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Unreleased songs: S – Z

Lyrics only — sorry!

Apologies, but I haven't had the chance to annotate all of these yet — if you'd like to help, please email me! This page is just a placeholder so that you can read the lyrics. Full annotations, liner notes, and the rest will come when the page is fully annotated.

not yet annotated

Table of contents

Saigon Shrunken Panorama

The last vestiges of empire were crumbling
Daisies were pushing through the ground
And I saw a crane disappear beneath still water
On the day when you came back around
And though time remembers meaningless gestures
Your goodness will not be forgotten while I am still alive
It was the eighteenth day of May in 1975 1

And I asked if you could last a week or two
And you said you thought you could
You came inside then with the light trickling behind you
It was fine and it was good
And so gleams the single moment
Before we heard the officers arrive
On the eighteenth day of May in 1975

Hey

Scavenger Babies

Wake up all the birds of prey
Dig your tools out from the clay
Seal the exits of your room
Watch the cactus flowers bloom

And send my regards to the boys down on the corner
Yeah, send my regards to the boys down on the corner

Build a house from sticks and mud
Listen to the poison singing in your blood
Pull yourself a tall cool drink
Carve your initials in the bathroom sink

And send my regards to the boys down on the corner
Yeah, send my regards to the boys down on the corner

The city of Norwalk in my dreams
Rises like Atlantis from a watery grave
Burn the things you have to burn
Save all the people you're supposed to save

And send my belongings to the drop box in Tijuana
And send my regards to the boys down on the corner

[Shield My Eyes Against the Glare]

Up the hallway and out into the air
Shield my eyes against the glare
Blacktop bubbling in the heat
Satan rising from the street

I don't care much
Wildflowers wither at my touch
And I'll burn too
Before I get through

Down the street, step short and sweet
Watch for the hand behind the curtain
There is no trace of it
Not anywhere, so I shield my eyes against the glare \

And I slide
Glide
Into the intersection
Check out my own reflection
When the gears grind, I won't mind

Shower

Blackest storm I ever saw
Was coming in from Omaha
And the latest news from Tokyo
Was a lot of ugly numbers

I was checking pay phones for forgotten coins
When the clouds came over West Des Moines
Got into the house, got the curtains drawn
Got into the shower with all my clothes on

Hey hey, let the water come down
Hey hey, let the water come down

By noon it was clear that winter'd come
And I just let the water run
I got soap suds in my eyes
And they stung like iodine

Phone started ringing like a fire alarm
And the voice on the machine was brutally calm
New numbers coming down the wire
Got out of the shower with my eyes on fire

Hey, hey, let it fall on me
Let it all come down relentlessly
You swore that you would stick around
When days like this started coming down
Well, break out the crystal
Get out the good champagne
We're going down
In flames

[Slip Away from Me]

Tapped on the window from the inside
Just to hear the glass ring
And it sang out like a shark
Then went silent like a tiny frightened thing

And the small sun fell down through the treetops
And the small sun shattered on the snow
And the snow stretched out like a blanket
Like something I used to know

I let the memory slip away from me
I let my memory slip away from me
And the snow stretched out like a shroud
From our doorstep to the seashore

And the new day came, whatever it intends to be
Let my memory be erased irretrievably
The rain will fall on the old house now
A thousand miles away

In the sky sometimes I see a reckoning
When I'm cold and tired
And then the compass tilts like a sinking ship
Or spins like a thing gone wild

Something Blue

You come around here when the lights are down low
And you hang around for six or seven hours and then you get ready to go
Well I remember when you used to kiss me without me asking you to
Yeah I remember when you used to

When I lean toward to you, you turn away
It's a quarter past 1 AM on a warm Saturday
That's all right, that's all right, I hear you
Don't do anything you don't wanna do
But I remember when you used to kiss me without me asking you to
Yeah I remember when you used to

Song for Black Sabbath's Second North American Tour 2

Hang my hammer on a nail
Never see it again
Set sail for the cosmos
High above the world with its beaten-down men

Not long for this world
Have to be reminded
To stay away from windows
Not to leave important things behind

All gone
All gone
With the dawn

And then I'm in an airplane heading west
Over the ocean
Unsteady on my feet again
A body in motion

So far from the slaughterhouse
New creatures with new hearts
Landing at LaGuardia
Tearing up the charts

