‘On the Beach’ is currently not on an album, but may be included in a future compilation.
Lyrics
The sun baked down as I stumbled across the ground.
And I climbed way up to the top of the hill,
And they all seem higher and they always will…
To think I once had a postcard of this view,
Sent by you, how things change.Tarmac sheets criss and cross this land,
It almost seems as if they were planned
To link the red brick piles of utility tiles.
It goes on for miles, down to the beachI am here on the beach, I am here on the beach
The parching of the soil is a lonely sound,
But it’s all that’s left for me to hear.
And the blue sky, once imagined, now seems so real.
It joins the sea down by the beachI am here on the beach, I am here on the beach
But you’re out of reach.Copyright 1995 Graham Armfield
Song history
This song was originally written in the early 1980s during a holiday to southern Spain.
Near where I was staying there were loads of half-finished and deserted house and road developments that seemed to be randomly strewn across the hillside. In the parched soil this seemed like some dystopian post-apocalyptic landscape.
Coincidentally I’d just been reading ‘On the Beach’ by Neville Shute – the cheerful story of the end of the world after a nuclear war.
This is one of the few songs I’ve written where the lyrics came first. I married the desolate lyrics to a gentle acoustic chord sequence and the song was complete.
The song became a regular in the live set of Reset and a very rough 4 track demo was recorded in late 1983.
A later recording was released as part of the Heart Made of Stone EP by Shnaffel in 1995, although this was a completely solo recording.
Recently I’ve been playing ‘On the Beach’ at open-mic nights where it’s been sung by Tracy Ginn.
