The song was inspired by the TV series The Prisoner featuring Patrick McGoohan. It was one of few things worth watching at the time (Monty Python and Marty Feldman being another two).
And the bankers and tycoons and hoarders of money and art
Full up with baubles and bibles and full of no heart
Who travel first class on a pleasure excursion to fame
Are the eyes that are guiding society’s ludicrous aim
And those are still the self-obsessed, mindless cretins who are setting the direction. They run the planet for profit. They control the media, buy off the politicians, set the wars, strip the rainforests, and put out the tripe and propaganda – so they can exploit it.
They use religion when they need to, buy their status symbol cars and yachts and do not give a fuck about anybody or anything – just as long as they can have everything they want.
And the village is making its Sunday collection in church
The church wobbles ‘twixt hell and heaven’s crumbling perch
Unnoticed the money box loudly endorses the shame
As the world that Christ fought is supported by using his name
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my stupid poetry burbling
Even the idealistic spiritual leaders are hypocritically used and deployed to serve the game. The very things they stood against are put forward in their name as the madmen select the texts.
In the face of the enormity of the collusion every protest ends up burbling in the background.
And the pin-striped sardine-cum-magician is packed in his train
Censoring all of the censorship filling his brain
He glares through his armour-plate vision and says “Hmm, insane”
The prisoner is taking his shoes off to walk in the rain
And we are packed off to work in our conforming uniforms, with our conforming minds, safe within our ruts and disdainful of anyone who doesn’t follow the prescribed pattern that we have been brainwashed into.
And the luminous green prima donna is sniffing the sky
She daren’t tread the earth that she’s smelling her birth was too high
Her bank balance castle is built on opinion and fear
Which is all she allows within three hundred miles of her ear
And the wealthy stick their noses in the air and deplore the stinking masses, foreigners and life in general. Nature appalls them – it is too dirty, vulgar and smelly. They have servants to deal with all that vile business.
And I’ve seen all your pedestal values your good and your bad
If you really believe them your passing is going to be hard
And I’ve thought through our thought and I know that its blind silly season
Occurs when our reasoning is trying to fathom a reason
And if you really know it’s all a joke but you’re just putting me on
Well it’s sure a good act that you’ve got ‘cos you never let on
But if all of that supersale overkill world is for real
Well there’s nowhere to go kid so you might as well start to freewheel
Well I’d looked at the values I was being handed – play the game, get a good job, earn the cash, fit in, shut up, look the part, get as high as you can get, stab, claw, lie and cheat – but get to the top.
It was a charade, a joke and an empty promise. I rejected it completely. As far as I was concerned they could keep their mansions, masons and secret handshakes. I wanted something more exciting and genuine and less mean, nasty and destructive.
I wanted to think for myself and not be part of that capitalist dream of consumption at all costs. In my opinion it was immoral, unethical and unsustainable.
I’d read Kerouac’s alternative and I wanted that bohemian dream.
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing there burbling
It might be pointless and absurd, the rebellion of youth, but it was what I craved. I wanted to drop out of that overkill world.