All gone
All gone
With the dawn

Song for God

Neighbor kids running across the front yard this evening
Sun going down, wind gathering strength
The state I live in is the largest of its kind
It takes two days or better to walk across its length

If you try to come and find me, I will know you're coming
There's an old fallout shelter I can hide in
I won't even be able to hear their hoofbeats When the horsemen ride in

Another mild winter, time seems to stand still
Sky swallows up the city like a tent
Young breezes' razor patterns in the dust
No way of saying what they're supposed to represent

I have come to where I've come to now
Always abiding in you
If you try to find me now I'll be invisible to everything
When the horsemen come riding on through

Song for Greg Valentine

When they get me in a corner, break legs
When I feel alone and useless, break legs
If I can't claim the victory
I'm taking you down with me
Break legs, break legs, break legs

When your enemies are closing in, break legs
When they've got you under contract, break legs
When they're filling out your card
Go hard
Break legs, break legs, break legs

Tear my insides up
With over the counter stuff
Jump the turnbuckle and grimace
Try to look tough

When you get a reputation, break legs
Brook no insubordination, break legs
When the beer cups are raining down on you
Do what they're paying you to do
Break legs, break legs
Break legs, break legs, break legs
Break legs, break legs, break legs

Song for My Stepfather

You have got that look in your eyes
In the pinprick place where kindness goes to die
I'll be 6 years old next year
You erase me

You'll be sorry, you always feel sorry later on
When you come around to say so, I will be gone
And in my place, meet my letter-perfect body double
You erase me

And a few years later
I set out on my own
Learned to take the reins up all by myself
Dug the spurs in clean down to the bone

But all that comes later, now there's only you and me
And the replica where my body used to be
You can go ahead and hit him, he feels no pain at all
You erase me
You erase me

Song for Roger Maris

When the power of God shows up in your swing
And the people start to notice and you can't do anything about it
And they all come to see you
They start to crowd around
Let me tell you brother, you can feel it coming down

And I got an angel watching over me
A monkey on my back
The devil at my heels
Reporters breathing down my neck

Yeah, my father always told me to finish what you start
And my wife's about to leave me and it's going to break my heart
And I no longer have my youth
I no longer have my looks
I got a goddamn one-way ticket to the goddamn history books

And I got an angel watching over me
A monkey on my back
The devil at my heels
Reporters breathing down my neck

Song from the Shoreline

Through the bodies of a hundred people
I saw you
I saw you coming through the crush
Saw you pushing through

And in the bodies of a hundred people
Moving around
I shut my ears off to the world
Couldn't hear a sound \

Among the bodies of a hundred people
I saw you
I saw you coming through the crush
I saw you pushing through

Stable Boy Song

Here come the times of changing tide
Here come the days of light and grace
Here come the hours of wordless wondrousness
Light, light will fill this humble place

When you come, the stars will shine brighter than spun gold
When you come, the world will seem shiny and new
My mom told me that someday someone like you would come to set things right
'Til you come, I'll keep this place ready for you

I saw them riding up the road
And I swept and scrubbed the stable twice
Filled it with golden yellow straw, sweet and clean
I did my best to make things nice

When you come, the stars will shine brighter than spun gold
When you come, the world will seem shiny and new
My mom told me that someday someone like you would come to set things right
Until you come, I'll keep this place ready for you

Standard Bitter Love Song #1

I'm not gonna say what I came over to say to you
But you were thinking along the same lines
And you let the words come ringing through

I wouldn't've said that to you
I wouldn't say it if they paid me to
You got no manners
You got no manners at all
You got no manners
You got no manners
You got no manners at all
You got no manners

I'm going to try real hard
But I, I can't believe that you're really gonna do it
It's like one of those Chinese kites flying in the wind
And then some kid with a shotgun sends a bullet through it

And I, I came here to say it
But I've done that before
But I'd never have told you that I don't love you anymore
You got no manners
You got no manners at all
You got no manners
You got no manners
You got no manners at all
You got no manners
You got no manners
You got no manners at all
You got no manners

Standard Bitter Love Song #5

Come down in the flatland
Show me your shoulder
Wait now where the black hand touches us
We'll both grow older

And the sky above us
And the ground beneath us
And the air around us
And the ocean to the right

Measure your arm length
I can't live without it
I treasure those thirty inches
I want to talk about it

