(10) Speedway At Nazareth (6:23)

[shangri la 1]

Speedway At Nazareth (Mark Knopfler)

LYRICS

After two thousand came two thousand and one
To be the new champions we were there for to run
From springtime in Arizona ’til the fall in Monterey
And the raceways were the battlefields and we fought ’em all the way
Was at Phoenix in the morning I had a wake-up call
She went around without a warning put me in the wall
I drove Long Beach, California with three cracked vertebrae
And we went on to Indianapolis, Indiana in May
Well the Brickyard’s there to crucify anyone who will not learn
I climbed the mountain to qualify went flat through the turns
But I was down in the might-have-beens and an old pal good as died
And I sat down in Gasoline Alley and I cried
Well we were in at the kill again on the Milwaukee Mile
And in June up in Michigan we were robbed at Belle Isle
Then it was on to Portland, Oregon for the G.I. Joe
And I’d blown off almost everyone when my motor let go
New England, Ontario we died in the dirt
Those walls from mid-Ohio to Toronto they hurt
So we came to Road America where we burned up at the lake
But at the speedway at Nazareth I made no mistake

CHORDS
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/m/mark_knopfler/speedway_at_nazareth_crd.htm

 

[Pottel]

anyone noticed how often Mark uses a signature line from the EC song Crossroads during the intro to Speedway? (i mean live)

[Jules]

Yes

[shangri la 1]

  Quite often. He seems to get into a certain head-space ("in the zone") before certain songs, where he seems to go back to a time and pluck something out from that time/space/event.

[TheTimeWasWrong]

After reading a post by dmg in another topic, I dug up this 9-minute (!) version from the early part of the STP tour. Five minutes of outro, almost 2 minutes before MK hits that Les Paul and the noodling goes on. Interesting to hear how this song has evolved over the years, those early versions were so raw, but the built-up got better and better (2010/2013 are superb).