STEPPENWOLF

You can see my eyes are lupine
The liquid golden fires glare
My loping walk, my slinking spine
Are signs that there is something there
The way my nostrils flare for odour
   The way my ears prick up for > SOUND <   
My hairs electrically aware
Tells me things from miles around


I am a manwolf I am a wolfman

I have half a canine mind

I have half the mind of a man

I am neither of one kind


Maybe it was only an hallucination
I'm no stranger to such things

I have made a thorough investigation
The image had a power that clings

To my jaded imagination
My brain has found the bells it rings
Like a wolf my wilful loafing
Languishing alone in my lair
Where you will never hear me laughing
I'm half in love with Dark and Despair
The Moons The Moons

are  howling  mouth of Mercury
Quicksilver quivering in the sky
It echoes like a cave of chromium
They'll vacuum up my soul when I die

I am a wolfman I am a manwolf

A freak, a fiend, a figment of mind
A species of the steppes and city
I am neither of one kind
Dissolving in the splendour
of this
desolation
The forest has been felled by fog
Exactly a description of my
isolation
I made a note of it
in my log

To the secret of all creation
I follow my own trail like a dog

I am a wolfman
who walks alone in the gas lamp shadows
of the streets at night

I am a manwolf

upright on two feet in the city

dressed somberly as a man
I am a wolfMan
  Under skies heavy with snow   
My eyes are convex lenses of ebony

embedded in amber
I am a manWolf

The fat bourgeois and his
doppel gänger

are buried in their
solid glare
Twin specimens of insect
set for display
I am a wolfMan, the man in me would kill the Wolf
I am a manWolf, the wolf in me would eat the Man

I am a WolfMan

who despises the strivings of all common men

I am a manwolf
Who sees them at work at their daily tasks
at factories office desks
Who watches them
at evening

elbows lift at tavern table

heads lolling in song
Ich weiß nicht was ich sagen
soll
Ich weiß nicht was ich sagen
soll soll
soll

soll
Ich weiß nicht was ich sagen
soll

I

saw a

n e o n
sign reflected
in a p o o l of l i q u i d sky
it was not what I expected
I was only walking by

The sign read

To the M a g i c Theatre

It is not for everyone
It is but

For     M a d m e n     Only

the first performance has begun

I looked up
to

see that notice
where the lights were shining from
But nothing but

blank

wall

was there
and the reflection too was gone

Maybe it was only an hallucination
I'm no stranger to such things
I've made a thorough investigation
The image had a power that clings to my jaded
imagination

My
brain brain
has
found found

the
bell bell

it
rigns rings
rings
the bell it rings

the bell it rings

by <©> Robert Calvert

Music by Hawkwind
images/animations: knut gerwers
LISTEN to an excerpt of Steppenwolf / real audio

taken from:

Astounding Sounds; Amazing Music &
Distances Between Us

Robert Calvert on writing the Steppenwolf song

back to
LYRICS

... more bells to ring ...

Hermann Hesse

the German writer who's book by the same name inspired these lyrics...