And the sky above us
And the ground beneath us
And the air around us
And the ocean to the right

Love you in the cold air
Your long hair makes me shiver
Above you I see the sun
Light up every sliver

And the sky above us
And the ground beneath us
And the air around us
And the ocean to the right

And the sky above us
And the ground beneath us
And the air around us
And the ocean to the right

Standard Bitter Love Song #6

I don't like what I've turned into
There's a hole in my chest in the spot that you wormed out through
They say it's on the mend
But it hurts me when I bend
Yeah

And I saw you down at Angie's place
That rippling smile on your perfect face
Well, it really doesn't suit you
When I see it I want to shoot you
Sorry

And I don't like what you said to me
I don't like what you said to me
But I guess I'll have to deal with it
Just let the bullet hit me and I just reel with it
Isn't that right
Isn't that right
Isn't that right
Isn't that right

Sure Do Love You Baby, But I Can't Do 60 No More

They had moved down here and you came down too
Where the surf's always wild and the skies are blue
Got my blood pressure measured down in Pahokee
One sixty-five over one twenty-three
And the lights are low over Pompano Beach tonight
And one light is flickering out for the last time

Coconuts growing in the coconut tree
Surf and turf and sand and sea
Down here in the wreckage, just us three
Him and you, you and me
And the lights are low over Pompano Beach tonight
And one light is flickering out
Out for the last time

Tampa

My brother and me found out
Where you keep your ugly secrets hid
We dug up the missing one this morning
I don't know why you did what you did
Yeah, we found him naked in the snow
Down where the wild crocus grow
I don't wanna do this anymore
Yeah, ain't wanna fight your dirty little war

Yeah, my brother said not to waste another thin dime
Because he ain't comin' out next time
And you can soak in a bathtub full of gasoline
But you will never get your hands clean

Yeah, the building was glowing, fire was raging within
And you ran out to save your own skin
And I probably shouldn't blame you
Yeah, yeah, I probably shouldn't blame you
But by God, I do
And I found the photographs in the top dresser drawer
But ain't gonna fight your dirty little war
Hey, hey, hey
Yeah

That Hippolytine Feeling

Sat together on the porch
As the sunset bled
And you playfully leveled your semi-automatic handgun
Right at my head
And then God
In another stroke of his genius
He opened up the floodgates
And the bulls came out
And the bulls came out

We heard the heavy hooves beating on the earth
As the moment came near
I felt the chamber of your pistol kissing my jaw
I felt your red lips brushing my ear
And then God
Convincing if not transparent in his motives
He opened up the floodgates
But the rivers were dry
'Cause it was late August
And the bulls came out
And the bulls came out

Tribe of the Horned Heart

You knew that they were out there by the signs they'd left behind
On old abandoned buildings, just some Xs and some lines
Half-circles in the concrete, crescents in the snow
You could find the little beacons almost everywhere you'd go

Only people who were sick enough
Knew how to read them right
I got sick when I was seventeen
And I'd hunt down signs all night

You'd listen for the voices in the generator's hum
Hang out behind the power plant and wait for them to come
Hints about their mission in the rustling of the surf
But no secrets can be kept from you if your faith is strong enough

Only people who've been sick too long
Can hold on to the hope
That some friendly ghost is listening to the prayers they learned to say
At the slack end of the rope

Tulsa Imperative

Your momma's failed wheat field
Was a good place to lie down together
Three weeks deep into the guts of summer
We sweat like hogs and I felt light as a feather

I saw a disk-like object
Reflected in your eyes
And the noise grew louder
As we looked up to the skies

And the sleek silver body had lights along the side
And the sleek silver body had lights all underneath
I remember the warm air blowing in our faces
I remember the heat running through me

There was no one worth telling
There was nothing we could do
And I was real quiet as I lifted the keys from the kitchen table
I was looking right at you

And your hand brushed against mine
And it shook me inside
As all along the night sky
I watched our futures collide

And the car's new headlights cut through the darkness
As the oil dripped silently to the pavement underneath
I remember the warm air burning our faces
I remember the heat running through me

Warm Lonely Planet

Let the stars come out, and the moon shine bright
We're sleeping on the porch tonight
Wind blew all the power lines down
Watch where you step if you go walking around

This may be the night
Our bodies fill with light
And we may hover above
The surface of
Our warm lonely planet

