Voices Inside

Lyrics

You leave your dressing gown cord
Draped ’round curved table legs
The last of your coffee
Is sweet with the dregs
You collect up the paper
And you take it to bed
Say ‘good-night’ to the voices inside

There’s a crack in the sub-frame
It lets in the exhaust
There’s a groove in the paint-work
Where the window was forced
A face framed in mock-leather
Leaves you cold with remorse
As you drive with the voices inside.

And sometimes the voices speak sharp
But most times the voices are low
And once, on a Sunday, they whispered
That they knew, that you hoped, they would go…

Your T.V. repairman
Told you ‘matter’s inert’
There’s a rose-coloured stain
On a pale-pink silk shirt
You could be digging with Django
But your digging the dirt
One more time for the voices inside.

And sometimes the voices cry out
And they keep you alone and awake
Oh, but once, once, on a Valentines Day
You know they told your heart not to break.

There’s a face on a bill-board
Telling you to ‘believe’
But he’s wearing his heart
On another man’s sleeve
And you ‘get up and go’
It just got up to leave
But there’s always the voices inside.

Song Description

Again, I have a vivid memory of this. I was buying all of Tom Waits’s albums at the time and I loved that languid feel he conjures around himself through his songs. It was a languid morning and I looked around the room and came up with this. I think it’s one of Steve’s best compositions and yet it never made it to the live set and it never made it beyond a B-side.

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