G
It was 1962
      C                D
I was two years out of school
       G 
When I got on board a boat
         C              D
that was bound for Liverpool
    G
The day I went away
    C            D
I remember it so well
     G                    Em
Said goodbye to the North Wall
    D              G
And bid a fond farewell

When I got down to the smoke
It was 1963
I got a job doing meals on wheels
Round NW3
I was terrorising grannies
For ten lousy bob a week
I was smashed and blacked
And drunk and young in NW3

In the filth and piss they lived in
They would sometimes hum an air
Or talk in tongues of madness
Keeping time upon the chair
And for their wrists a numbered tab
In Westminster morgue
On a cold hard slab
When I was still a young man
In NW3

Now spent of love and rage
I'm going home again
Never did nobody wrong
Never turned a decent wage
So thanks for sweet fuck all
once more back to the north wall
Said goodbye to all of that
And bid a fond farewell

At the top of the Pentonville Road
I watched the sun setting
The town spread out before me
Looked beautiful to me
Away from all the sighing
The suffering and the dying
I dreamed of the future
Of the young and the free

        G             
But the years they went by quickly
      C             D
Now I swear I won't return here
      G
Where each day just bring me closer
       C          D
To the final misery
   G
My kids will never scrape shit round here
     C                      D
And I won't die crying in a pint of beer
   G                  Em
Or eat their stinking meals on wheels
   D G
In NW3.