The Songs of Richard Thompson: "Cooksferry Queen"

This song is apparently about a blues club in London in the 1960s, whose owner used to be a gangster, until he met a hippie chick who introduced him to to LSD. Sometimes drugs can change people for the better.

It's from the great 1999 album "Mock Tudor", which is sort of a concept album or song cycle about the outer suburbs of London.

The song rocks, and I like the couplets that build on "Alice in Wonderland" and Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit": "She gave me one pill to get bigger / She gave me one pill to get small / I saw snakes dancing all around her feet /And dead men coming through the wall"






Well there's a house in an alley
In the squats and low-rise
Of a town with no future
But that's where my future lies

It's a secret, but no secret
It's a rule, but no rule
Where you find the darkest avenue
There you'll find the brightest jewel

Now my name it is Mulvaney
And I'm known quite famously
People speak my name in whispers
What higher praise can there be

But I'd trade my fine mohair
For tied-dyes and faded jeans
If she wanted me some other way
She's my Cooksferry Queen

She gave me one pill to get bigger
She gave me one pill to get small
I saw snakes dancing all around her feet
And dead men coming through the wall
Well I'm the prince of this parish
I've been ruthless and I've been mean
But she blew my mind as she opened my eyes
She's my Cooksferry Queen

Yeaaaaah

Well she's got every rare perfection
All her looks beyond compare
She's got dresses that seem to float in the wind
Pre-Raphaelite curls in her hair

She could get the lame to walking
She could get the blind to see
She could make wine out of Thames river water
She could make a believer out of me

Yes I'd trade it all tomorrow
All the wicked things I've been
She's my bright jewel of the alley
She's my Cooksferry Queen

Yes I'd trade it all tomorrow
All the wicked things I've been
She's my bright jewel of the alley
She's my Cooksferry Queen