John Wetton and Richard Palmer-James: Monkey Business 1972-1997



FLOURISH (Intro) 



TOO MUCH MONKEY BUSINESS (Ch.Berry) 

Runnin' to-and-fro, hard workin' in the mill
Never fail in the mail, yeah, come a rotten bill
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Salesman talkin' to me, tryin' to run me up a creek
Says you can buy it, go on try it, you can pay me next week, ahh
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Blond hair, good lookin', tryin' to get me hooked
Want me to marry, get a home, settle down, write a book
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Every day, same thing, gettin' up, goin' to school
No need for me complaining, my objection's overruled, ahh
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Telephone, something wrong, dime gone, will hold
Oughtta sue the operator, for telling me a tale, ahh
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

I been to Yokohama, been fightin' in the war
Army bunk, army crew, army food, army corps, aah
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Workin' in the fillin' station, too many tasks
Wipe the windows, check the tyres, check the oil, a dollar gas
Too much monkey business, too much monkey business
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!

Too much monkey business for me!



CONFESSIONS (R.W.Palmer-James) 

Let me make a small confession
To be honest with you all Memories of good times past
Still have their call

I'd like to make a resolution
To spend a little time alone
Away from the papers and the busy days
And the telephone

I don't want to sneer at the downbeat life
I never want to part from my pretty wife
The gossip and the wine take up too much time
When I oughtta be far away

This is my inclination
When ambitions pull me down
To swing the doors on the lunchtime bores
And get outta town

I can't make an invitation
You'd never know what I mean
On the road with an unsafe load
And a jukebox queen

I don't want to live those times again
I just want the peace to remember when
Saturday night was a cellarful of sin
Singing songs from far away, far away 



EASY MONEY (W.Bruford/D.Cross/R.Fripp/J.Muir/J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James) 

Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers

And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money

With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders

We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the almighty
Easy money

Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money



THE NIGHT WATCH (R.Fripp/J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James) live

Shine, shine, the light of good works shine
The watch before the city gates depicted in their prime
That golden light all grimy now
Three hundred years have passed
The worthy Captain and his squad of troopers standing fast

The artist knew their faces well
The husbands of his lady friends
His creditors and councillors
In armour bright, the merchant men

Official moments of the guild
In poses keen from bygone days
The city fathers frozen there
Upon the canvas dark with age

The smell of paint, a flask of wine
And turn those faces all to me
The blunderbuss and halberd-shaft
And Dutch respectability

They make their entrance one by one
Defenders of that way of life
The redbrick home, the bourgeoisie
Guitar lessons for the wife

So many years we suffered here
Our country racked with Spanish wars
Now comes a chance to find ourselves
And quiet reigns behind our doors
We think about posterity again

And so the pride of little men
The burghers good and true
Still living through the painter's hand
Request you all to understand



WOMAN (J.Wetton) 

When you say that you will never part from me 
I believe you always, come what may 
I sometimes have doubts, but when you speak to me 
In seconds they're all washed away 
And I know it never would occur to you 
That you mean the world and more to me 
Say that you'll stay for eternity 
For it's you gives me reason to be 

Woman oh woman, if you could only see 
Woman oh woman, just what you mean to me 

At times I know I am impossible 
I can ignore you, but you should know by now 
One look from you and I understand 
And the frown disappears from by brow 

In my life the girls were a necessity 
There were others but none compared to you 
I'll give you that life if you want it now 
In the end that is all I can do 

Well I tell myself this is the last time 
I want the whole thing, nothing less will do 
No-one else can give me just what I need 
So always I come back to you? 

Woman oh woman 
Woman oh woman



FALSE START  



UNTITLED (J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James)  



RICH MEN LIE (R.W.Palmer-James)  

Flowers cut for dying
Used to bloom when you passed by
And the day revealed its colours
Force of will could clear the sky
But you had to stop believing
In the magic you had learned
And if once the flames were warming
Now you're buned

Tell me is it envy
Is it fear or is it pain
In those eyes still filled with visions?
Have the tears all turned to rain?
When you stand beneath that window
Where a golden twilight glows
Do you long for words of wisdom
And the voice of one who knows?

