Lyric sheets
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Your support makes all the difference.Cosy Powell, one of this country's best rock drummers, died in a car crash this week. A certain pop poet once sang in a glam rock band which supported Cosy Powell's Hammer at Norwich Theatre Royal in 1974.
Elegy For a Drummer
A drumstick thrown into the air
Higher than the lighting rig
Frozen by the follow-spot
Seemingly just hanging there
And in the dark
The band stands by
The audience rows
With mouths like Os
Await a drummer, clad in black
Who'll catch the thing behind his back
Without a glance, will catch the stick
And cue the band in with a click
Don't knock it `til you've seen the trick
Or stood backstage
In some strange town
And craned to see the thing to come down
Dropping like a splintered bird
Past a battered lighting stand
Out of darkness. Into hand.
Cozy died. You never heard?
Good drummers then.
What's it to us?
Essential to a band? Discuss...
And of how many bands d'you say:
"The drummer's good. I've seen him play?"
You noticed him. The bloke stood out.
A power-house?
The world's too trite
Does not explain the light and shade
Of which a decent drummer's made
Or whether he has got the look
The maze-bright eyes of rock star rats
The sparkling of a tinderbox.
And timing of atomic clocks
"Was worth his weight in gaffer tape."
A roadie I once knew might say
And while obituaries are done,
Everyone.
A drumstick thrown into the air
Higher than the lighting rig
Frozen by the follow-spot
Seemingly just hanging there.......
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