I seen a hand, I seen a vision
It was reaching through the clouds,
To risk a dream
A shadow cross the sky
And it crushed into the ground,
Just like a beast
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
I seen a woman, standing in the snow
She was silent as she watched them take her man
Teardrops burned her cheeks
for she thought she'd heard,
The shadow had left this land
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
The crowds just gathered, their faces turned away
And they queue all day like dragons of disgust
All the women whispering
Wondering just what these young hot-heads want of us
And entres vie he cries
with eyes that ring like chimes
His anti-worlds go spinning through his head
He burns them in his dreams
for half awake they may as well be dead
The old man's back again
I see he's back again
I see a soldier, He's standing in the rain
For him there's no old man to walk behind
Devoured by his pain
bewildered by the faces who pass him by
He'd like another name the one he's got's a curse
These people cried
Why can't they understand
His mother called him Ivan then she died
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
I can see him back again
It was reaching through the clouds,
To risk a dream
A shadow cross the sky
And it crushed into the ground,
Just like a beast
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
I seen a woman, standing in the snow
She was silent as she watched them take her man
Teardrops burned her cheeks
for she thought she'd heard,
The shadow had left this land
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
The crowds just gathered, their faces turned away
And they queue all day like dragons of disgust
All the women whispering
Wondering just what these young hot-heads want of us
And entres vie he cries
with eyes that ring like chimes
His anti-worlds go spinning through his head
He burns them in his dreams
for half awake they may as well be dead
The old man's back again
I see he's back again
I see a soldier, He's standing in the rain
For him there's no old man to walk behind
Devoured by his pain
bewildered by the faces who pass him by
He'd like another name the one he's got's a curse
These people cried
Why can't they understand
His mother called him Ivan then she died
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
I can see him back again
Contributed by Alessandro - 2010/2/1 - 12:47
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Album "Scott 4"
"Scott Walker’s passionate leftist political beliefs had been no secret by the time “The Old Man’s Back Again” was written and recorded, but the event which prompted one of his most pointed songs found him tackling not a right-wing dictatorship (as he later would with “The Electrician”) but a left-wing one. The subtitle – “Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime”) specifically refers to the repressive Czech government that overthrew the Prague Spring era in 1968 with Soviet military help, the ‘old man’ himself being the ghost of Stalin returned to a horrific new life. “The Old Man’s Back Again” found Walker blending a symbolic lyric of destruction and death with a striking combination of rumbling, prominent funk bass and a post- Ennio Morricone western-orchestral arrangement, stabbing strings courtesy Peter Knight and mournful, almost Russian chorale-tinged wordless calls coming to the fore. As is often the case with Walker, his smooth singing power sugars the pill, exchanging open rage or a cynical snarl with a stance that’s uneasy listening, at once romantically evocative and bitterly condemnatory. (Ned Raggett su Allmusic)