Songs: Another True Story

notes / gigs / releases

I took the keys out of my jeans and put them in my shoe
I lay back on my sleeping bag and swiftly thought of you
And as I lay in my bed
A plane flew overhead
Taking you away

A sunny day at Glastonbury as we sat on the grass
Passing round a readymade and starting to laugh
Then you turned up late
I thought you were GRATE
And you didn't mind me

I said "I'll see you later when the next band has been on"
You said "Yeah, i'll meet you there, and please don't be too long"
But I got waylaid
By the time I got backstage
You had been and gone

I got my friends to look for you, we covered the whole site
We searched until the time had past for you to catch your flight
You had to fly away
To the USA
I wish you could have stayed

I took the keys out of my jeans and put them in my shoe
I lay back in my sleeping bag and swiftly thought of you
And as I lay in my bed
A plane flew overhead
Taking you away

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

I haven't listened to this song for YEARS, and sat here with it on now I'm quite touched by it, it's rather NICE, I think. The story behind it is pretty much TRUE, although it didn't happen to me and it didn't happen at Glastonbury, it happened to Tim and it happened at Reading. He told me this story in the pub one night, and the bit about seeing a plane fly overhead really TOUCHED me, hence the song. As with MR RIGHT he is a constant INSPIRATION.

The first version of this song had completely different words and tune, and was performed by me at the last ever Artists Against Success show at The Magazine - this was BEFORE the label, when I set up a night for me (and other people, but mostly ME) to try out some solo material. The idea was that people who were usually in bands, and especially people who usually didn't sing, could get up and try out a few old songs in a quieter way, or new songs, or whatever occurred to them really. The first couple went pretty well, but after a couple of months people stopped coming, including the ARTISTES. For the last one only me and Neil turned up, and I discovered a couple of people who were meant to be there HIDING across the road in The Phoenix. THUS I got VERY DRUNK indeed, so much so that I fell off my chair in the middle of a song, and all memory of the original version of this got WIPED OUT, and I had to start again from scratch.

The second version appeared on my cassette "Home Taping Is Killing Music", which the woman I was going out with at the time sent to a guy in, I think, Norway. He and her both REALLY liked the song, and insisted it should go on the single we were going to put out - actually they said it should have been the A-Side, and when I dug my heels in and said it had to be "Born With The Century" neither were very pleased. I doubted their judgement at the time, but put it on anyway because, well, I used to do that sort of thing, but listening back to it now after all this time I must say I think it's rather nice!

Oh yes, and the reason it's called "Another True Story" is that I wrote it when I was having my GREAT CHANGEOVER to writing songs based on Real Things, so had a LOT of songs that were true stories, and this was another one. Clever, no?