Making The Perfect Man

"This is another one in the same style as Brother John. The atmosphere starts on a very windy night, somewhere in Transylvania, and there's a peal of thunder - crash! It's way after midnight, the village is all asleep, and suddenly the church bell starts - bong, bong, bong - at which everybody rushes out of their homes. It's a traditional thing; they hear the bell and all rush out to find out what's going on. As they do, they come across the village idiot, sort of pointing up at the castle on the hill. There's lights blazing and he says 'There's something going on. I don't know what it is - we'll have to go up there.' Of course, it's Dr Frankenstein's castle. So they all light the torches and go up towards the castle - you know, the old scene, I'm drawing on people's movie memory here; they run out of their homes, light torches, bang on doors and then, in an absolute mob, they rush up the hill to the castle. Someone goes ahead, climbs over the castle wall, to find out what's going on. He comes back to tell them what he's seen, and he says 'It's horrible: There's this monster on a bed and there's this magician raising up the living from the dead. Keep away! They're making the perfect man.' So they burst into the castle. The monster is still tied down and they call for the local village doctor, who has a good look at it and says 'He's got pistol on his fingers, he's got love on the brain.' So they're actually making the perfect man; he's got guns built into his hands, and he's sex mad. And the doctor continues 'He's got a tongue good for lying, and the legs fast enough to run away at a hell of a speed; he will fool all of the people all of the time - someday.' Obviously, this is the perfect man. And the crowd say 'What will he be?' And the response is 'He'll be a leader of the country, he'll be a member of the Press or he'll be a banker, selling moonbeams - you can watch your money going West.' So there's a little dig in there, you see? Anyway, then the monster wakes up and he says 'You'd probably like to spend a night with me, and I'll show you what I really can do...' It's going to be a wild one this song and, you see, I wrote it live; it was all written for live performance. OK, so the crowd come in again, it's all very theatrical, and they go 'What will he be?' Probably a politician. He has all the qualities to make a great politician or a great journalist or a great banker, thieving all your money. It's a lot of fun, and I think I've spotted the three areas, certainly in recent times, of professions people are dubious about. After all, who can trust politicians these days? Secondly, there's a certain element in the Press - the gutter Press and the intelligent Press, too - who think it's their moral right to expose other people's weaknesses. But that's a bit like Murphy's dog - you know the story about Murphy's dog? Well, this was a dog that used to live in Cork, and Murphy used to take it around. The dog used to leap on everything that moved, and the good citizens or Cork would hear these squeals and shouts - and it would be Murphy's dog at it again. They'd say 'Ah, there's Murphy's dog...' Anyway, one Sunday afternoon the good folk are all walking around and they suddenly hear the most dreadful, awful screams from a dog. So they look over to where the commotion is coming from - and it's Murphy's dog being ridden by a bigger dog. Murphy's dog is getting the wind knocked right out of it. And one of the locals looks over and says `Ah, that's Murphy's dog; he can give it - but he can't take it.' This is my opinion of journalists... if you try and criticise a journalist in public, oooh, they hate that - but they don't mind dishing it out. They just hate being told exactly what you think of them. The same thing applies to politicians. As for bankers, well, with BCCI you can watch your money going West - a lot of people will be only too sadly aware of that."


"'Making The Perfect Man' was a fun song for me. And it's an ironic look at the old story of Shelley about the Frankenstein monster. It's almost like we are creating Frankenstein monsters around us and one of them is the media which can sometimes be looked upon as a blind monster, falling around the place and crushing everything in its way as it tries to gobble up stories as food. The idea 'watch your money going west', this is an old expression. To watch something going west, I think, comes from North America back in the Cowboy and Indian days where people looking to make a fortune went West. And I think a lot of them either made fortunes or lost fortunes, so to watch your money go West, it has nothing to do with the Western world, our economic world or geographical world. It's just an expression about saying goodbye to something."