The Plumbers
When we were young we looked just like two peas in a pod,
And we grew up very close.
He would wear my nicest clothes.
It made me smile.
We would comb our hair inside our wendy house
When we shared a nursery.
In a child’s embrace,
I’d kiss that pretty face.
It was just like kissing me.
Every brotherly peck on that sisterly neck was fine.
Every garment he shed on that nursery bed was mine.
Though we relive with tears those incestuous years
During concerts we don’t cry because by ten
It’s yesterday again.
Though we’re rich and famous we remember still
Music lessons in the High
Where beneath the desks we’d try
The rhythm method.
Now we’ve our fans to think about and so for them
We remain both pure and neat.
It’s not Gibbs S.R., just very good P.R.
That keeps us so sickly sweet.
Shing-a-ling-a-ling
Ding-a-ling-a-ling
Doo wop doo wop bang bang.
It might shock you we don’t feel ashamed at all,
But to be fair why should we?
Just like Donny and Marie we keep it quiet.
If we weren’t twins I’d love my brother legally
But I never can,
Cos like the Ku Klux Klan
We’re both in to kinky sects.
Every song that I sigh is a way to say I love you.
Every chord that I play, every note helps me say me too.
All these limp melodies about the birds and the bees
Are a way of fooling you, because in truth
Twin love is not quite couth.
But then you see, the one I really love is me.
1979
PS
I’ve never had anything but the utmost respect for The Carpenters. Yes, I could have done without the bang-thump inanities of ‘Top of the World’, and that one about the postman, but ‘Goodbye to Love’ and ‘Close To You’ are solid gold masterpieces for the ages. Karen’s voice was as magical as any pop singer of the last fifty years, and Richard was a top-class arranger. So what do I do? Celebrate them with a song about incest. Only there was an Edinburgh show to write for and we needed content. All I’m saying is, this one probably needs to be taken with a gigantic pinch of salt.
No chords with this as it’s pretty obvious what it was based on, and the only reason I didn’t follow the original any more closely was purely down to my musical ineptitude. If I knew the real chords they were playing I would probably have stuck even more closely to them than I actually did. On the other hand, if Richard had set this in the remote key of Fb diminished or something, it’s more than likely I would have merely utilised my capo to crank it up to my usual snug key of C major, wherever that happened to be on the fingerboard, like everything else I ever wrote myself.
I sang this as a duet with Jane E, so immediately the illusion was flawed (the male half of the duo wasn’t sitting at a piano), but maybe that helped too in that the visuals slightly skewed the otherwise actionably slanderous import of the lyric. These days such a question might not even arise, as the content may be too questionable for me to even attempt. But what’s done is done, we got a few laughs, and the world has moved on. And The Carpenters at their best remain unbeatable.
(Speaking of flawed illusions, I had the notion early on for another song fragment that might have made a virtue of my limited skills. The spotlight would find me sitting on a stool with my guitar. Flashy introduction. I sing: “Here I am, sitting at my piano…” Awkward moment of realisation. Blackout. Might have worked.)