(Do do do do) x 4
Smiling angels on your milk-white shoulders
Scared of Heaven [1] and accusing whispers
Angels always get the worst advice
But they can hire the sharpest lawyers
(Do do do do) x 2
Someone's always telling you how to behave [2]
(Do do do do) x 2
Someone's always telling you how to behave
Boys and girls, come out to play
See Cupid fire his poison arrows
Mickey Mouse grew up a cow [3]
You should hear the things they say about Minnie now [4]
Farewell to all the smiling angels
I have a date with some little devil
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls [5]
I found a bed full of Heaven in this Hell of a world
1.) Heaven is, of course, Heaven, but it's also the name of a well-known nightclub in London that hosts the G-A-Y club night.
2.) This is a line from the article by Steven Wells, which is also featured on this site.
3.) This is a quote from the song "Life on Mars" by David Bowie ("It's on America's tortured brow/That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow). The song also mentions John Lennon.
4.) This line refers to an exchange that ocurred in court during Jason Donovan's libel lawsuit. See the "article" page for more information.
5.) This is a quote from the song "Lola", by the Kinks.
NB: This transcript is incomplete, and names are given only based on what I can hear. If you think any of these names are incorrect, or know one of the missing names, please contact me.
Verse One: Cynthia Payne[1], Gene Vincent[2], Bet Lynch[3], ?, Bernadette Devlin [4] , Mr Brian Epstein [5] , Poly Styrene [6], Brendan Behan [7], Arthur Seaton [8], ?, ?, ?, ?, Bertolt Brecht[9], Yvonne Pawlett [10] , Georgie Best [11], Lenny Bruce[12], Anna Mendelssohn [13], Hilary Creek[15], Malcolm McLaren [14], ?, ?, ? Anaïs Nin [16], John Lennon [17], Mark Chapman[18], Suzy Creamcheese [19], Sirhan Sirhan[20], Laura Palmer[21], Number 6[22], Judas Iscariot[23], Shirley Pitts [24]
We're going to kidnap your children
We're going to brainwash your children
And sell them to the devil
Bill Drummond, Jimmy Cauty[25], Johnny Cash [26], George Oghani[27], Derek Jarman [28], Billy Casper [29], ?, Frances Farmer[30], Harry Roberts[31], Bob and Terry[32], Shirley Valentine,[33] Mark Perry[34], Sheila Grant[35], ?, Mark Clark [36], R.P McMurphy[37], Klinger[38], ?, Jimmy Reed[39], Chuck D[40], Valerie Solanas[41], Clara Bow[42], Minnie the Minx[43], Nestor Makhno[44], Bobby Sands[45], Ari Up[46], Eddie Yeats[47], Robert Mapplethorpe[48], ?, Simone de Beauvoir[49], Jello Biafra[50], ?
Fletcher, Godber[51], Salome[52], Delilah[53], Oscar Wilde[54], Diamanda Galas[55], ?, Dennis the Menace[56], Harry Goldthorpe[57], Mairéad Farrell[57], Cynthia Plaster Caster[58], Tank Girl[59], Viv Nicholson[60], ? [61], Michael Clark[62], Lee Miller[63], Malcolm X[63], ?, Johnny Rotten[64], ?, Vivienne Westwood[65], Lydia Lunch[66], Jesse Owens[67], Roddy Marsh[68], Susie Bright[69], Josephine Baker[70], Mandy Rice Davies[71], Lucifer[72], Cicciolina[73], ?, Bart Simpson[74], Leslie Woods[75]
Demons, fags, hardcore slags, class war mad dog pervert shags, looters, stealers, lifters, rioters, scumbag rebel prizeless fighters, banged-up mashed-up needy whores, ? big sissies, evil-doers, dirty, sleazy, sexy saviours, funky funky misbehavers.
1.) Professional dominatrix and failed political candidate (for the "Payne and Pleasure Party"). ↩
2.) Early Rock and roll musician.
