On a lone and windy hilltop beneath a roof of tin
In a little wallpapered bedroom I done my growin'.
'Twas there I dreamt my dreams, I hung my jeans
And wandered through my puberty as all do.
My mother was a tight nut bound up with false guilt
Strapped up in her fearing wall she had built.
The independent girl in a dark and cruel world
She'd lost the way to say, "OK, now lay back".
We disagreed on most things, I shouted peace and love
The family is mankind, the symbol of the dove.
She only saw the surface of things before her face
But I was young and argued on for hours.
My father he liked poetry, a scholar he might have made.
Had nothing, born a poor boy barefoot and underpaid
So the man worked with his hands up and down the land,
His dreams forgot he thought that I must follow.
With his marks as worker's wisdom he'd read a thing or two
He once had been a Mason but he never followed through.
Always kind and thoughtful, smelling of mushy oil
And he read me poetry of visionaries.
I flunk my way to college, a looser kind of school
But we bobbed and played time arty, feeling cool
Just to live an artists diggin' the ravin' scene
Reading Kerouac and Ginsberg well deuced.
I was not academic, Art and English neat,
The history of mankind I liked that a bit.
And what was I to do ? The choices they were few,
I done right disgrace to the working classes
I done right disgrace to the working classes
I done right disgrace to the working classes
I done right disgrace to the working classes
