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| Pete Atkin sings
National Steel by Clive James and Pete Atkin, [Much more at www.peteatkin.com] |
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| LYRIC: | |||||
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Shining in the window a guitar that wasn't wood It was looking like a silver coin from when they still were good The man who kept the music shop was pleased to let me play Although the price was twenty times what I could ever pay Pick it up and feel the weight and weigh the feel That thing is an authentic National Steel A lacy grille across the front and etchings on the back But the welding sealed a box not even Bukka White could crack I tuned it to an open chord, picked up the nickel slide And bottlenecked a blues that sounded cold yet seemed to glide The National Steel weaves a singing shroud Just as sure as men in winter breathe a cloud Scrapper Blackwell, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Blake Son House or any name you care to take And from many a sad railroad, mine or mill Lonnie Johnson's bitter tears are in there still Be certain, said the man, of who you are There are dead men still alive in that guitar Back there the next morning half demented by desire For that storybook assemblage of heavy plate and wire I sold half the things I valued but I'll never count the cost While I can pick a note like broken bracken in the frost And I hear those fabled names becoming real Every time I feel the weight or weigh the feel Of the vanished years inside my National Steel | |||||
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