Twister
Lyrics
The magnificent structure straddled the river
As I dictated my autobiography to my biographer
When I heard this tune
My title was "Renegade Genius" (1)
But was interrupted much too soon
Was interrupted much too soon
I received this line
Twister
From me in Hampstead he received a letter
I headed it "Dear Twister"
Up from West Hampstead I visited Keswick (2)
On permission from the guard
I begun like this but could not continue it
When I heard this tune
(It begun like this but could not continue it)
My ears were burned
By this tune
My head swooned
By this tune
Twister
The train from London on day of lunacy
Was packed with innocents
Children tended by walkman'd parents (3)
Cretins auditioning
For non-existent parts on TV One
The train was a tube
Within the crushing beauty of the countryside
On the London-Keswick run (4)
Twister
My head burned...burned...da da da da..my ears burned..
countryside has sold out..countryside...cheap phone calls home...
accent all around..cheap phone calls...ramble..grinning...
normally..rambled...in my ear hole...was day of lunacy..some things
like...explosives..of pages turned..shadows..massive fucking noises...pop stars.. heh heh hackles...try mystic meg..twister...rustic town...
Twister
Notes
1. Around 20 years later MES did indeed dictate somewhat of an autobiography (maybe "memoir" is more accurate) to a "biographer," and when he did the title chosen was Renegade, which seems like a loss of nerve. The Story of the Fall comments that this is about "MES obviously stuck on a train surrounded by fame crazed wannabes..." The blistering Peel version is best.
Twister is of course a popular game, as well as slang for a tornado. What seems to be most relevant here, though, is that in English slang it is a word for a villain, "One who turns this way and that; fig. one who shuffles or prevaricates; a dishonest person, a crook. slang." (from the Oxford English Dictionary). According to Dan, "'Twister' means someone who is distorting the truth or ripping you off. I don't think it refers to the game. Worth noting that the only other song in the Fall canon where the word occurs is in "Australians in Europe" from the same period: 'They're just a bloody twister, so who do you think you're fooling?'"
2. West Hampstead is in London, and Keswick is in Cumbria. There is no prison in West Hampstead, and it seems unlikely a prisoner could get "permission from [a] guard" to leave and visit Keswick, so I am unsure what the meaning of the lyric is, but in any case the narrator's confinement by a guard may be metaphorical. Neither is it clear whom the mysterious "Twister" is, or why MES is summoned to Keswick.
3. For all you kiddies, a walkman was a popular portable device that played cassette tapes directly to headphones.
4. According to Blokbuster, this run was discontinued in 1972.
More Information
Comments (22)
- 1. | 05/05/2013
- 2. | 05/05/2013
So for a while the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (a renegade genius if there was one) lived in Keswick. There are two famous interruptions for which Coleridge is known. The first is the "Person from Porlock" who interrupted the writing of 'Kubla Khan'. And the second is the "letter from a friend" which turns up in Chapter 13 of Biographia Literaria (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6081/6081-h/6081-h.htm#link2H_4_0025):
"Thus far had the work been transcribed for the press, when I received the following letter from a friend, whose practical judgment I have had ample reason to estimate and revere, and whose taste and sensibility preclude all the excuses which my self-love might possibly have prompted me to set up in plea against the decision of advisers of equal good sense, but with less tact and feeling.
"Dear C.
"You ask my opinion concerning your Chapter on the Imagination,
both as to the impressions it made on myself, and as to those which I
think it will make on the Public, i.e. that part of the public, who,
from the title of the work and from its forming a sort of introduction
to a volume of poems, are likely to constitute the great majority of
your readers."
And so on. It turns out, by the way, that Coleridge wrote the letter himself.
- 3. | 05/05/2013
shades of
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran..."
Too far fetched?
- 4. | 02/07/2014
- 5. | 02/07/2014
- 6. | 02/07/2014
- 7. | 02/07/2014
- 8. | 15/07/2014
- 9. | 09/07/2015
It means someone who is distorting the truth or ripping you off. I don't think it refers to the game.
Worth noting that the only other song in the Fall canon where the word occurs is in Australians in Europe from the same period: "They're just a bloody twister, so who do you think you're fooling? "
- 10. | 28/05/2016
- 11. | 24/06/2016
- 12. | 16/07/2016
28th May 1987 was only a few weeks in the future when The Fall recorded the Peel version. So was he looking ahead to something, or looking back?
- 13. | 19/07/2016
--but I've never heard "Twister" used in the way you say, is that an English slang thing? In any case I added a bit from the OED.
- 14. | 17/11/2016
Ah, but you have!
See my note 9:
Australians in Europe from the same period: "They're just a bloody twister, so who do you think you're fooling? "
- 15. | 10/03/2018
- 16. | 10/03/2018
- 17. | 26/04/2018
- 18. | 09/07/2018
- 19. | 09/07/2018
- 20. | 09/11/2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keswick,_Cumbria#Transport
- 21. | 16/11/2019
- 22. | 04/02/2021
A train guard?
Or "the gods", which is what sounds like to me at the moment?