Nick’s Song
Was your uncle really Marlon Brando?
Or have rumours started since you went away?
Is it true you had a gorgeous typist
Every day?
Did you really love a true-blue Tory
Who was never in his office when you called?
And what’s this I hear about your hair-do?
I just can’t believe a hairdresser is bald.
Oh Nick, all those stories – are they sure that it was you
They caught imitating John Travolta in the loo?
Now they say you started working in production
But you quickly graduated out of it
For you know they always grow the sweetest roses
Out of shit.
Well, promotion brought you more than just an office,
The accounts they gave you show you were a hit.
Things like AMF with Fisons and Alcoa –
Yes, I guess they must have loved you quite a bit.
Oh but Nick, all those stories – I’m sure that it’s not right
You were once caught sniffing Dayglo in the night.
And I hear you used to go out every lunchtime
For a jog around the park to keep you spry.
And I hear you used to shower in Creative
With some guy.
Now I wouldn’t perjure you or Trevor Fleetwood,
We must all enjoy ourselves in our own way.
But now that you’ve both gone it looks suspicious –
Wasn’t it safer sinking fifty pints a day?
But Nick, all those stories – you go with every fondest wish.
Could you answer me one simple question – were those shower curtains really made by Swish?
(modulate)
Well, you’re gone and all I hear’s ‘Good riddance.
Camiletti, you have been a perfect pri-brick.
All the secretaries here are weary
Of your dick-tatorship.’
Though I couldn’t say I ever really knew you,
There is nothing I could put my finger on,
But I’m sure that even though your chair is empty
The depression that you left will linger on.
Oh Nick, all those stories – I wonder if they’re true?
On the other hand, since you’ve gone now – who more suitable to pin them on than you?
1979
(And they were really getting their money’s worth with this – metaphorically speaking of course. The final verse introduces what I believe is known in musical circles as a modulation, that is, shifting the key up a notch, in this instance from C to D. In my terms this simply meant I started playing the same chord shapes two frets further up the fingerboard. It involves the occasional bar chord, wherein you have to use your whole index finger to press down all six strings simultaneously, imposing huge strain on the muscle at the base of the thumb, which is why I don’t like to go there unless I have to. In this case the thing was doubly complex because I was already doing my favourite bass-line walk-down which I’d found I could sort of pull off in the key of D as well, and I daresay if I’d thought of it at the time, I would have added a further potential bar chord on the -tatorship line. But I don’t repine. It was a pearls before swine job, and I got more satisfaction out of it than I expected to. They, in turn, got the best of me for nothing, though by then it was too late.)
PS
I must say, I’m really rather pleased with this one. I don’t expect it to mean anything to anybody but the parties involved, but in terms of pure invention and making the most of a little, you can take my word that I did a bang-up job under the circumstances.
I was working in a London advertising agency, my first proper job after university, and hating every dull, boring, pointless, rotten minute of it. It soon became clear that account management was not for me and if I didn’t resign soon, they would sack me. But before either of those things could happen, there was a leaving do for some guy called Nick Camiletti (not his real name, but the same metre) and someone had the bright idea of asking me to write a waspish little going-away song for his leaving do. They had remembered my Leonardo performance at the Christmas bash. Our office building, which was in one of the swankiest parts of the capital, had an entire floor filled with overpaid, supercilious, trainer-wearing young louts who didn’t have a clue how to do it, so they had to come to me, the depressed, skint and hag-ridden Oxford graduate, who didn’t want to be there any more than they wanted to have me, so naturally it – (No, come on, long time ago now, water under the bridge, get a grip.)
So I decided to show them what they would be missing.
I didn’t know the beneficiary in question, so one of his friends briefed me on his character and doings to give me material. All of it is in the song. And all of it evoked knowing peals of ribald laughter on the night, so the friend must have got him pretty bang to rights. Jumped up bleeder, by all accounts, full of himself. Typical advertising sort – (Now, what have I just said?)
Did I get offered a job as a copy writer on the strength of this? Did they reconsider my role in the firm and discuss with me the possibility of utilising my talents elsewhere, as a kind of roving creative know-it-all? Did they even pay me anything for my effort? It was a fucking advertising agency. What do you think?
On the other hand, I suppose it was my own fault for being such a pushover. If I have a fault – or at least a fault I’m prepared to own up to in public – it is that I am too easily flattered and a sucker for blandishments. But I am an on-going project and every day is another chance to get better. (Sounds like the sort of slogan this crappy ad agency would have come up with.)