Love Chronicles

Love Chronicles                             by Al Stewart   Part I  ---------   I can remember the first girl that I did love   It was Stephanie        In kindergarten arithmetic classes she used to   Sit next to me      I’d pass her sticky sweets under the table   Where the teacher couldn’t see      Although she wouldn’t remember me now Sometimes I wonder where she can be.                             I can remember the first girl I kissed it was   Christine when I was ten.   I’d been told we were moving away   I thought I’d never see her again      Oh don’t forget me   I’ll be back when they let me   Before you learn how to lie when you’re leaving   Love is so much easier then                             And at school would you believe three hundred boys   And no girls at all   But you’re a fool if you should leave   Just think of the joys of rugby football   And prep in the morning and Brylcream and acne   And cross-country running to kill evil thoughts   I’m surprised that I survived   I ran ten thousand miles with my back to the wall.                      I can remember the first girl that I made love to   It was in a park   In the lower pleasure gardens in Bournemouth   In summer just after dark   My mind was reeling.  Oh what a feeling.   I missed the bus and walked twelve miles home   And it really didn’t seem far.                     And all through my seventeenth summer   Running together from crowds and ties   Taking our clothes off and feeling each other   With fingers and senses and mouths and eyes   Incurring the glances of old disapproval   From elderly local inhabitant’s eyes   Oh time time we hardly even knew you   You didn’t touch us with your lies.      In the halcyon days of my late adolescence   My goal seemed clearly in sight     Playing electric guitar with a beat group   We set the ballrooms alight   Camping it up for the dyed blonde receptionists   Who told us we were al-ri-yi-yight   On an ego trip for a teenage superstar                                 On thirty shillings a night.                     And so it fell that I came up to London   To look for fortune and fame   Starry eyed in my seaside successes   And much too sure of the game.   First girl I met there   I thought I’d get there   But the first girl was nearly the last girl   She left my eyes in the drain.     Part II   (slower)  ---------   She sat on my floor in the dead of the night   Rolling a joint and looking round for a light   Her clothes were so black and her face was so white   How could I know what was right?   And I sat all huddled upon my bed   Watching her in my innocence   And it was no sense at all but too much sense   That took me to the bridge of impotence.            Oh Artaud’s anthology lay spread on the floor   And the thoughts that she gave me I’d not met before   And stranded half hypnotised I watched her in awe   Of everything that she stood for.   And I wanted more than anything to be like her with every sense   But it was no sense at all but too much sense   That took me to the bridge of impotence.   She came over to me and kissed me in play   Taking my hands between her legs as she lay   And she looked in my eyes but I turned them away   Finding no words fit to say.   And I hated myself but could not move   Shattered in my confidence   But it was no sense at all but too much sense   That took me to the bridge of impotence.   Now the stare of the lightbulb tore holes in my brain   As she got up in silence that hung like a stain   And I wanted to speak or call out her name   But how could I begin to explain?   And my prosecuting room still holds a strand of her hair   In evidence   But it was no sense at all but too much sense   That took me to the bridge of impotence.   Oh I still think about her when the night fills with rain   And speaks with its voices uneasy and vain   And I think were I maybe to find her again   Oh I’d probably see her more plain.   And I should have known she was just like me   It was after all only commonsense   But it was no sense at all but too much sense   That took me to the bridge of impotence... Segue to part 3.        The chords for each verse are the same.         Part III      (faster tempo 1)  ----------       (repeat)   At first I didn’t go out much at all   I just stayed home in my chains.      Picking over the threads of my confidence   And searching for the remains.   And when I couldn’t stand any more of it   Going down to a club.      Mixing in with the sounds and the crowds   I let the music cover me up.                       And so it came that I stood disillusioned   By everything I’d been told.        I just didn’t believe love existed   They were all just digging for gold.   Widows and bankers and typists and bus’nessmen   Loved each other they said.           But all it was though was just a manoeuvre   The quickest way into bed.                       And only lonely the harlequins and painted phonies   Pick their ways through the haze   Of highs and lows and blues   And all that I could do was to pick my way to you   Though I didn’t tell you   You were just a thing to prove   But I was hungry when found you but I’m al-right now.   They sigh they lie the refugees and superhe-roes   On ice     so nice to see you what’s your name?   And all that I could do was to say the same to you   Take you for the moment though the moment wasn’t true   But I was hungry when I found you and I’m al-right now.   Though the street lamp cut through the curfew   It shed no light on our mind   It would have been so easy to love you   At any other time.   Only lonely you came to me the night hung coldly   In your eyes some other time I might have stayed with you   But all that I could do was to turn around to you   Thanks for what you gave me now it’s time to say "Adieu"   Oh I was hungry when I found you but I’m al-right now.   Ba ba ba      alright now         (repeat)   And so I followed the other’s example   And jumped into the melee          In hunting grounds of Earls Court and Swiss Cottage   I did my best to get laid       Beer cans and parties deb girls and arties   Bouncing around in the social confusion   Missing and making the grade. (Instrumental Solo - ad lib)               Part IV    (Slower)   --------- The very first time I must confess I thought you’d be like all of the rest And we’d be strangers once again By the time we were dressed. But when you’d smoked your cigarette And talked of some people that we’d met I found myself asking was it set did you have to go yet. And so you laughed and then kissed me And stayed for the whole weekend Although the bed was so narrow We had to sleep end to end.            And so the weeks passed through my brain In their dadaistic chain I found myself seeing you again and again and again And all you gave you gave it free Asking for nothing back from me You gave yourself unselfishly as a part of me. And where I thought that just plucking The fruits of the bed was enough It grew to be less like fucking And more like making love.           Of all the girls I ever knew some loved and some denied me And all the words I ever said have been no use to hide me And all the songs I ever sung each one of them untied me And all the girls I ever loved have left themselves inside me.