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The Clash - If Music Could Talk

The Clash - If Music Could Talk Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Sandinista!
Released: 1980

If Music Could Talk Lyrics

Make sure!
Taking cover in the bunker tonight
Waiting for Bo Diddley's headlights
I feel alright
Gotta Fender Stratosphere
I can do anything tonight
It's in neon lights an' global rights
Frank? He's on the phone
There ain't no German girl outside
But who cares when its warm inside?
With music
Special mystery of music tragically
Exchanging slaves for majesties
Modern waves of tragedy
Packing a two piece colt pair of shoots
A shiny grey Mexican suit
The blue eyed traffic can sashay by
'Cause tonight the sailor boys have hit Shanghai
The kick-out traffic goes creaking by
I smash my glass and shout shanghai
My drummer friend comes shooting by
He said Errol Flynn will never die
Oh no! Who am I to question why?
And are you lonesome tonight
And do ya need a country cowboy
Who's just thin and tight in those
Br' bus depot jeans
With a squirt resistant stud stud
Hey stoner

Get over there in the spliff bunker one
Because London Bridge was sold somehow
But it was too old anyhow
When Uncle Sam has broken down
We'll make him down in old Japan
Say ye'

Well there ain't no better blend
Than Joe Ely and his Texas Men
Where the wind blows
I ain't seen none like that scenery
You can see from a bus if you pay the price

Wave my arms around
Flag one of those taxi's maybe
I saw a girl somewhere somehow
Forever sticks in my mind somehow
I've just got three lines
And a pair of two's
Like a lucky roll of dice that you
You cast

If Music Could Talk!
Which means
Whatever your mind can bring
Like the apple fell off the tree
Pah! Fell right on his head
Yeah many years ago

There was a man who said
I am a shaman
A voodoo shaman
Got in trouble so he's going out
Mixing up and Haiti! Oh!
And the crickets
Buddy Holly said it was
Br' br' yee'

If music could talk you know

I feel kinda lonely
Standing out on the floor
Of Electric Ladyland

'cause this is a good question Samson
Are you partly Arabic?

Chi man! Whatcho all about

I don't want to I can't hope to
Say it all in one go
Occasionally once or twice
A day I feel alive enough to say
Let's hear what the drummer man's
Got to say about
He said is it Errol Flynn's birthday or not?
Sept twelfth until October
If they pack two piece
Colt pair of shoots
We got the shiny grey Mexican suits
I'm just wasting a great big
Corporation and the entire fund
The girders of Wall Street
And the temples of money
And the high priests
Of the expense account
And I'm wasting the whole thing
I come down in Yamaha-ha
They make the best pianos-time to step-up

Writer/s: JOE STRUMMER, MICK JONES, PAUL SIMONON, TOPPER HEADON
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

If Music Could Talk

The backing track to "If Music Could Talk" is in fact another one of the songs on the Sandinista! album: "Shepherd's Delight," which was recorded at Pluto Studios two months previously with producer Mikey Dread. The band decided to revisit the track, and singer Joe Strummer added a stream-of-consciousness set of lyrics about New York city, including a plethora of references to Joe Ely , Errol Flynn, singer Bo Diddley (whom The Clash had toured with in 1979), Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison and Elvis Presley's song "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"

There are also personal references to The Clash themselves, including the Electric Lady studios they had worked, lighting engineer Warren "Stoner" Steadman, and his own "spliffbunker," which was a nest-type contraption Strummer built in whichever studio the band were recording in out of flight cases where he would sit and write songs in peace whilst recording took place elsewhere in the studio.

Production tricks abound on this song, as they do throughout the album. In this case, Joe Strummer double-tracked his vocals, putting one track in the left channel and another in the right to create an all-encompassing sound. Gary Barnacle, session musician and longtime friend of the band, added jazzy saxophone interludes when the song was recorded in Wessex studios in August 1980.

As it's possible to tell from the backing track complexity, this never featured in The Clash's live set, probably because the band just wouldn't be able to do it justice in concert.