Originally Posted by: Prime586 
I was listening to Low Life in the car today, and when Sunrise came on it reminded me of this thread. I dug the CD out this evening and ripped the track as a WAV, then cut out the last verse and did some EQing in a sample editor to isolate Bernard's vocals (not so easy, as the guitar and synth occupy the same frequency space). I also scouted around youtube for the various live versions, which are usually truncated (he leaves out the two lines before the last one, and has a slightly different version of the last line).
The version I've come up with from all of this is:
As we spent our days together, nothing could go wrong
No one told the truth about it because it was so strong
If you ever think of me, if you hear my name
If you read between the lines, you'll hang your head in shame
These old wounds will never heal, the ice will never freeze
Whatever I have done for you I did in sympathy(Live he usually replaces the last 3 lines with '
Whatever I have done for you I'd do it all again')
The main difference to the ones posted above is the tense of first line - it's a breakup song, talking about a relationship in the past tense, and the first line continues that (as do the following lines).
The
Rotterdam 1985 live performance is probably the clearest live version
Welcome to the thread.
Yep - I think you're right on most of this.
Weirdly, I always used to think that it was 'nothing could go wrong', but have, in recent years, gone with 'nothing can go wrong', based on the use of the word 'spend'. But, listening back now, I'm pretty sure it's 'could', so it makes sense it's 'spent'.
To my ears, line 2 is 'No one told the truth about it because
they were so strong', but I could easily be wrong.
In respect of line 5, this is the most problematic, I think.
I'm now pretty sure it is 'wounds' but I really can't hear 'old'.
I've been having a chat with a fellow fan over on the JoyDiv.org boards about this and he has suggested 'Bitter wounds' rather than 'These old wounds' and this seems more likely to me. I can certainly hear a 'tt' sound and it's the same number of syllables.
Here's a little video that the above person has uploaded with some the sounds made clearer / being stripped out.
There are two versions on this clip.
As he says "The first preserves more of the consonant sounds but includes more of the music, it's a bit clearer than the album. The second (starting at 0.41) is a lot clearer but strips out some of the consonant sounds too, so it's not ideal."
Like you, Prime586, I've listened to a load of gigs and agree that he does miss out lines 4 and 5 quite often. I've never heard a gig where he replicates the Low Life version, even during gigs played at the time of the LP release. This makes me think that it was probably improvised at the time of recording, rather than planned lyrics.