↩3.) Character in Coronation Street , a British Soap Opera set in Manchester.↩
4.) Northern Irish politician and activist. A socialist, a republican and an opponent of racism. Chumbawamba previously expressed their admiration for her on their album Slap! ↩
5.) Businessman and manager of the Beatles. Gay. When the Beatles each received an honour from the British government, becoming members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (aka receiving an MBE), George Harrison joked that MBE stood for "Mr. Brian Epstein". ↩
6.) British punk musician, lead singer and lyricist of the band X Ray Spex. ↩
7.) Irish author, playwright, songwriter, and republican. Served time in British youth detention as a teenager for his involvement in the IRA. Bisexual, according to Ulick O'Connor's biography Brendan Behan . Possibly the first person to ever say "fuck" on British TV. ↩
8.) Main character of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe, later adapted into a film. A juvenile delinquent who refuses to let his athletic talent be exploited by anyone else. ↩
9.) German Communist, playwright, poet and author. Famous for his refusal to present plays in a "natural" style, instead using obviously artificial elements (such as stage effects or songs) to shock the audience out of their immersion in the play.↩
10.) Former keyboard player for Manchester band The Fall.↩
11.) Northern Irish footballer of great reknown from the 1960s onwards. Almost as famous for his personal life and alcoholism as for his playing ability.↩
12.) American standup comedian who was repeatedly convicted of obscenity offences due to the content of his stage act. Once fraudulently earned several thousand dollars by pretending to be a priest fundraising for a leper colony. Chumbawamba previously paid homage to him with the song Bigmouth Strikes Again from the album Shhh
↩13.) Poet. Alleged member of the "Angry Brigade", an anarchist-communist terrorist group which conducted a deliberately non-fatal bombing campaign across Britain in the early 1970s. ↩
14.) A member of the Angry Brigade who served a prison term on conspiracy charges. Current whereabouts unknown.↩
15.) Businessman, musician and manager of the Sex Pistols.↩
16.) French author best known for her diaries and her erotic writing.↩
17.) Singer, musician, lyricist, author and member of the Beatles. Admitted to being a domestic abuser during his first marriage. Moved to New York after the Beatles split and became an advocate for left-wing politics and peace, leading to the United States government attempting to deport him. ↩
18.) Assassinated John Lennon in 1980. ↩
19.) A name and identity invented by musician Frank Zappa and used by many different wome.↩
20.) Assassin of Robert Kennedy, a 1968 candidate for the Democratic presidential primary. Still in prison.↩
21.) Fictional high-schooler whose death provided the central mystery in the television program Twin Peaks .↩
22.) Protagonist 1960s TV drama The Prisoner . Only ever referred to onscreen as "Number Six", the character was a retired spy who had been abducted and imprisoned in "The Village" (a prison in disguise full of former spies) for his refusal to explain why he had resigned. The series revolved around Number Six's resistance to the manipulations of his jailers and his attempts to escape. ↩
23.) The man who betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Identified Jesus to the Romans who wanted to execute him in exchange for 30 pieces of silver, ensuring Christ's martyrdom and the salvation of humanity. ↩
24.) An incredibly successful British shoplifter who sustained herself and her family through theft for much of her life, without often attracting attention from the law. A contemporary of the Kray Twins. ↩
25.) Drummond and Cauty are musical collaborators who achieved financial and critical success through deliberate manipulation of the pop charts. After releasing a mixtape full of unclearable samples as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and achieving a calculated number one UK hit with novelty song "Doctorin' the Tardis", Drummond and Cauty formed The KLF and released a string of hit singles. They announced their retirement from the music industry on-stage at the Brit awards. Soon after, they made a film of themselves burning a million pounds of their earnings.↩
26.) The man in black who spoke in song for the poor, disregarded and oppressed. Although generally conservative in his attitudes, he flatly refused to perform the songs "Okie from Muskogee" and "Welfare Cadillac" for Richard Nixon during a performance at the Whie House, substituting two of his own songs (Ballad of Ira Hayes and What Is Truth) which expressed a desire for social change in America. ↩
27.) A talented footballer who at one point played for Burnley FC, the local football team of several of Chumbawamba's members.↩
28.) Set designer, artist, film director, author, gardener and AIDS activist. Beatified as Saint Derek of Dungeness by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an order of queer nuns. Commemorated elsewhere by Chumbawamba with the song Derek Jarman's Garden .↩
29.) The protagonist of the novel A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines and its film adaptation, Kes . Casper is a teenage boy from Yorkshire who finds purpose in raising and caring for a kestrel. ↩
30.) An actress who spent time in psychiatric asylums due to mental illness, and was allegedly subject to psychiatric abuse. A dedicated free-thinker who wrote a school essay about her atheism and visited Russia in the 1930s against the wishes of her parents. ↩
31.) Unpleasant career criminal who gained infamy by shooting three policeman dead, inspiring the football hooligan chant "Harry Roberts is our friend". Was for some time Britain's longest serving prisoner. Chumbawamba previously made reference to Harry Roberts in the song Happiness is Just A Chant Away from their album Shhh . ↩
32.) The protagonists of the British sitcoms The Likely Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? . Disaffected working-class northerners who are determined to enjoy life. ↩
