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Click on the ‘Play’ button above to hear the song as you read the lyrics via the link below. If the player doesn’t start straight away, wait and then press the ‘Play’ button again.
Alternatively, you can listen to the song Quentin Crisp on Bandcamp HERE
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Quentin Crisp by ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) from our album The Chelsea Hotel#3
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Watch the video promo of Quentin Crisp HERE
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download Quentin Crisp at download stores HERE and on Bandcamp HERE
download our album The Chelsea Hotel#3 at download stores HERE
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Listen to the alternative Quinten Crisp Club Tribute HERE and the video promo HERE
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Watch the video of my June 2025 trip to the New York Chelsea Hotel HERE
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Quentin Crisp lyrics
Born Dennis Charles Pratt one Christmas Day before World War One
For all his life he was in a war that couldn’t be won
He’d never complain or fight back or shout
At a society that had rejected and had spat him out
He lived in a society where everyone hid
But he wore more make-up than Boy George with purple paint on his eyelids
They called him a queer, a poof and a bender in those dark days
But he just smiled at them, for he cared not for praise
At home in Sutton there was tension in the air
His father said, You look like a whore with your red hair
And why don’t you like girls, son?
So a male prostitute he would become
Working the dark streets of Soho by gaslight
Servicing the straights who’d come out only at night
Then they’d go home and close their closet doors
Till they’d come out again when they needed more
He laughed in the face of men’s aggression
Caused by their sexual oppression
With his blood on their fists and on the boots
Of the queer macho ape-men brutes
The queer bashers would punch and kick him black and blue
Showing they were real men, they said, not like you
There was never one, always a few attackers
There’s no-one more gay than a queer basher
There’s no-one more gay than a queer basher
Quintin Crisp is gone
But his legacy and spirit lives on
Quintin Crisp is gone
But his legacy and spirit lives on
He became a nude model in a government school
The Naked Civil Servant they called you
You then took yourself and that wiggle when you walked
And flew to and became An Englishman in New York
You moved into The Chelsea but it wasn’t fancy
You were there when Sid Vicious killed Nancy
But you loved Manhattan’s cosmopolitan air
And when you died your ashes were scattered there
You lived through a storm, a hurricane
You never complained or showed your pain
Oscar Wilde would have been full of pride
To have stood in the rain by your side
Without him today you wouldn’t be free
To live your life openly
To love who you love without fear
And celebrate your pride in being queer
Quintin Crisp is gone
But his legacy and spirit lives on
Quintin Crisp is gone
But his legacy and spirit lives on
Quintin Crisp is gone
But his legacy and spirit lives on
Quintin Crisp is gone
But his legacy and spirit lives on
Music composed and performed by Paul Odiase BMI No. 1252265 (Switzerland)
Song lyrics by Paul Robert Thomas PRS No. 497904008 (London)
PRS Tunecode 815799LN
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