Let cooling rains come, let them fall
Let the grass grow strong and tall
Let the dandelions breed
Give me what you know I need

This may be the night
Our bodies fill with light
And we may hover above
The surface of
Our warm lonely planet

We Shall All Be Healed 3 4

Red brick building
Nights that never end
Whole lime structure left
Sad games of let's pretend
Do our best
Stay true because it's what we have to do
We will all be healed
Before the night is through

Big church basement
Flashing lights
Tell me nice things
Hold me tight
But not too tight
Devan and Ivory
And Carolee and Quinn
We will all be healed
Before the sun sneaks in

[Whon]

The garbage man is never going to come
The cans out at the curb will bloat and stink
The rot will work its way through cracks in the foundation
The water will go stagnant in the sink
And you, you will know
Where it is that memories go

The migratory birds will not come back
The charms that summer held will all turn sour
And from the treetops when the wind stops
Sweet blossoms will rain down and you will stand beneath the shower
And it will be so clear
You will never quite escape last year

The wind will blow or else it won't
Sometimes you just move on and sometimes you just don't
You think the matter through, you try hard not to think
The water all goes stagnant in the kitchen sink
And you will know, and I will too
What it was I might have left to you

Wishing the House Would Crash

I was standing outside
With my hands in the air
And the scent of gardenias
Was everywhere
Let the house come down on me
Let the house come down on you

I made my invocation
With my eyes on fire
You were there at the window
You are a goddamn liar
Let the house come down on me
Let the house come down on you

Wizard Level

Wake up and recite the lost formula
Scrub my face with cold water at the basin
Sketch forgotten trees inside a little notebook
Commit their names to memory
Trying to get up
Trying to get up to wizard level
Trying to get up
Trying to get up to wizard level

Go walking out behind the house by moonlight
Collect dry stems and leaves and small green pinecones
In a muslin bag I got down at the hardware store
Blessings on the hardware store
Trying to get up
Trying to get up to wizard level
Just trying to get up
Trying to get up to wizard level

Not everybody gets there
Very few can find the path
Go to sleep and dream these holy dreams
Scatter to the wind each day at sunrise
Always catch the sunrise when I can
Held in my heart through trying times
Trying to get up
Trying to get up to wizard level
Just trying to get up
Trying to get up to wizard level

You Were Cool

This is a song with the same four chords I use most of the time
When I've got something on my mind
And I don't want to squander the moment
Trying to come up with a better5 way
To say what I want to say

People were mean to you
But I always thought you were cool
Clicking down the concrete hallways
In your spiked heels
Back in high school

It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselves
It's better to pass on through those years and come out the other side
With our hearts still beating
Having stared down demons and come back breathing

People were mean to you
But I always thought you were cool
Clicking down the concrete hallways
In your spiked heels
Back in high school

You deserved better than you got
Someone's got to say it sometime cause it's true
People should have told you you were awesome
Instead of taking advantage of you

I hope you love your life now
Like I love mine
I hope the painful memories only flex their power over you
A little of the time

We held on to hope of better days coming
And when we did we were right
I hope the people who did you wrong
Have trouble sleeping at night

People were mean to you
But I always thought you were cool
Clicking down the concrete hallways
In your spiked heels
Back in high school

Yeah, yeah

You're in Maya 6 7

He hit me right in the face
I drove the Falcon 8 uptown
Hung out in the library parking lot
The swelling will never go down

Pint of Hiram Walker 9 in the lining
Of my father's old corduroy coat
Big, big plans hatching in my brain
And a big ugly lump in my throat

I drove up to Harvey Mudd 10 and I played pinball
'Til I didn't want to kill anyone
Polished off all my cheap whiskey
And stepped out into the California sun

Singing bainne na mbó is na gamhna
And the juice of the barley for me
Singing bainne na mbó is na gamhna
And the juice of the barley for me 11

My thirst carried me up the coast
Where it only got sharper, goddammit
In a small room that got even smaller
A block away from the Willamette 12

There was nowhere I needed to go
And nowhere I wanted to be
And my window looked out upon nothing
And nothing looked right back at me 13

I had a couple of things on my mind
A couple of problems to think through
And I drank 'til I couldn't see straight anymore
Until there was nothing to drink to

Singing bainne na mbó is na gamhna
And the juice of the barley for me
Singing bainne na mbó is na gamhna
And the juice of the barley for me

Credits

Thank you to Austin Campbell, who transcribed and annotated Saigon Shrunken Panorama and You're in Maya, and transcribed Wizard Level and You Were Cool. Thanks also to Alice Rose for transcribing Shower.

