hungry
He's dancing in his chains
And the trainer is melancholy
Feeling hard and grey, okay
And he will have to dig
For miles underground of soil
If, if not for Frenchmen
Dizzy from turning their backs
On everyone's story
And everybody's disgust
Everybody's distrust
Distrust, disgust

Well, behind the sanitary napkin beauty
That oozes out of each and every song
He harnesses the blood bank soul
The [park bench] creatures that belong
Hey, John Wayne, he can feel no pain
'Cause he's got no brain
He's riding horses to Apocalypse and back
Just like a crosseyed Paul McCartney
Like another crosseyed Paul McCartney

For hard-judged creatures that belong above the [weathered tan]
That material safety ain't a safety found in numbers
But they're never getting [slumber]
And they're never getting [zoned]
And the getting's all gone
[I love a big gain]
[Kate and Peter], beauty comes last
Safety first and beauty comes last
Safety first 'cause spiteful caravan goes last
Antique caravan goes last

Well Delilah is your [envy flowing?]
Samson's shorn and hoarse
With fifty caliber bullets
For the [trutches??] in the human race
Japan, Japan, Japan, we love you
They carve you like Californian turkey
Feed to hungry missiles sucking
The moist vagina of the world
Leave it

And Russia is defecting
Russia, Russia is defecting
Russia is defected, is defective,
Is defecting, is defecting, is defecting
What's wrong with the motherland
What's wrong with the fatherland

Here comes the China Ku Klux Klan
And elect black Communists surgeons
In case you need them
Elect Communist surgeons
Elect black Communist surgeons
Elect black Communist surgeons in case
In case you need them
If it rains, if it rains
When it rains
It never rains on the Russian Party
Rains
If it rains, if it rains
If it rains on the Communist Party
If it rains, if it rains, if it rains on the Communist Party

[top]

Magic & Lies

Look at that old man with the broken shoes
He could tell you stories he knows how to lose
Look at that sweet thing packaged so tight

She does things her own way, knows the wrong from right
But there's one big difference now she does anything she wants
And every night is midnight as they come to take her through the door
Of suffering as it is her own way out no matter how she feels
Her day is

Can you see madame breaking all the rules
She does things her own way, she's nobody's fool

Yes, she finds things easier now she does everything she says
They climb up on her doorstep and rock around the clock tonight
And rock around again in spite of everything she'd done she is forgotten

Look at that young man with the tired eyes
He believes in magic, he believes in lies



© 1999- Hans Werksman