On his jean jacket,
A badge Graham wore.
Neither 'Rush' nor 'Steve Hackett',
He was no prog rock bore.
Not the 'Pistols', 'Jam', 'Ruts',
This kid was more hard.
This boy had the guts
To wear the badge of The Bard.
He promoted 'Will Power',
A neat play on words.
In his finest hour,
He charmed the posh birds.
"Oh, Graham, you're so cool,"
They'd say with their eyes.
"You can tell that you're no fool.
And tremendously wise."
To be in one's late teens,
In '78,
Neither new wave nor prog scenes
Would get you a date.
You just wore The Bard and
Who needed luck?
Cos Will made you hard and
Guaranteed you a fuck.
Excellent!
ReplyDeleteOle Willy invented over 1500 words and crammed a working vocabulary of over 35ooo words up in 'iz 'ead.(apparently this was about 7 times the average in his day and twice that of our modern high school graduate)....to which I would say
SO!
Sure beats the Keep On Truckin' guy and the mandatory psychodelic silk screened portraits of Hendrix/Ziggy/Zep/Zappa that I displayed on my T-Shirts back in the 70s.
That Graham sounds so cool - I bet he could shake his spear.
ReplyDeleteHE - You were much cooler than Graham. And more so than me with my Yes and Dire Straits t-shirts.
ReplyDeleteKaz - I reckon Graham found his Ophelia eventually. Like in about 1985.
My favourite bit of Hamlet:-
"Ophelia! Ophelia! Isn't it about time I had Ophelia?"
....Please yourselves.
I was always more of a Marlowe fan myself.
ReplyDeleteMarlowe may have guaranteed you a roll in the hay, but of a different stripe.
ReplyDeleteA Marlowe badge may draw more admiring glances than old Shakey.
ReplyDeleteThat's MY FZ t-shirt, dammit.
ReplyDelete*rips it off Homely Escapee*
MJ was cooler than me, too.
ReplyDeleteI was a useless excuse for a teenager.
I didn't care about cool then and I don't care about it now.
ReplyDeleteI would have given you the FZ shirt off my back.
I would have killed to hold onto my Yes one.
ReplyDeleteI had a James t-shirt.
ReplyDeleteOne of those ones with a big 'Ja' on the front, an 'm' on the sleeve, and the 'es' on the back.
I wish i was a little bit older sometimes..
None of us were born at the right time. I was too young for punk and disco.
ReplyDeleteI could've looked like Sid Vicous or the Bee Gees.
I disliked Shakespeare while at school. A few years later, I picked up my sister's Shakespeare text (forget which one) and loved it.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the "Reduced Shakespeare Company" who amalgamate all his plays into one production, complete with audience participation. Great fun!
And he was on Dr Who at the weekend!