20,000 Days on Earth Page #5

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and then he tried to get up on the piano

and he couldn't,

and it was one of the wildest things

I'd ever seen.

He was just trying to get up,

and then they ran up behind him

and they were trying to get him up there,

and he's...

going like this.

It was phenomenal, and then he walked

off. The power blew in the place.

The guitar player,

who was about 70 or something,

picked up his amp,

put it under his arm and walked off,

like this old amp he must have had

since day one, you know,

and it was like,

that's what it was like about, you know.

You're seeing a show, you know.

WARREN:
Do you want

salt and pepper with that?

- No.

- Is that enough?

No, I'm all right.

I might just put that there for a second.

Mm.

I don't know

if they're gonna be able to...

WOMAN:
Vous Vous taisez, d'accord?

Oh, il fait chaud, huh?

(MUSIC PLAYS)

# I've got a feeling

that just won't go away

# You've got to just keep on pushing

# Keep on pushing

# Push the sky away... #

OK, let's...

- (SYNTHESISER STOPS)

- Yeah. Um...it sounded really good.

- Just we need to join...

- Push, push the sky away.

...the idea

of bringing the sky later.

The "away" later. Push. They're going...

- # Push the sky away... #

- You've got to just...you've got to...

It's not good. It's gotta do it at the

same...the way I'm doing it, yeah?

- OK. It's actually like one word.

- D'accord.

- (WOMAN SPEAKS FRENCH)

- # You've got to just... #

- Tell...tell them.

- Oui, oui.

Hey...hey, juste...juste un petit truc.

Um...push the sky away.

Ensemble. Sky away.

- Pas sky...away.

- Ah, oui, d'accord.

Ensemble.

# Push the sky away...

# You've got to just keep on pushing

# Keep on pushing

# Push the sky away. #

- Bravo! C'est fini.

- OK.

WARREN:
C'est bon. Super.

Bravo, tout le monde.

KEVIN:
Well done, mate, yeah.

You've got a future career there.

WARREN:
Well, it was my original career,

until I discovered heroin

and alcohol and then...

(LAUGHS)

...it kinda all went wrong after that.

- Couldn't juggle the three professions.

- (LAUGHS)

(HELICOPTER WHIRRING)

There's a helicopter.

I've probably had more meals with you

than my wife, actually, when I...

- We've had a lot. We've had a lot.

- ...if I do the mathematics.

- (PHONE RINGS)

- We have had a lot...a lot of bad ones.

(WARREN LAUGHS)

- Right, I've gotta go.

- WARREN:
Yeah.

I've gotta go to the archive.

(SEAGULLS CRY)

NICK:
You've gotta understand

your limitations.

It's your limitations that make you the

wonderful

disaster you most probably are.

For me, that's where

collaboration comes in,

to take an idea that is blind and unformed

and that has been hatched

largely in solitude

and allow these strange

collaborator creatures that I work with

to morph it into something else,

something better.

Well, that's really something to see.

BLIXA BARGELD:
I mean, with

the last record that I participated in,

on Nocturama,

it wasn't open like that any more.

You came with basically fixed songs,

in the sense of musically as well as

lyrically, to the studio, and we were...

I was just trying with that record to...

...you know, disrupt the process slightly

and...maybe that...

Yeah, I noticed that you wanted to...

that you wanted to

go somewhere different.

- It wasn't much...

- So, is that why you left?

No, no, no, no, no.

I left basically because of our management

and because I felt that I can't keep up

a marriage and two bands.

- Right.

- Time was becoming a problem.

I had had no personal conflict with you

or anyone else in the band.

- No. No, I...I didn't think so.

- I had no musical schisma either.

(SIREN BLARING)

(SIREN BLARING)

I...I sometimes listen

to the records we made...

BLIXA:
Yeah.

...and I really wish there was

someone in the studio who had have...

- Tell you that this is too much.

- ...told me it's too long,

"Edit," you know,

and now I'm brutal with editing,

and the lovely thing about editing,

when you're actually sitting there

and doing the take,

and you ask, "How long is the song?"

and they say, "Six minutes,"

and then you take out a couple of verses.

And suddenly it's better than before.

Suddenly...well, suddenly,

it's a different song.

In fact, you don't even know

what the song really is until...

- Yeah.

- ...some time later when you kind of...

BLIXA:
Yeah, I know that feeling.

...because

of the ramifications of the edit.

Once you've understood the song,

it's no longer of much interest,

and some of those...

some of those great songs that you do,

that you kind of become aware

of new things over the years,

- with songs and...

- Yes.

...the reason why you keep

playing them, for me...

- Yes..

- and some of those others...

Others just alienate their selves

- and go somewhere else and...

- Yeah.

...you don't find the door any longer

to be able to...to bring something

out of it that's still true.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Yeah.

NICK:
I love the feeling of a song

before you understand it.

When we're all playing deep inside the moment,

the song feels wild and unbroken.

Soon it will become domesticated

and we will drag it back

to something familiar and compliant

and we'll put it in the stable

with all the other songs.

But there is a moment

when the song is still in charge

and you're just clinging on for dear life

and you're hoping you don't fall off

and break your neck or something.

It is that fleeting moment

that we chase in the studio.

NICK:
How long was that? How long is it?

(GUITAR PLAYING)

# Can't remember anything at all

# Flame trees line the streets

# Can't remember anything at all

# But I'm driving my car down to Geneva

# I been sitting in my basement patio

# Aye, it was hot

# Up above, girls walk past

# The roses all in bloom

# Have you ever heard

about the Higgs boson blues?

# I'm going down to Geneva, baby

# Gonna teach it to you

# Who cares?

# Who cares what the future brings?

# Black road long

And I drove and drove

# I came upon a crossroad

# The night was hot and black

# I see Robert Johnson

# With a ten-dollar guitar

strapped to his back

# Looking for a tune

#Ah

# Well, here comes Lucifer

with his canon law

# And a hundred black babies

running from his genocidal jaw

# He got the real killer groove

# Robert Johnson and the devil, man

# Dunno know who's gonna rip off who

# Driving my car

# Flame trees on fire

# Sitting and singing

# The Higgs boson blues

# A shot rings out

# To a spiritual groove

# Everybody bleeding

# To that Higgs boson blues

# And if I die tonight

# Bury me in my favourite

patent yellow leather shoes

# And with a mummified cat

# And a cone-like hat

# That the caliphate forced on the Jews

# Can you feel my heartbeat?

# Can you feel my heartbeat... #

Ssh!

(MUSIC QUIETENS)

# Hannah Montana

does the African savanna

# As the simulated rainy season begins

# She curses the queue at the Zulu

# Moves on to Amazonia

and cries with the dolphins

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