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English Boy Lyrics

Artist: Pete Townshend
Album: Psychoderelict

RUTH: Hello, Ruth Streeting here once again with "Streeting's Street", where you get the word straight from the street. This is the show that dishes the dirt on the dirt. Strictly no rock star bullshit on my show. I don't review pop anymore, I talk about anything I like ... or anything I hate. Talking of which, remember that clapped-out 60's hell-raiser Ray High? Rumor has it the sad old lush can't do it anymore ... I mean "make records".

I'm an English boy
I was brought up right
Hold me down
And I will bite
I know no fear
I serve with joy
I'm proud to be here
An English boy

I feel like a stray dog
Blurred like a movie
You say you've come to arrest me
But you're just trying to test me
I'm bored with your prejudice
Spreading like a fever
Your promises to train me
Are just attempts to restrain me

I'm an English boy
Precisely made
You can pin me down
I am not afraid
I show no fear
I will serve with joy
I'm proud to be here
An English boy

Use me like a headline
Cut pieces to pieces
I'm black on the tube line
Red on the touch-line
Freezing up the future
Stopping every stopwatch
You say we're moving like an oil slick
Thicker than a house brick

I'm an English boy
I was brought up right
If you raise your dress
Then I will bite
My voice is clear
I got perfect poise
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 just keep going round and round on the circle line
Like some demented kind a 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

RUTH: I hear his manager, Rastus Knight, is pulling what's left of his hair out. The only thing Ray's writing these days are large checks to his booze merchants. He's a serious recluse now. Hasn't seen daylight or another woman since his old lady walked out two years ago. Poor little sausage, brooding in that twenty-two room glass mansion. Life's a bitch, and so am I.

Feel like I'm kicking at a dead man
Kicking in the chorus
I'm broken by hatred
While politicians just ignore us
You never gave me any value
You didn't give me any reason
There's no tools and no toys
For any English boys

I'm an English boy
I was brought up right
Hold me down
And I will bite
I know no fear
I will serve with joy
I'm proud to be here
An English boy

I'm an English boy
I'm an English boy
I'm an English boy
No tools, no toys for any English boy
English boy

Comments/Interpretations

by warren leming-wleming@berlin.com on 1/23/2009 12:17pm
Townsend, one of the lyricists who actually looked to extend the form hits on the roots of English romance, nowhere better presented than in rock performer form. Townsends penchant for blending an almost Brechtian analysis with the cliches and contradictions of POP presentation- prove that media criticism is now a function of the rock lyric. Townsend's
apres moi le deluge" was remarkably true.