Song Of A Bass-Player

by Clive James and Daryl Runswick

They drop the keyboard cover on the old upright piano
The evening's jazz is over, it was midnight hours ago
And a whole new day is dawning, the trumpeters and tenor men with their little leather cases
Slip away into the morning like doctors on their rounds

But who's this weaving on after
Half an hour behind the laughter
With an impossible great parcel
Emitting intermittent hollow thunking sounds
The guy on the double bass is

I'm the hands you half remember
I'm the face you can't quite place
Peeping shyly round the corner
Of the thumping lump of lumber
I'm the guy on the double bass

I'm the hands you half remember
I'm the face you can't quite place
Peeping shyly round the corner
Of the thumping lump of lumber
I'm the guy on the double bass

I'll tell you this in secret
But for Pete's sake keep it quiet
I hate the bass, I loathe the bass
Despise it and defy it

It isn't cute, it isn't sweet, it isn't small, it isn't skinny
It needs flags on when you tie it to the roof rack of the Mini

It needs a room of its own
When I see it every morning I have to persuade myself it hasn't grown
This thing is bigger than both of us, darling

Other instruments sound menacing maybe
But only the bass is menacing to see
For only a bass can loom
And when you touch it accidentally it goes Boom

I'm the hands you half remember
I'm the face you can't quite place
Peeping shyly round the corner
Of the thumping lump of lumber
I'm the guy on the double bass

Since the beginning of the human race
One thing has united players of the double bass
they're all... tall
They have to be to reach top G
They have to be six feet easily

But not many people can stand the pace
In the race to be an ace on the double bass
Anyone small would take a terrific mauling
If the thing started falling

It would be appalling
Be appalling

At eleven in the evening there's a phone call
It's dramatic, persistent and persuasive
Excited and emphatic

'There's a session at my place' the voice says, 'We need you badly'
But I'm slow to be ecstatic and I head there rather sadly

For I already know in this case
There simply isn't space on his staircase for my bass
And I'll be playing in the garden while the band plays in the attic

Damn and blast your cedar carcass
You bass creature
One of these days I'm gonna grab you round the neck, and...

I'm the hands you half remember
I'm the face you can't quite place
Peeping shyly round the corner
Of the thumping lump of lumber
I'm the guy on the double bass

I'm the hands you half remember
I'm the face you can't quite place
Peeping shyly round the corner
Of the thumping lump of lumber
With the tone as sweet as amber
From its mild and mellow timbre
Ticking over like a humber
Like a heartbeat under slumber
Under every single number
Swift or swinging, soft or sombre
I'm the guy on the double bass
Clive and Daryl wrote this song