This is what they do - rich men lie
Fortune feeds but few - rich men lie

Speed became religion
In a temple of straight lines
Where you acted out contririon
For the helpless and the blind
But the prices on redemption
Have been rising day by day
Though you say you've seen the glory
You can't pay

No-one will convict you
As the jurymen are dead
And the truth is but a burden
All those volumes left unread
See the hanging judge is dreaming
In the comfort of his chair
While your silver-tongued attorney
Doesn't care

Now I promise you - rich men lie
Guess it's sad but true - rich men lie

Poor folk now surround you
To confirm your fall from grace
All your deeds and obligations
Have released their fond embrace
You're condemned to join the guilty
We'll go shuffling with the crowd
When your equals all ignore you
You'll be proud

All I tried to prove to you - pigs cannot fly
Not a word is true - rich men lie
Time passes by - this what they do
Rich men lie



COLOGNE 1977 (R.W.Palmer-James) 

Cologne
Charlie steps down from the train
And wanders by the Dom
Raindrops falling in a foreign town
Wish that sun was beating down
To warm the ground
Just like it does at home

Cologne
Charlie checks her book again
And fumbles with the phone
If there's a lover on her mind
It only proves that love is blind
And too unkind
To leave her gilded throne

Oh, don't you tell no lies
About the things you said
When you left home
A visit to your daddy's land
Two hundred dollars in your hand
And here you are confronted with
Cologne

Somewhere in this town they lived
Before the war
A quiet street with chestnut trees
That Charlie never saw
Central European Time
It's ten o'clock here on the Rhine
We're feeling fine
Just waiting for the tone

Cologne
Charlie comes 'most every year
And how the feeling's grown
Soldier boys come home one day
And how they need the will to stay
And find a way
Out of the fray alone

Oh, don't you tell no lies...



THE LAUGHING LAKE 1 (J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James)  



THE GOOD SHIP ENTERPRISE (J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James) 

When the morning came I was the only one alive
In the boat that floated from the good ship Enterprise
That ship had led a spiral path
Down to her birth in drifting sands
And I was left upon the waves
With sea-dew chill upon my hands

When the morning came I tried
To look into my dead friends'eyes
But mist accompanied the dawn
And made them look so pale and wise
We sat together, up together, down together
With the rolling swell

And there for once out in the boat I knew
That all my empty childhood days
My lusty home so far away
The moralising of my kin
The shelter of the world within
Had led to this unsteady stage
Before an audience of dead men

Conceit was all I knew before
And lost upon the shifting seas
With no concern for little things
Conceit was all that could remain
I was their sole inheritor
In the bottom of the boat
Lying gazing at the sky
Perhaps I was about to die ...



BOOK OF SATURDAY (R.Fripp/J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James) demo

If I only could deceive you
Forgetting the game
Every time I try to leave you
You laugh just the same

'Cause my wheels never touch the road
And the jumble of lies we told
Just returns to my back to weigh me down

We lay cards upon the table
The backs of our hands
And I swear I like your people
The boys in the band

Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds

All completeness in the morning
Asleep on your side
I'll be waking up the crewmen
Banana boat ride

She responds like a limousine
Brought alive on the silent screen
To the shuddering breath of yesterday

There's the succour of the needy
Incredible scenes
I'll believe you in the future
Your life and death dreams

As the cavalry of despair
Takes a stand in the lady's hair
For the favour of making sweet sixteen 

You make my life and times
A book of bluesy Saturdays
And I have to chose ...



BOOK OF SATURDAY (R.Fripp/J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James) live 



THE GLORY OF WINNING (J.Wetton/G.Downes/R.W.Palmer-James)  

Up where you hide away
The buildings are tall
Nobody looks at the view
None of your consequences
Dare to be small
It's a lonely situation
But you said you'd take it till you knew

The glory of winning
Face to face, we steal from each other
The glory of winning
Can't erase the sadness of losing you

Now all you idolise
Is concrete and clay
Where only egos can grow
And each ambition
Is a step on the way
Till you join that congregation
In a place reserved for those who know

The glory of winning
Face to face, we steal from each other
The glory of winning
Can't erase the sadness of losing you

