I've been consultedby Michael D,Eamon Dunphy hashad me to tea,With Frances BlackI've charted,But can't get started with you.
I was singing in the bath the other morning (I take a bath religiously every three weeks, whether I need it or not), and it occurred to me that this song-writing lark is a bit of a doddle. (Apply well-soaped sponge to armpits and back of neck.)
Around the K Club
I'm under par,
Louis Walsh has
asked me to star,
Howth to Bray
I've DARTed,
But can't get
started with you.
I watched Mr Bono at the Special Olympics opening concert, pacing around the stage like a demented lion in Baghdad zoo, and I found myself momentarily diverted by the thought: "What fun it would be if Mr Domingo were to deliver an aria in that fashion" - and, conversely, if Mr Bono were to do his singing standing at the microphone in tails and a white bow-tie, with a gardenia in his buttonhole and a large white handkerchief in his hand.
Then, when I realised that Mr Bono was not meant to be a spectacle, like the fireworks or Macnas, but a musical artist, I noticed that I couldn't make out a word he was singing. So I went to the Internet, Googled and found the band's lyrics.
Oh, dearie me. Copyright considerations disbar me from quoting, and the defamation laws preclude me from commenting, but let me just say that if one of those songs was running through my head it had better not slow down or I'd strangle it. (Open the hot tap by prehensile application of right big toe.)
You're the top,
you're a verse by Heaney,
You're the top,
just like Flo McSweeney.
You're the pure delight
of a Budget flight to Spain,
You're a Trinity Fellow,
You're Lillie's Bordello,
You're Borrisokane.
You're the top,
You're Sinead O'Connor,
Now a Mother,
Signs upon her.
I'm an ageing hack
with a dodgy back and piles,
You're a wall by Giotto,
the midweek Lotto,
You're Johnny Giles.
Seeking enlightenment, I reached for my copy of The Rise and Fall of Popular Music by Donald Clarke (Penguin Books, at all fine bookstores). Mr Clarke dismisses Mr Bono's band thus:
"As for the words of the songs, we have come from the folk poetry of Hank Williams, Carl Perkins and Bob Dylan to empty posturing; the rockists are no more literate than the popsters. Take U2, an Irish group who began composing their own material because they could not perform anybody else's and who were suddenly found to be relevant in the wasteland of the 1980s. . ."
He then goes on to quote another scribe, a Mr Johnstone of the Daily Telegraph, writing about the U2 film Rattle And Hum: "The Edge, I think, says: 'There are people who say you shouldn't mix music and politics, but I think that's bullshit.'
"And we wait, open-mouthed, for him to expand on this sententious theory; but answer comes there none. . .Names like Bishop Tutu and Martin Luther King are taken down from the shelves like proprietary brands and lobbed into their songs, like supermarket shopping thrown into a basket." How very disobliging. (Corner of the face-cloth into those whorl-like crevices of the ear.)
You're the top,
you're the Guinness toucan,
You're the top,
like Darina, cookin',
You're the heavenly fire
of the Dublin Spire by night,
You're a Hewlett-Packard,
I'm crashed and knackered,
You're Marlboro Lite.
You're the top, you're
a nice colcannon.
You're the top,
cute as Sharon Shannon,
I'm the glinting sag of the bag
of F. Dunlop,
But if, baby,
I'm the bottom,
you're the top.
(Pay particular attention with the loofah to the knees and other low joints, first removing the yellow plastic duck.)
Serbs do it,
Croats do it,
Volga little men
in boats do it,
Let's do it,
let's fall in love.
Writing to the
lovelorn,
Anna Raeburn
does it,
Talking to the
housewives, even
Gay Byrne does it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
(Bit out of date, that one, but art is timeless.)
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi
does it,
Now a father, Bishop Eamonn
Casey does it,
Let's do it, let's
fall in love.
Sheer folk poetry, don't you think? The shorthand of beauty. Political significance simply oozing from every line. And names dropped in like supermarket shopping.
But enough of this tomfoolery. I do so admire the work that Mr Bono does on behalf of the world's hungry. No, really I do. I hope he will consider devoting more of his time to it.
No, check that: I hope he will consider devoting all of his time to it.
(Where's that towel? I enjoyed that. I must take a bath more often, maybe as much as every fortnight. I might even start a band. I could call it Mr Paul Hewson and His Senescent Syncopators. Well, why not? Nobody else is using that name.)