Ultravox Lyrics

Saturday Night In The City Of The Dead
While a fat guy zips by, bony in a Zodiac
Picking out trouble, maybe looking for a heart attack
All-night boys in the Piccadilly arcade
(???) trawling for some rough trade

Saturday night
Saturday night
Saturday night in the city of the dead
Can't you feel the time bomb ticking in your head?
Too many memories are burning in your bed
Saturday night in the city of the dead

Dead in the dole queue, face like a statue
Laugh like a maniac, walk like a king too
Spiked hair, don't care, hot spam outlaw
Rad man (?) rips it out, you're buzzing like a chainsaw

(Chorus)

High-rise reptile sucking on a cigarette
Ripped suit, zip boots, dancing like an insect
Tottenham Court Rolexes the excuses (?) in the wind hide
The city's pretty dead but I'm still alive

(Chorus)

Saturday night
Saturday night
Saturday night
Saturday night in the city of the dead

Saturday night

(Repeat and fade)

Life At Rainbow's End
Streets I knew were raining, changing
Addresses were rearranging
The cold boy from the suburbs he left there
He'd read the book of no return
And me, I burnt your picture
For the ashes of the lords
For you had played your games too well
As the martyr and the boss

Chorus:

I suppose I chose a good introduction
From a formerly trusted friend
A good introduction to life at rainbow's end
Life at rainbow's end
Life at rainbow's end

Here I am a millionaire
Sown into these dreams
I burnt all the maps that lead here
So no-one can ever follow me

Only lonely parties start
At the dark side of this world
The gangster with the broken (?) arm
Plays deaf cards for the girls
I saw the final vicar make confession to a dancer
He stood upon the bridge at dawn
And the dancer kissed my cancer

(Chorus)

Slip Away
Enter me gently
I break in the light
Cover my eyes
With the rags of my life
Was I dreaming?
Or did you say:
"The frontiers are falling
It's time to be slipping away
Let's slip away
Let's slip away"

All things fall from me
The bonds and the veils
All things blow by me
My sorrows have sails
Was I dreaming?
Or did you say:
"The empires are fading
It's time to be slipping away
Let's slip away
Let's slip away"

What am I to do?
Don't leave me
What is there to say?
I really...
We're just wasting time
Let the night takes its place
Colour my eyes
With the dusk of this wonderful day
Let's slip away
Let's slip away

Letters from lovers
Are lining my grave (?)
Some came too early
And some came too late
Were you speaking?
Or did I say:
"The frontiers have fallen
It's time to be slipping away
As you call me
My hands they fall open
My mouth it is frozen
The (???) stumbles is (???)
I'm falling slow-motion
Dissolve"

I Want To Be A Machine
I found the bones of all your ghosts
Locked in the wishing well
While birdsong gourmets dragged empty nets
I slumbered in my shell

In mitternacht, die mensch-maschine
Kissed me on my eyes
I rose and left the fire-ladies
Glowing lonely in the night
With all the pornographers
Burning torches beneath the sea

Chorus:

I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine
I want to be a machine

I stole a cathode face from newscasts
And a crumbling fugue of songs
From the reservoir of video souls
In the lakes beneath my tongue
In flesh of ash and silent movies
I walked at boulevards again
A nebula of unfinished creatures
From the lifetimes of my friends
I hope your innocence has depraved me

(Chorus)

Broadcast me, scrambled clean
Or free me from this flesh
Let the armchair cannibals take their fill
In every cell across wilderness
We'll trip such a strangled tango
We'll waltz a wonderland affair
Let's run to meet the tide tomorrow
Leave all emotion dying there
In the star cold beyond all of your dreams

(Chorus)

Ah!

Wide Boys
I took a walk down New York avenue
Wearing my latest disguise
Enjoying the perfume of utter dismay
I was effectively anaesthetised
Starving so arrogantly in jumble-sale clothes
Evangeline hires out my throat
We've got the streets of London wrapped in our beds
Nagasaki in our own coats

We're the wide boys
Up on the streets
Wide boys
Ah, go on and meet me
Wide boys
Delightfully unpleasant
With the foxy adolescent (???)

Tired of being put down
Broken-hearted my life (???) started
Tired of being cut down
All your illusions disillusioned (???)

Wide boys
Up on the streets
Wide boys
Ah, go on and meet me
Wide boys
Delightfully unpleasant
With the foxy adolescent (???)

We'll do some music plays the wrong side of nightmare
Juke-box models collide
The scent on the fire escaping blazing to the sun
Embracing the old suicide pride
I spent a few lifetimes making spinal connections
Down on Einstein Boulevard
I've to to walk a tightrope now the rampart is so high
I swagger like a neon guitar

With the wide boys
Up on the streets
Wide boys
Ah, go on and meet me
Wide boys
Delightfully unpleasant
With the foxy adolescent (???)

Wide boys
Up on the streets
Wide boys
Ah, go on and meet me
Wide boys
Delightfully unpleasant
With the foxy adolescent (???)

Dangerous Rhythm
Chorus:

Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm
Dangerous rhythm in the air

Stranger to stranger
We're both dressed for danger
Something is generating here

Oh, take off your halo
For the all-night inferno
Something is happening in the air

It's not like anything I've ever known before
And I don't care

(Chorus)

Surging and merging
Urgent and urging
Soft as a footstep on the stair

The red light is on now
My gravity's gone and how
I can feel something in the air

It's not like anything I've ever known before
And I don't care

(Repeat chorus twice and fade)

The Lonely Hunter
Chorus:

Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter

I'm a lonely hunter, a hungry ghost
When you call a passion you must pay the host
Look upon me as I thunder, I wonder if you wonder
How it feels to be the lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter

The wind blows clouds across my cheek
My collar's up and my coat is sleek
Look upon me as I blunder, I wonder if you wonder
How it feels to be the lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter
Lonely hunter

(Repeat chorus three times)

The Wild, The Beautiful And The Damned
Calling cards of madness
Pull the brass men from their knees
To petrify more images to dangle just outside the reach
Of the stunted and the dreamless ones who have nothing left to keep
For frozen dawns or nights as cold as these have been

Don't ask for explanations
There's nothing left you'd understand
You're one of the wild, the beautiful and the damned
The wild, the beautiful and the damned

We read the latest venereal journals
Flicked through some catalogues of fear
You tore some more pages from your old lovers hearts
Then we engineered a wild reunion in a Berlin alleyway
While your New York fuehrer (?) tore our universe apart

(Chorus)

Break my legs politely
I'll spit my gold teeth out at you
Your sores are almost big enough to step right inside now
I'll send you truckloads of flowers from all the worlds that you stole from me
I'll spin a coin in the madhouse while I watch you drowning

(Chorus)

The wild, the beautiful and the damned

(Repeat and fade)

My Sex
My sex
Waits for me
Like a mongrel waits
Downwind on a tight rope leash

My sex
Is a fragile acrobat
Sometimes I'm a novocaine shot
Sometimes I'm an automat

My sex
Is often solo
Sometimes it short circuits then
Sometimes it's a golden glow

My sex
Is invested in
Suburban photographs
Skyscraper shadows on a carcrash overpass

My sex
Is savage, tender
It wears no future faces
Owns just random gender

My sex
Has a wanting wardrobe
I still explore
Of all the bodies I knew and those I want to know

My sex
Is a spark of electro flesh
Leased from the tick of time
And geared for synchromesh

My sex
Is an image lost in faded films
A neon outline
On a high-rise overspill

My sex

(Repeat and fade)