The members of Play Dead have stated many times in interviews that the decision not to publish lyrics on record sleeves was a deliberate one. A couple of different reasons for this have been given, depending on who was doing the talking, but Rob Hickson’s main reasoning was that “…I really had no intention of explaining them. I wasn’t keen on making it too easy for the listener and I enjoyed not having to answer any questions on what the songs were really about”.
All of which made Rob’s recent decision to donate copies of the lyrics to this site all the more welcome and unexpected. But equally fascinating are the copies of his original notebooks, which he’s also supplied and these contain the lyrics in his own handwriting, some of which feature early versions of songs which were redrafted before they were recorded. Copies of the pages from these notebooks can be found here and links to plain text versions of the words can be found below.