Long Strange Golden Road Lyrics - Modern Blues - Waterboys

I was longing to be wooed 

I was ready to be humbled 

by the words that you had written 

by the syllables you mumbled 

yeah, I was ready in my heart 

to have my heart invaded 

by the fervour of your passion 

yes, I came to be persuaded 

But when I heard your ragged voice 

something switched in my perception 

and I knew I was the victim 

of a beautiful deception 

all my once exact beliefs 

like tangled threads unravelled 

I walked out, stunned and liberated 

and so began my travels 

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Keep the river on your right 

and the highway at your shoulder 

and the front line in your sights, pioneer 

Keep your eye on the road 

remember what you told her 

this is all in code, my dear 

You better get yourself a coat 

said the handsome taxi driver 

and he sighed like seven bridges 

like a natural-born survivor 

as we drove into the night 

I could feel the forest jangling 

all the choices laid before me 

and their consequences dangling 

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We came upon a stricken ship 

that must have once been splendid 

the captain as he died said "Boys, 

our revels now are ended" 

I heard a wild holy band 

playing jazz that was outrageous, 

that invoked the days of rapture 

when our love was still young and contagious 

Keep the river on your right 

and the highway at your shoulder 

and the front line in your sights, pioneer 

Keep your eye on the road 

remember what you told her 

this is all in code, my dear 

In a dim-lit motel room 

two sad lovers were discoursing 

on the dignity of exile 

and the merits of divorcing 

she said "all certainty is gone" 

but he leapt up, still denying, 

cried "I won't believe the flame I lit 

is dead or even dying" 

She left him drooling in the dust 

and with rucksack packed begun her 

bitter journey to the border 

which is where I wooed and won her 

she was Aphrodite, Helen, Thetis, 

Eve among the satyrs 

She was Venus in a v-neck sweater 

she was all that ever mattered 

Keep the river on your right 

and the highway at your shoulder 

and the front line in your sights, pioneer 

Keep your eye on the road 

remember what you told her 

this is all in code, my dear 

Like Dean Moriarty's ghost 

I came in quest of secret knowledge 

in the winter of my journey 

to a crumbling Druid college 

there I read the books of lore 

and contemplated in seclusion 

but I took my leave embittered, 

still in love with my illusions 

In the drizzling Irish rain 

as a tender dawn was breaking 

in a doorway I stood spellbound by 

the ancient music they were making 

I took my breakfast with the Gods 

on a blushing summer morning 

till a wind blew them all away 

I had misread every warning 

Keep the river on your right 

and the highway at your shoulder 

and the front line in your sights, pioneer 

Keep your eye on the road 

remember what you told her 

this is all in code, my dear 

Under cold electric light 

I watch the scenes mutating 

like an old time frontier ballad 

or a carousel rotating 

As if in a moment from a film 

with astonishing precision 

the camera zooms in close 

and a figure comes into vision 

I'm in Tokyo, it's dawn 

and it's raining hallelujahs 

down the bright-lit neon canyons 

along the sidewalks of Shibuya 

I'm trying to take a stance 

and rise above my contradictions 

but I'm just a bunch of words in pants 

and most of those are fiction 

Keep the river on your right 

and the highway at your shoulder 

and the front line in your sights, pioneer 

Keep your eye on the road 

remember what you told her 

this is all in code, my dear