LYRICS // Taxi For Alice (1996)

‘Taxi For Alice’ was probably the first set of lyrics I wrote that I was actually happy with, after trying to write something satisfactory for about 9 years. It’s another one of those attempts at wordplay and a stab at writing ‘Dylanesque’ lyrics.

The song kind of came together from scraps that had been hanging around for ages. The title came to me in a pub in Brighton. A cabbie walked in and shouted across a busy bar – ‘Taxi for Alice!’. Lewis Carroll‘s fictional rabbit-following heroine immediately came to mind and the song almost wrote itself from there. ‘Barbed Wire Fantasy’ was the brief name of my first band at college, which later morphed into ‘Boxed Prophet’ (a kind of allusion to messianically-treated rock stars who are too gloriously fucked up to lead anyone, let alone set good examples). There’s another religious joke in there too, with the pun about a ‘Turin sample’ (think Turin Shroud/urine sample).

I was always quite pleased with the first two lines of the third verse, about ‘one in each crowd’ and shaking foundations. Most people, particularly when in a group, are only too happy to follow rather than lead. For those that do want to take a lead in certains positions or issues, often it’s easier to do so when starting from the ‘underground’. For example, the Green Movement were dismissed in the 70’s as hopeless hippies. In 2006, with factors such as Al Gore‘s ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘ and British economist Sir Nicholas Stern’s review of the longer term financial implications of radical climate change, environmentalism could be said to have fully hit mainstream consciousnesses.

The song was recorded with The Zamora and can be downloaded here.

Photo of Merlin, Steve and Dom of The Zamora by Dan Paton.

Taxi For Alice

There’s a taxi for Alice stopped at the end of the road.
I’m sorry for sneezing, but I think I’m getting a cold.
She rode her motorbike right through my room,
Leaving me wrapped in a barbed wire fantasy.
I’d write you a letter, but my typewriter’s been sold.

There’s a frightened boxed prophet shouting to me to slow down.
I thought he had the answers until my questions left town.
My doctor thinks that he’s omnipotent,
I gave a Turin sample and off I went,
And though I’ve tried for days, I can’t get the gravy brown.

Whenever you’ve tried to find your way in
You always ask where the latch is.
Whenever I’ve tried to raise your smile,
You never give me the matches

There’s always one in each crowd who won’t accept limitations.
You’ve got to go underground if you want to shake the foundations.
I’ve seen you sniffing newly polished floors,
And exaggerating the minor details.
I’m not sure you’re ready for my new creations.

There’s a taxi for Alice stopped at the end of the road.
There’s a taxi for Alice stopped at the end of the road.
There’s a taxi for Alice stopped.