From a Dead Beat to an Old Greaser (re‐recorded for the TV special) Songtext
von Jethro Tull

From a dead beat, to an old greaser:
Here's thinking of you.
You won't remember the long nights,
coffee bars, and black tights
and white thighs in shop windows
where blond assistants fully-fashioned a world
made of dummies, with no mummies
or daddies to reject them.


When bombs were banned every Sunday
and the Shadows did F.B.I.
And tired young sax-players sold their instruments
of torture;
sat in the station, sharing wet dreams
of Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac,
Rene Magritte, to name a few of the heroes
who were too wise for their own good;
left the young brood to go on living

without them.

Old queers with young faces, who remember
your name
though you're a dead beat with tired feet;
two ends that don't meet.
From a dead beat to an old greaser:
think you must have me all wrong.
I didn't care, friend; I wasn't there, friend.
If it's the price of a pint that you need, ask me again.