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"Stretch Out And Wait" (Morrissey/Marr) These words are transcribed without permission the way they appear in the "The World Won't Listen" and "Louder Than Bombs" albums. Additions to the printed lyrics are in darker text while omissions are striken out. As the single version compiled on "Louder Than Bombs" is different to the alternate version on "The World Won't Listen", the variations are given separately. "Louder Than Bombs" aka single version "The World Won't Listen" alternate version 1 Up to the Scottish tour of September 1985 Morrissey didn't change these lyrics. In Dundee on that tour he started changing the intro by singing "With the lies that you say, what's at the back of your mind, oh the three day debate with the lies that you say, what's at the back of your mind". At the next gig in Lerwick, he sang "All the lies that you say, what's at the back of your mind... Ah your face I can see and it's desperately kind, what's at the back of your mind". From these Scottish dates throughout 1986 Morrissey settled on the intro from the alternate version that would later be released on "The World Won't Listen". When he resurrected the song on the Greatest Hits tour in 2007-2008 he at first preferred the original single intro, but as the tour progressed he switched back and forth between that and the alternate intro. On dates where he went for the alternate lyrics he would actually replace "desperately kind" with "moderately kind", "more or less kind", "really quite nice" or "really not bad". By the summer of 2008 he had settled on the latter change actually. 2 A week or two after he resurrected the song on the Greatest Hits tour in 2007 Morrissey changed this line to "it's the Manchester blood in my veins". The change remained standard afterwards. 3 From September 1985 to the end of the Smiths days Morrissey extended this line to "Ignore all the silly codes of the day". After resurrecting the song on his Greatest Hits tour in late 2007 he rarely did the change, until early 2008 when he started doing it on and off. 4 Now and then in the summer of 2008 Morrissey sang "let yourself be yourself". 5 Now and then on the UK/France leg of the Greatest Hits tour in early 2008 Morrissey changed 'puny body' to 'skinny body'. 6 When he resurrected the song on the Greatest Hits tour in 2007 Morrissey usually sang the "will the world end in the day time?" line before the "...night time" one instead of the other way around. This remained so when the tour returned to Europe and the UK in 2008, and then Morrissey actually sang a variation on "Will the world end in the daytime, I really hope so... or will the world end in the night time, don't ask me I don't know". 7 For about one week after he reintroduced the song on the third American leg of the Greatest Hits tour in 2007 Morrissey followed the question "is there any point ever having children?" with something like "I would say no", "lemme think... no!", "don't be silly" or "obviously, no!". Then for the remainder of that leg he would just point the microphone to the audience and let them supply a loud shout of "No!". On the following leg which took place in the UK and France in early 2008 he started by handing the microphone to the fans for the answer, then halfway into the leg went back to shouting, moaning or sighing the answer himself. It remained this way for the summer dates of 2008. 8 On the Greatest Hits tour in 2007-2008 Morrissey often changed "how can you consciously contemplate" to "how can you stand there and contemplate".
Quotes
"In The Smiths' song, 'Stretch Out And Wait', there is a line 'God, how sex implores you'. To make choices, to change and to be different, to do something and make a stand, and I always found that very, very encroaching on any feelings that I felt that I just wanted to be me, which was somewhere between this world and the next world, somewhere between this sex and the next sex, but nothing really political, but nothing really threatening to anybody on earth and nothing really dramatic. Just being me as an individual and not wishing to make any elaborate, strangulating statements." |