Top of the Bottom (Live at Union Hall)

I started playing guitar by the town memorial

All my songs were singing editorials

And when I'd done the Sermon on the Mount

I counted my change, put it in my bank account

I didn't wanna work at the local abattoir

So I left home and expanded my repertoire

Did some gigs, no one booed

Got free beer and drank it with gratitude

Once I started, couldn't stop

That's how I got from the Bottom to the Top

A businessman with a very young dolly bird

Talked through the set, liked what he thought he heard

Dropped some names he claimed to represent

Asked me if I had any management

Two weeks later, I'm signing on a dotted line

Offered some drugs, at first I declined

Lots of parties where the spread's incredible

Don't get close, cos the food's inedible

I became a spinning top

That's how I got from the Bottom to the Top

Got a big deal and moved to America

I fell in love with an heiress called Erica

Started out smart, soon got silly

A party by the pool, an arrest for necrophilia

News travels like electricity

A bad mugshot is good publicity

I laid low for a month or two

And spent my dough building a recording studio

And that's when it all went pop

That's how I got back from the Bottom to the Top

Of the Bottom

The label and payola got me in the charts

My new management had me by the private parts

Went on strike, took the initiative

Forgetting that I didn't have a single chip to bargain with

Lost my nerve, and my fall was glorious

The lawsuit was eternal and laborious

My new material was only fair-to-middling

Rome was burning and I did some fiddling

And finally, I was dropped

That's how I got back from the Bottom to the Top

Of the Bottom

On the way down, people tend to leave you where you fall

I tried to stand up but I didn't have the wherewithal

I nearly died in a cab one day