Telephone Song

The Song

I can still remember when I was really young and I joined my first group and I finally got that feeling that I’d been waiting for all my life. After a kind of loner, daydream filled youth, suddenly I was in a band of brothers and the world was there for the taking. That kind of bond is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before or since. Well, you grow up I suppose.
One day, really early on, whilst heading to a rehearsal studio in Berkeley Street, we were caught in a torrential downpour and ended up running in a pack, laughing the whole time, being “chased by the rain like A Hard Day’s Night,” with not even a girl in sight. I remember the feelings of joy and camaraderie. It was Heaven.

The Players

Alex Neilson drums
Bob Kildea bass vocals percussion
Bill Wells piano
Mick Cooke French horn
Rosie Townhill Cello
Ysla Robertson violin
Gillian Risi violin
Stevie guitar vocal

The Writers

Stevie Jackson

The Words

Money and style and friends and work
Music and sex and art and scene
Boys and girls and drugs and dreams
That’s you girl
There’s a lot to be said for a telephone line
I could call you up I could make it so fine
But guilt and fear and jealousy
That’s me girl (ho, ho, ho)

I carved her number on my wall
It’s not as if I need someone
It’s not as if I need someone

It’s funny she didn’t like my shirt
So she told me, then she kissed me
Like I’d never seen a flirt
I had not been courting, not for a while
You’d have never have known it
Not by her smile
Now the coins they’re burning a hole in my pocket
Thoughts of her, they’re burning a whole in my head
I could reach for the ‘phone, I could flick it wide open
I could scroll down some number
I could wish I was dead

I carved her number on my wall
It’s not as if I need someone
It’s not as if I need someone
If I treated her like she’s number one
It’s not what I was thinking of
It’s not what I was thinking of

With an action I could be interrupting her time
If I pickup the phone and get her on the line
Is she making some coffee, washing her dishes
Playing her records, dreaming her wishes
Now I’m running with my group, I’m feeling alright
Being chased by the rain like ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
I pass by the ‘phone I wonder if she’s home
She’s so cool, gotta have her, think I’ll leave her alone