Download lyric sheet with chords
Walk around your town and you’ll be shocked at what they’ve done
They’ve knocked down all the terraces and put up brand new slums.
With wood-look doors and wood-look floors, with plastic and with steel
It’s a pity that the people left to live in them are real
Walk around your town and you’ll be shocked at what they’ve done
They’ve knocked down all the terraces and put up brand new slums.
With wood-look doors and wood-look floors, with plastic and with steel
It’s a pity that the people left to live in them are real
Chorus
Bricks and mortar, sand and water, concrete, iron and steel
Bricks and mortar, sons and daughters think and breathe and feel
A town can be constructed but communities are grown
It takes more than bricks and mortar to make a house a home
They’ve lasted for a hundred years in peace time and in war
And with nothing but a lick of paint they’d last a hundred more
With care and ingenuity they’d still be going strong
When the little concrete boxes that they’re building now are gone
I saw the red brick terraces the old front doors and sashes
Reduced to heaps of rubble and to piles of smouldering ashes
And through the smoke I saw the old folks watching from the path
While unconcerned the workmen burned their future and their past
And I wondered if they really wanted patios and ponds
Or if they’d prefer the terraces put back where they belong
And I wondered if some nine-to-fiver lumbered with the task
Had ever even bothered to get off his arse and ask
It takes more than plans and promises to make a place to live
And more than good intentions if that’s all you have to give
You can’t build flesh and feelings or get blood out of a stone
It takes more than bricks and mortar to make a house a home
It’s the friends and it’s the families, the well to do and poor
The Preacher and the Publican, the bloke who lives next door
The mothers and the lovers and the sisters and the wives
Make the difference in the end between a living and a life
© 1993 His Worship & the Pig