‘Dressed as knights, we’d walk onstage to the sound of the William Tell overture. I’d quote Henry V and the crowd would shout, “You’re the rightful king of England!”’
I’d worked up the basic idea on Stiff Records’ three-month tour of the northern hemisphere. It’s near-impossible to write songs on the road because you lack the basic solitude, so I’d retire to the tour coach latrine. The melody was really a boogie-blues progression, part-inspired by Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky and Canned Heat’s On the Road Again. But lyrics only flowed when we came off the tour. Rehearsing near our favourite drinking haunt, the Castle on Holloway Road, London, provided the opening line: “Deep in the castle and back from the war.”