Janus
Here we are alone at last together.
Sure took quite a time.
Fingers on my face as soft as any feather…
Hope we work out fine.
There’s the moon, looking quite terrific.
See her how she shines,
Drowning in a dark as deep as the Pacific…
Hope we work out fine.
And all the wise men say that love was made for giving.
I wouldn’t dare to give you mine.
It wasn’t you who said that life was meant for living…
Hope we work out fine.
Morning creeps like gold across the ceiling,
Seeping through the blind.
Watch you rise and cry and sigh because you’re leaving…
Knew you’d work out fine.
Knew you’d work out fine.
Knew you’d work out fine.
1978
(The Dmaj7 chord in the third line is a stopgap, as I think there is a better chord to play there, but I simply don’t know what it’s called. It’s like the fingering for D major only with Ab instead of the A natural. Anybody?)
PS
This doesn’t sound like me at all, and I can’t say I like the sound of this person much either. But you can’t be cosy all the time.
I mean, it’s hardly as if sex was so easy to come by at university that one could afford to be blasé about it when it finally arrived. So I don’t really know what brought this on. It’s certainly not from life. I think I may simply have been experimenting with that damned major 7th chord again and needed some lyrics to justify it. Here, weirdly, the major 7ths make the whole thing sound rather cynical and calculating. Is that possible? Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
The change of tense in the final line is meant to be the clincher. The protagonist has strung the lover along and now once they have left, they have put them from their mind. (Too many ‘theys’. Damn this modern political correctness. It probably is a man telling the girl not to expect too much of him isn’t it? It’s usually that way round. Or at least it was when I were a lad. And Janus was a male god, the one with the two faces, so that fits too. Not that I could ever imagine offering anything other than slobbering canine servitude to any girl who would have had the stupendous generosity to invite me in under her duvet.)
The line about the Pacific is a deliberate steal and/or homage to Roger McGough. I remembered his line There’s the moon trying to look romantic, and that’s what I put in the song to begin with, rhyming it with Atlantic, only someone recognised it and told me to my face I couldn’t do that. And on balance I’m grateful they called me on it, because of course what joy is there to be had from taking credit for somebody else’s work? Any artist worthy of the name should want to make sure they can take any plaudits they get with a clear conscience (but see ‘Greenhorn’ , the ‘Alice’ sequence et al). So I simply chose the other ocean and hung a different rhyme on it: same thought, different part of the world. I still think Mr McGough’s was better.