Life On Mars? (Truncated) [Live Storytellers Version]

[Intro]
There's so many stories I could tell you, I wish I could
Have more time to tell you things like—
The things I could tell you
Oh, you don't know the half of it

[Verse]
It's on America's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
And the workers have struck for fame
For Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog and clowns

[Pre-Chorus]
But the film is a saddening bore
For I've lived it ten times or more
It's about to be lived again
As I ask you to focus on

[Chorus]
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh, man, look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh, man, wonder if he'll ever know
It's the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

[Interlude]
Thank you, Michael
And welcome to Storytellers
Well, I'd like to bring on, uh
The rest of the artists who will be working with us tonight
In ab— In about 1968
My then publisher, um, asked me if I would do, uh
An English lyric for a French song that he was managing at the time
It's called, um, "Comme d'habitude"
Sorry, "Comme d'habitude"
And I said I'd have a— a crack at it
And I turned in
The pitifully awful titled "Even A Fool Learns To Love"
Which he rejected out of hand quite rightly, I feel
And it passed on to Paul Anka who did his own English lyric
And he called it, simply and effectively, "My Way"
Uh, so, in retaliation, haha, yeah, right
In retaliation, I wrote "Life On Mars"
But then I got my comeuppance
When miss Barbara Streisand decided to cover Mars
Going through one of her slightly more lost periods
She had her then-husband come hairdresser
Produce and arrange and probably blow-dry it
Anyway