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English Boy (Reprise) Lyrics

Artist: Pete Townshend
Album: Psychoderelict

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?

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