As always, thanks to the superlative Caliclimber, whose Flickr pages provided essential information and release details, and to Andrew Fazzari, who transcribed Stable Boy Song.

Footnotes

  1. This date is shortly after the Fall (or Liberation, depending on your point of view) of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War on April 30, 1975. ↩

  2. Occasionally called Song for Black Sabbath's First North American Tour, rather than Second. Rango's Ballroom, Pittsburg, February 28, 2014. ↩

  3. "This is a song I'll never finish writing... So I had some friends in Portland, and most of them are dead. And I have a lot of long stories about all of them, and they're the sorts of people you meet when you're 18 or 19 who are as lost and desperate as you are, but — and you never see them again after a certain point, but you carry them with you like little ingots resting in your heart, right. And they shine there, and gleam there, and hold a sort of cold fire. And the whole album, We Shall All Be Healed, was for them. And, I sort of, I like the idea of a hidden, nonexistent title track, right." Troubadour, Los Angeles, December 16, 2011

    "I found the We Shall All Be Healed notebook... and [it] has a bunch of songs I didn't get to, and that is a song that I had written 7 or 8 times, and I will write some more versions of it too, and it, like, names all the people, who are all gone, who were sort of — who should be credited for the album." — Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, September 9, 2011 ↩

  4. We Shall All Be Healed, being an unfinished song with no fixed content by design, has no clear lyrics. The lyrics listed here are from the earliest recording I'm aware of. That said, there is another version with very different lyrics, that is much more prominently documented in the bootleg record several years later, and played on piano instead of guitar:

    Left home in a blur
    Arrived in the night
    Everything is going to be all right
    Came back to the place
    Where it all flared out
    Just to check if the reservoir
    Still bore the mark of the drought

    Up to 13th and Taylor, check my pulse
    You weren't there, and neither was anybody else
    Stared down demons, came back breathing
    No real point in ever leaving
    Tracy and Ivory and Brad and me too
    We will see some great miracle before the night is through

    Slipped in through the entrance
    Stood in the hall
    Left my fingerprints on the elevator wall
    Went down to my old room
    Stood outside it a minute
    Wondering if parts of me
    Were still there in it

    Who can say it won't be me
    You are gone now and I am free
    Wesley and Quinn and Devan and you
    We will all be fixed up as good as new

    And I stared at the number 10 on my old apartment's door
    That's one ghost that can't bite me anymore
    And someday we will all feel at home in our new skin
    And someday we will never be alone again
    When the sun comes up and the night has passed
    We shall all be healed at last, at last, at last, at last

    See for example Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, September 9, 2015; Saturn, Birmingham, October 4, 2015; Radio X session, London, May 25, 2017. ↩

  5. Also sung, "... with a more complicated way". Chapman University, Orange, November 12, 2010 ↩

  6. "It's called 'You're in Maya', which is a thing that the Hare Krishnas say to one another when they're saying that you're too caught up in thoughts of the world, right. 'Maya' is the energy that constrains us all here and keeps our mind on material things." — Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, California, October 23, 2002. See also Crossing Border, Amsterdam, October 9, 1999 ↩

  7. "This is a song that is extensively autobiographical. It is probably the only one in my whole corpus like that." — Crossing Borders, Amsterdam, October 9, 1999

    Although this may have been semi-true at the time, it has long since ceased to be so. ↩

  8. The Ford Falcon is a classic American compact car produced from the 1960s through the 1970s. ↩

  9. Hiram Walker is a whiskey distillery and brand. ↩

  10. Harvey Mudd College is one of the Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California. John attended Pitzer, one of the other 4 undergraduate colleges in the consortium. ↩

  11. "The chorus is in Irish Gaelic, and I pronounce it badly, probably. It's 'bainne na mbó is na gamnha', which means the 'the milk of the cow is all right for the calf'." Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, California, October 23, 2002. ↩

  12. The Willamette River passes through Portland, Oregon. ↩

  13. Likely a reference to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's famous quote, 'He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.'

    Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Aphorism 146. Archived by Project Gutenberg. Retrieved July 24, 2019. ↩