I Miss You

I miss you
But I can't complain
Still got you running round my brain
Acres of green grass
Going up in flames
Still got you running round my brain

We walked in the fields by the reservoir
Capable of anything
Never far
from the wheels of industry
Turn us all around
Shaping you and me

I don’t cry myself to sleep
I don’t crawl the ocean floor
Like some ragged claw
Lost to the deep long ago oh no
But I miss you

I miss you
And I know deep down
That you
Miss me too

If I could switch to an alternate theme
Live a double life
Chase the dream
Under no illusion
Under no thumb
I’d turn the clock back in a second, son

Can’t hold back the tears anymore
Throw some sandbags round the door
Maybe I can drown in my misery
What ever happened to you and me ?

The bridge is out
And the phones are down
Heavy weather in the soul

Remember when we were heroes ?
When we were gold
Said I miss you

I miss you
And I know deep down that you
Miss me too

I’m a bad boy
I miss you honey
Yes I do

I’m a bad boy
I miss you honey
Yes I do

I’m a bad boy
I miss you honey
Yes I do

I’m a bad boy
I miss you honey
Yes I
Yes I
Yes I
Yes I do

Lyrics by:
Squire

Available on:
Time Changes Everything (3.51)

Details:
Squire said in an interview that this track was written not only towards Brown ("Acres of green grass going up in flames" referring to Brown's penchant for weed) but also to a past girlfriend. The third verse seems to have been influenced by the following extract from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1919) by T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965), which neatly ties in with the smoking habit of Brown:

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows ?...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas

Eliot's poem examines, through the introspections of the narrator, the emptiness and soulless quality of the bleak social world surrounding him. It is interesting to note that it opens with a passage from Dante's Inferno (Canto 27, lines 61 - 66), as the preceding song on Time Changes Everything, Joe Louis, has elements of this.

John Squire uses the same lines from Eliot's poem as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Dennis Hopper's character, a photojournalist, refers to himself, saying "I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas." This line follows a reference to another famous poem, Rudyard Kipling's (1865 - 1936) 'If'.

Back To John Squire Songs