NEXT

Ontem dei a conhecer a interpretação bem estranha da canção de Brel "AU SUIVANT" pelo senhor Matthieu -M- CHEDID. A mesma canção já foi cantada em inglês pelo Scott Walker e chamava-se NEXT. Mas hoje encontrei esta versão, interpretada pelo irlandês JACK L, bem menos polida que a do Scott.
O texto em inglês é de MORT SHUMAN. Este autor, em parceria com Eric Blau, escreveu o musical "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" em 1968.

NEXT
Naked as sin, an army towel covering my belly
Some of us blush, somehow knees turning to jelly
Next, next
I was still just a kid there were a hundred like me
I followed a naked body a naked body followed me
next, next
I was still just a kid when my innocence was lost
In a mobile army whorehouse gift from the army, free of cost
Next, next
Me, I really would have liked a little touch of tenderness
Maybe a word, a smile an hour of happiness
But, next, next
Oh, it wasn't so tragic the high heavens did not fall
But how much of that time I hated being there at all
Next, next Now I always will recall
The brothel truck, the flying flags
the queer lieutenant who slapped
Our asses as if we were fags
Next, next
I swear on the wet head of my first case of gonorrhea
It is his ugly voice that I forever hear
Next, next
That voice that stinks of whiskey of corpses and of mud
It is the voice of nations it is the thick voice of blood
Next, next
And since the each woman I have taken to bed
Seems to laugh in my arms to whisper through my head
Next, next
All the naked and the dead should hold each other's hands
As they watch me scream at night in a dream no one understands
Next, next
And when I am not screaming in a voice grown dry and hollow
I stand on endless naked lines of the following and the followed
Next, next
One day I'll cut my legs off or burn myself alive
Anything, I'll do anything to get out of line to survive
Never to be next . Never to be next.