You're playing to win
You'll never give in
You're counting on victory
Now figures and schemes
Are haunting your dreams
And they are the mean
To take you away from me

The glory of winning
Face to face, we steal from each other
The glory of winning
Can't erase the sadness of losing you

The glory of winning
Worlds apart, we steal from each other
The glory of winning
Leaves my heart the sadness of losing you



STARLESS 1 (J.Wetton/R.Fripp/R.W.Palmer-James)  

Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within
Only see
Starless and bible black

Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that oh years to be
Starless and bible black

Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and bible black



THE LAUGHING LAKE 2 (J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James)  



THE LAUGHING LAKE 3 (J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James)  



THE LAUGHING LAKE (1977) (J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James)  

Throw a stone across the ice
Upon the laughing lake
We city kids sure know our stuff
We're out here on the make
The colour of the winter sky
Reflects the coldness of the ground
The leather of our shoes is thin
It lets us know we've been around

Throw a stone across the ice
And hear the laughing lake
We should have worm our furry coats
Our ears begin to ache
No empty cans among the trees
No motor-cars or suddensounds
Just wayward crows in wintertime
They cross the hills between the town

The pebble spins across the ice
Farther than the eye can see
The laugher echoes from the air
And darkness gathers silently

Throw a stone across the ice
And watch the laughing lake
When springtime sunshine warms the air
The frozen water breaks
Our sinking stone will make its way
To join the other stones below
While you and I will take our place
in stony cities'undertow



MAGAZINES (J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James)  

Was it you, gazing out from magazines, magazines?
Sun through the blinds, mornings in Rome
Talking so fine, feeling so low
Bright magazines, strewn on the floor
Took their revenge, chose to ignore
Roman spring, coloured everything with days in store

Was it you, gazing out from magazines, magazines?
Inside information, glossy invitations from
Galaxies of laughing souls

And the wine, made you dance in time
Time to see the dawn
Knights in arms, lie in sympathy, bleeding on the lawn

Was it you, gazing out from magazines, magazines?
Inside information, the glossy invitations
To chronicles of love and pain ...

Come the Fall, on your balcony, against the wall
Feel a chill, turn around to find, no-one there at all
Just magazines 



STARLESS 2 (J.Wetton/R.Fripp/R.W.Palmer-James)  



COLOGNE 1997 (R.W.Palmer-James) 

Cologne
Goodtime Charlie steps from the train
And wanders by the Dom
Raindrops falling in a red-nosed town
It never gets as cold as this back home

Cologne
Charlie checks his little black business book
From now on in he's running blind
The desperate kind
He's cursing at the phone

Oh, don't you tell no lies
About the way your heart feels
It's freezing, turning into stone
Your best friend's widow reeks of gin
Says, Best go see my uncle
In Cologne

Cologne
The seeds of grief that Charlie bears
Will break his back before they're sown
Central European Time
The midnight hour here on the Rhine
The music's fine
We hate to dance alone

Oh, don't you tell no lies
The customers you're meeting
Their greetings, all chill you to the bone
Their borderlines have closed you in
You've joined a game you cannot win
The deal will bring cold comfort
In Cologne



DOCTOR DIAMOND 1997 (W.Bruford/D.Cross/R.Fripp/J.Wetton/R.W.Palmer-James) 

I am the driver of an underground train
Chaos in the streets above, to me it's all the same
I shake your houses, then I'm gone, keeping time down here below
I could drive my train to hell, not a soul would know

I am the driver of an underground train
The lonely life can't bother me, far away from wind and rain
I come upon the station lights with a mighty rushing sound
Listen for the hiss of breaks in tunnels underneath your town

I am the driver of an underground train
just imagine who I am and breathe the letters of my name
Any time you say the word, my wheels are humming on the line
We'll be meeting face to face, somewhere beyond the danger sign

I am the driver of an underground train
Climb aboard, just climb aboard, your loss is my eternal gain
Squeeze your precious body in before I quickly close the doors
Come riding in the smoky dark, where you are mine, and I am yours



STARLESS 1997 (J.Wetton/R.Fripp/R.W.Palmer-James)