The Gravy Train

The way a little baby wraps the hand around your finger
Sunshine on your face in the first dawn light
The way she waits to let the moment linger
The way the future's always gonna bring surprise

It ain't cocaine running through your veins
Beluga caviar on the gravy train
It ain't cocaine as you sip champagne
As you toast high times on the gravy train
So many vampires in the night
All of the riches in this time
I know you're mine

Waiting for the lightning, so exciting after the thunder
The twinkle in your eyes, the starlight shines
The diamond in your mind is cut from wonder
I know how you're feeling and you're feeling fine

I know you're mine

And we got all the time in the world
Yeah we got all the time in the world

Lyrics by:
Brown / McCracken / Bierton / Hatwell

Available on:
Music Of The Spheres (4.23)

Details:
Ian Brown's perception of the paths taken since the split of the songwriting partnership - his own string of solo LPs contrasted with Squire's gradual retreat from the music sphere - is that Squire's inspiration has tellingly dried up. The guitarist is now a lone figure in the wilderness, one who has "painted himself into a corner" in using a career in Art as a fallback mechanism. The Gravy Train is critical of those who exist solely for the pleasures of the high life - Beluga caviar (a favourite of Pablo Picasso), champagne and cocaine. Ian had taken cocaine circa the first week of the Gulf War* in 1991, consuming four grams a day. On one particular morning of that week, he went on a five-mile run, almost precipitating a heart-attack. Ian gave up Class A drugs at this point, and subsequently alcohol in 1997, but still smokes weed. Ian's criticism of Squire's alleged cocaine use** was relevant in the immediate aftermath of the band's breakup, but the relentless attribution of its significance in their demise is starting to drag on this, his third solo album. Ian's protestations that his poor singing on the Second Coming tour was attributable to the relative size of John Squire's amps are equally questionable.*** Speaking to the NME in October 2009, during promotion of his sixth studio album, 'My Way', Ian described walking in on John Squire taking cocaine at 11am as his personal worst moment in the band. By the time of this interview, Squire had given up music and had effectively withdrawn from the public sphere, making the nature of the comments seem even more to be of an unnecessary personal attack. Contrary to Ian's argument, from an objective viewpoint, one would consider his - and by extension, the band's - lowest moment undoubtedly to be him taking to the Reading stage in August 1996, after staying up all of the previous night, smoking weed and drinking, and delivering a cabaret performance with an inexplicable Pan's People impersonator in tow. The post-Beatles feud between Lennon and McCartney in their solo careers held appeal due to its tit-for-tat nature; the predominantly one-sided element of the post-Roses fallout very soon became tiresome.

On his Music Of The Spheres tour, Ian would break into a rendition of Dillinger's 'Cocaine In My Brain' at the end of The Gravy Train, citing the influence of this song.

Dillinger's 1976 album, 'Cocaine', is bookended by 'Cocaine In My Brain' and 'Marijuana In My Brain', tracks which could be seen to represent the state of mind of the Roses' songwriting pair circa Second Coming. 'Cocaine In My Brain' contains dialogue between John and Jim; The Gravy Train is directed at a John that Ian once knew.

Dillinger, 'Cocaine In My Brain'

The lyric, 'Waiting for the lightning, so exciting after the thunder', is either a blatant disregard of the laws of physics or an oversight; light travels faster than the speed of sound and thus lightning comes before thunder.

* Taken in this context, the lyric, "I don't need no powder", from Straight To The Man, seems to be an expression of Ian's own unsettling experimentation with the drug, as opposed to a disguised jibe at his songwriting partner per se.
** Ian showed a lack of consistency on this topic when speaking about Pete Doherty to Louise Compton of The Sun newspaper, on 16th September 2005: "Pete's alright, he can shoot crack into his eye and I wouldn't knock him."
*** Despite John Squire not having shared a stage with Ian since December 1995, such 'sound problems' have mysteriously continued to plague the singer's solo career to the present day.

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