THE BENDS
Found on: The Bends
Lyrics
Notes
Where do we go from here  
The words are coming out all weird  
Where are you now, when I need you  
Alone on an aeroplane
 Fall asleep on against the window pane
 My blood will thicken  

I need to wash myself again to hide all the dirt and pain  Cos I'd be scared that there's nothing underneath  
But who are my real friends
Have they all got the bends  
Am I really sinking this low   

My baby's got the bends, oh no  
We don't have any real friends, no, no, no   

Just lying in the bar with my drip feed on  
Talking to my girlfriend, waiting for something to happen
I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy
I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen  

Where do we go from here  
The planet is a gunboat in a sea of fear  
And where are you
They brought in the CIA, the tanks and the whole marines,  To blow me away, to blow me sky high

My baby's got the bends  
We don't have any real friends   

Just lying in the bar with my drip feed on  
Talking to my girlfriend, waiting for something to happen
I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy
I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen
I wanna live, breathe
I wanna be part of the human race  
I wanna live, breathe
I wanna be part of the human race, race, race, race   

Where do we go from here  
The words are coming out all weird  
Where are you now when I need you
This track was intially introduced as being about "knowing who your real friends are and when they're going to come to your gigs." Thom soon simplified this to "knowing who your friends are." The song reflects Radiohead sense of humor; it contains many ridiculous lines about the CIA and the Marines.

Of the opening, Thom says, "The sound at the beginning comes from this caterwauling mayhem outside this hotel in the States. There was this guy training these eight-year-old kids, who were parading up and down with all these differents instruments. The guy had this little microphone on his sweater and was going: 'Yeah, keep it up, keep it up.' So I ran out and taped it."
[ back to the nosuch library]
[ back to the lyrics page ]