Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds[1]
Lyrics
There's indifference on the wind
But a faint gust of hope
At a club nobody goes to
With a musty velvet rope
Guys in Motorhead jackets[2]
Who knew him way back when
Haven't raised a drink in years
But now meet up again
To remember how it was when they all thought they'd move away
Ridin' Lotus Sevens[3]
through the London streets one day
Nobody ever gets away
Even the best of us come back someday
To the unmarked rooms where the dry dust breeds
Andrew Eldritch is moving back to Leeds[4]
There's a rusted fog machine[5]
In a concrete storage space
Letter-number combinations
With no meaning on its face
They won't make these anymore
It's a wooden coach-and-four[6]
No one will even steal it if you leave it by the door
With no sign to mark its going, no tombstone for its grave
There will be goodbyes by dozens, so practice being brave
No one anticipates the rush
The breezy feeling of the faceless crush
At the end of things where the selvage bleeds[7]
Andrew Eldritch is moving back to Leeds
They don't throw him a parade
He just comes in on a train
One suitcase in his hand
And an old army backpack
From the second World War
From a Leipzig second-hand store[8]
Pick the keys up from the agent
Everything's been taken care of
No big changes in the roadways
Since you left, that I'm aware of
A few old buildings gone to dust
And some new ones in the way
They'll look just like the old ones when the winds have had their say
See the children bound for London[9]
You'll all be back too
Everybody tests the membrane
But no one pushes through
Come on boys, that'll be enough
You'd think your old friends wouldn't play so tough
Like a basket by the Nile hiding down among the reeds[10]
Andrew Eldritch is moving back to Leeds
Banter
- This is a song about a band I was really into when I was about 17 or 18. I saw them twice, at the Palace in Long Beach, no, the Palace was Hollywood, Fender's was in Long Beach. And you know what? You can turn the fog machine back on. [Wurster enthusiastically bass drums] To the boys who love them some fog machine. (2017-06-01 The Fillmore)
- I would say that I’ve been waiting to play this song here since I wrote it, but it’s older than that because it was a song title in a notebook before it was anything else. And it sat there looking at me, going, ‘Make that one good.’ You know, there’s a bunch of song titles like They Took Charlie’s Fish, that’s been sitting in the same notebook forever and will probably never be written. It’s about how my friend Charlie likes tinned fish and I was in Norway, so I got him a bunch of tinned fish and then at customs, they wouldn’t let me bring them in. That’s as far as that song’s ever going to get. Possum on the Porch, probably going to the same place as that one; though I have higher hopes for Possum on the Porch. This one sat for a long time and I went to the beach with my family and miraculously, for an hour, the baby was asleep. I had a guitar with me because I’m incapable of not working and I had a little Johnny Cash thing going. I wrote a verse and went, 'I know what song that is.’ And then, a chorus was there. And then the baby woke up and the baby stayed awake for another six or seven months. I didn’t get back to the song for a long time. By the time I got back to the song, the baby had taken- was no longer a baby, although he will always be the baby to me. Well it’s true. And I couldn’t play the guitar around him anymore because he’d then want to hear his songs, which are mainly by Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Grateful Dead and Webb Pierce and guys like that. And the Beatles, I’ve got to confess. You may have a Beatles allergy but when you have children, then you will play them through Beatles songs. You accept your sad fate as the guy with the acoustic guitar playing Beatles tunes. But anyway, I was sitting at the piano and he came in and I said, 'You can hear the demo. You ready to demo of this jam?’ And he says, 'I’m ready to demo this jam.’ This is a song about a guy who is from here, he went to university here; his name is Andrew Eldritch and he used to talk up Leeds wherever he went. They would say, 'Where do you like it?’ And he’d go, 'I like it at home in Leeds and I like it in Detroit.’ This song imagines him coming home after a while. (2017-10-15)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. The first single from the album; Andrew Eldritch was the main singer of Sisters of Mercy, a popular goth band referenced multiple times in the album. The Mountain Goats twice covered the song “Lucretia, My Reflection” on the Goths tour and in my humble opinion, it rules. ↩
2. Motorhead was a band from the UK that formed in 1975 and was at the forefront of metal in the 80s. ↩
3. A particular type of lightweight sports car with two seats, produced between 1957-72. I went for a ride in one once, restored by my dad’s mate, and thought I was going to die. At least, I think it was a Lotus Seven, I was pretty busy trying not to hurl.↩
4. Eldritch moved back to Leeds from Oxford and proceeded to form Sisters of Mercy, which proceeded to be awesome, as previously discussed. ↩
5. Bring back fog machines!!↩
6. A coach drawn by four horses; i.e. obsolete. ↩
7. Also spelled “selvedge”; the heavier edge of a fabric that is specially finished in order to keep it from unraveling. ↩
8. Leipzig, Germany, formerly East Germany, home to many goth bands and goth related festivals. It was bombed heavily early in World War II by the Allies. ↩
9. A reference to the Smiths “London”.↩
10. See Exodus 2:3 - “But when she could hide him [Moses] no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.” ↩