33.) The main character in the film of the same name; a disaffected housewife who abandons her responsibilities to live in Greece, escaping the boredom and dysfunction of her life in Britain. ↩
34.) Co-creator of the early UK punk fanzine "Sniffin' Glue". Musician in his own right with the band Alternative TV . An aquaintance of, possibly a friend of, Steven "Seething" Wells. ↩
35.) Fitional character from the UK soap opera Brookside . ↩
36.) Perhaps referring to a Black Panther of that name, who was slain by police during a raid on the apartment of Fred Hampton, a prominent member of the Black Panther Party in Chicago. ↩
37.) The protagonist of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", both the book and the movie. A psychiatric patient who resists the bullying and cruelty of the doctors and nurses who treat him. ↩
38.) Supporting character in the American sitcom M*A*S*H . The series was set in a dysfunctional US army medical camp, during the Korean War. Klinger (a clerk) persistently attempted to get discharged from the army, mostly by wearing women's clothing.↩
39.) Presumable the american blues singer of the same name.↩
40.) Prominent member of the militant rap group Public Enemy. Musically and politically daring. ↩
41.) Lesbian author and playwright. Former sex worker. Best known for the authorship of the SCUM Manifesto (SCUM stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men), and for her attempt on the life of American artist Andy Warhol, who she shot and wounded because he had dismissed her work and (she thought) mistreated and exploited her. ↩
42.) American film actress of the Silent Era. Something of a sex symbol, her film roles helped to define the "flapper" femininity of the 1920s - independent, sexually liberated and a little bit androgynous. ↩
43.) British Comic book character from The Beano . The distaff counterpart to the Beano's most popular character, Dennis The Menace, Minnie is a troublemaker with no respect for adults or authority. Like Dennis, she always wears a red and black jumper and usually carries a catapult. ↩
44.) Ukrainian Anarchist, warlord and auto-didact who lead Ukrainian peasants against the White Army during the Russian Civil War. His attempts to maintain an autonomous region (known as "Makhnovia") failed. Allegedly the inventor of the tachanka, a horse-drawn carriage with a big machine gun at the back. ↩
45.) Irish Republican who was radicalised by the oppression he experienced as a Catholic in Northern Ireland. Best remembered for his part in the hunger strike which lead to his death. At the end of the 1970s, Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland had lost the right to special treatment, which they demanded because they saw themselves as political prisoners, not criminals. In 1981, when Bobby Sands and other members of the IRA went on hunger strike, the Thatcher government refused to accept their demands. 10 of the 23 hunger strikers died, including Bobby Sands: they never received their status as political prisoners. Bobby Sands was elected as an MP while on hunger strike. ↩
46.) Lead singer of The Slits, a mostly-girl punk band that started in the late 70s. The Slits played ferociously and out of tune, until Ari's passion for reggae began to bleed into their music. A non-conformist, right or wrong, whose punk feminism and white rastafarianism have their merits and demerits. ↩
47.) Character from Coronation Street, a soap opera set in Manchester. ↩
48.) American photographer famous for his portraits of musicians and his sexually provocative photographs. A former lover of Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe was gay and many of his photographs concerned gay and bdsm subcultures. Has been accused of racism due to his portraits of black men. Mapplethorpe was a divisive and controversial figure in his own lifetime and has continued to be after death. Exhibitions of his work have been challenged and the merit of his art questioned, often because of its sexual explicitness. Mapplethorpe died from the complications of Aids in 1989. ↩
49.) French feminist author famous for her book "The Second Sex", an analysis of and challege to the subjugation of women in Europe and around the world. ↩
50.) American musician who first became famous as the lead singer of Dead Kennedys, a San Francisco punk band. Dead Kennedys sounded like no other punk band, in part because Jello sounded like no other punk singer did and performed in ways no other punk singer did. A friend and collaborator of Chumbawamba's, who served as his backing band for the song "Homeless Hotel" during an American tour of theirs in the 80s. After barely escaping an obscenity trial and the breakup of the Dead Kennedys, Biafra has continued to write and perform music along with spoken word, acting and running the alternative tentacles record label.↩
51.) The two main characters from the UK sitcom "Porridge", which was set in a prison. Porridge was described by former prisoner Erwin James as the most authentic depiction ever of the true relationship between prisoners and prison officers, because of its depiction of the hard-fought "small victories" that prisoners tried to win over the prison system. ↩
52.) A character from the Bible. A dancer in the court of King Herod who, after performing a particularly alluring dance known as the "dance of the seven veils", was offered any reward from the King. She asked for the head of Saint John the Baptist on a plate. THe subject of a play by Oscar Wilde. ↩
53.) The woman who betrayed Biblical hero Samson by seducing him, learning the secret of his great strength (his hair) and cutting it off. ↩
54.) An Irish playwright, poet and author who became a social outcast and convicted criminal due to his trial for gross indecency and sodomy. Equally famous for his work as for his personal life and persecution, and equally famous for his witty one-liners as for his plays, essays and novels. He died in 1900 as an exile in Paris.
55.) An American musician and singer also known for her Aids activism. Often explores religious themes in her work. A member of ACT UP, she took part in their St. Patrick's Cathedral action, disrupting a mass there to protest the Catholic Church's attitude to gay people, Aids and the use of contraception for safer sex. ↩