Back to index of Nerve 16 - Summer 2010

Ian Prowse, of the Liverpool band Amsterdam, explains to outsiders how he came to write the iconic song:

“Does This Train Stop on Merseyside?”

“Some songs take 15 minutes to write some take 15 years, either method can produce a cracker or a stinker. This song took 15 minutes. Well actually, most of it took 15 minutes, the final verses I had to think about long and hard.

Not many cities can stand up to this sort of examination in song and not end up boring the listener. Liverpool is exceptional though. In England but not of it, facing out across the sea with its back to the rest of the country, the once magnificent second city of Empire, as exemplified by its fantastic architecture. Liverpool people though lived cheek by jowl with splendour and utter depravity, most ripped from their motherland across the Irish sea by a great hunger which, if not facilitated by their new homeland was certainly exacerbated by it. Liverpool was always thus! A crazy seaport of the best and worst of all humanity.

I started the song with a rumour, the grave of McKenzie, a ghost story about a Liverpool merchant who entered into a deal with the devil. As ghost stories go it’s a brilliant one. Seaports specialise in these. I go on to contrast the mundane nature of commercial airliners flying out of John Lennon Airport with the completely unimaginable actions of a child on child murder. The dark and still not openly spoken about horror of Liverpool’s central position in the trade of human beings as slaves is firmly nailed, those Africans ripped from their homes and culture and made to work that most pernicious of needless crops, sugar cane, are honourably mentioned in my song.

The Beatles though not directly mentioned are everywhere in it really. Mathew Street, the city’s most famous thoroughfare and home of the Cavern and Alan Williams the very first manager of the four mop tops who conquered America. He leads the charge most days in the old pubs like The Marlborough with stories of Merseybeat past, and the ghosts of long gone four piece beat groups will forever reverberate around the cellars of this city.

The final lines of my song concern the awful tragedy at Hillsborough in 1989 and the dreadful still not admitted mistakes made by the South Yorkshire police force were the most difficult to write. It’s still a burning issue within the city and everyone knows someone who didn’t come back that day. We all demand Justice for the 96.Listen to my song, then come and visit. Liverpool is alive, its people are its gold. Be warned though. It’s just as likely to offend as to thrill. We have a river running through it and a sea that crashes inside all of us.”

"Does This Train Stop on Merseyside?"

McKenzie’s soul lies above the ground
In that pyramid near Maryland
Easyjet is hanging in the air
Taking everyone to everywhere

See the slave ships sailing into port
The blood of Africa’s on every wall
Now there’s a layline runs down Mathew Street
It’s giving energy to all it meets

Does this train stop on Merseyside?

Alan Williams in the Marlboro Arms
Giving a story out to everyone
Famine boats are anchored in the bay
Bringing in the poor and desperate

Does this train stop on Merseyside?

Boston babies bouncing on the ground
The Riggers beaming out to every town
Why don’t you remember

Can’t conceive what those children done
Guess there’s a meanness in the soul of man
Yorkshire policemen chat with folded arms
While people try and save their fellow fans

Does this train stop on Merseyside?

Thanks to Ron Noon for this article: www.lovelanelives.com/index.php/project

Printer friendly page

Comments are closed on this article