The Thrills Have Gone

Album: La Peste
Released: 2000

This melancholy song about lost love and burnout is made more poignant by the addition of a spoken word monologue by Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six - one of six men wrongly convicted of two pub bombings in Birmingham in 1975. Hill's conviction was overturned in 1991, although the actual perpetrators of the bombing have never been found. He spent 16 years in prison.

In the monologue, Hill discusses the coercive tactics used by the police to obtain a statement from him.

This article says a chance meeting between Alabama 3 and Hill led to an invitation to speak on the album. "The Birmingham 6; Alabama 3, the name is about that kind of thing," says Rob. "Incarceration and diagnosis of mental illness are increasing, as the police lose control over the inner cities and these issues, they're going to hit the techno underclass and the underclass generally. The only good thing with technology is it's allowed c*nts to f**kin' organize".

Lyrics

Don't know if I miss you,
If you miss the part of me that used to feel.
Maybe if I kissed you,
You'd miss the part of you that used to need me.
Maybe if I held you,
If I took some time to tell you,
The only time I hold you now is in my dreams.
Schemes we shared together
Sweet sunsets, rocking chairs,
Are looking just as faded as my jeans

All the thrill are gone.
What used to kill the pain no longer passifies you.
What satisfied me once,
Got me jumping the ring of fire,
Has left me burned out on the wire,
All the thrills are gone.

(There's something missing. it takes quite a while to realise, the whole world is changing.)

Sometimes when I'm walking,
I walk the way you and I would walk.
Sometimes when I'm drinking,
I think about the things we used to talk about.
A lovers lane is lost,
Every telephone is broken,
I can't carry my words home to where I want to be,
Some candlelit location,
Singing on the radio station
Dream is slipping like an anchor to the sea.

All the thrills are gone.
What used to kill the pain no longer passifies you.
What satisfied me once,
Got me jumping the ring of fire,
Has left me burned out on the wire,
All the thrills are gone.

Paddy Hill's Monologue

There was a cop standing there with two guns in his holster, a waist holster. And I remember thinking to myself "Jesus, some poor bastard's in for a hard time." I never thought it would be me.

The Birmingham police come up to see me, they started battering and torturing me. They were telling me things about my wife and telling me that a mob's been seen outside my house, screaming for my wife and kids, for blood and all that sort of thing. And the only thing that was separating the mob from my family was the police, and that if I didn't make a statement they would call off the police cordon and let the mob have my wife and kids.

There's something missing. it takes quite a while to realise, the whole world is changing.

You sit there and people never understand what it's like. You're sitting there, everybody all over the country - government, people on the street, newspapers, radio, television, you name it. Everybody's delighted that you're lammed up - you're a bomber, you're a mass murderer, you're this, you're that and the other. And the bottom line is, you don't really give a fuck about it though because the only thing you think about is your wife and your kids.