Stabbed & Stoned A.K.A It Don't Take A Hero

These are lyrics for a song that I wrote way back in 2000 (everything that I post today seems to be from the past). I produced a good, though badly structured demo...the track had some fantastic lead guitar work from yours truly (even if I do say so myself), to the point that when I rediscovered the four track tape for it three years ago I couldn't quite believe that it had been me on it.

This song was written too for the Made In England script. It was for a scene in the film where George gets beaten up late at night. For me, its about consequences and the moral cowardice of those who can only express their issues through violence. Think about it, one idiot with a knife can KILL you. They don't even need to know you. They don't even need to be after your wallet. You see it on the streets in England every Friday and Saturday night, pricks boozed up to their eye-balls, with the ego sucking up what was left of their self-awareness and kicking the shit out of some poor sod who just happens to be walking down the same street. I've always figured that its about frustration... the majority of people today do shit jobs, for shit money, spend their life in debt, working in shitty artificial lit spaces on some production line. I've been there and seen it. I've worked in factories, I've worked as a bin man, driven white vans (well blue actually), packed 3000 filofaxes in one day. You don't need to do that for long before you understand the mentality. There really isn't much to find out. It isn't fascinating, just tragic.

And with that kind of soul destroying stuff - boredom basically - a weekend with fifty pints, some head clearing violence, and the opportunity to reaffirm your sense of self, seems to be the pay off.

So, here are the lyrics. Am particularly proud of rhyming "mother's loss" with "granite cross". Good image. This song is sung in expert Dylan-esqure drawl, and with ballsy Daltrey-esque power toward the end.

Tom.

Stabbed & Stoned

It don’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned.

You aren’t a leader
If you fight in the pack
Like some low fanged gutter rat.

He isn’t a coward
If he turns his back,
His decision if he don’t attack.

But I doesn’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned,

No measure of a man
In bloodied noses
Or bleeding chests.

Your not special
If it takes a weapon
to challenge and threaten.

Just a number
If your reason for fighting
Is to give another beating!

One more sucker
If your eyes don’t bleed
When you realise you won’t break free.

And he follows the crowd
When he stabs a man
He feels so vengefully proud.

And it don’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned

And the coward
Holds a bloodied knife
Cut the fucker down in a single slice.

No real pride in a man
Who carved a mother’s loss
In to a granite cross.

And it don’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned