Marianne Faithfull – Want To Buy Some Illusions

Want to buy some illusions

Slightly used, second-hand ?

They were lovely illusions,

Reaching high, built on sand.

They had a touch of paradise,

A spell you can’t explain,

For in this crazy paradise

You are in love with pain.

Want to buy some illusions

Slightly used, just like new ?

Such romantic illusions,

And they’re all about you.

Too bad they all fell apart

Like dreams often do.

They were lovely illusions,

But they just wouldn’t come true.

Slightly used, just like new,

Such romantic illusions

And they’re all about you.

I’d sell them all for a penny,

They make pretty souvenirs.

Take my lovely illusions,

Some for laughs, some for tears.

On this next song, I’m using the translation, a new translation done by one of my best, best, best, best friends in Ireland, the playwriter and poet, Frank McGuinness, and he did a new translation of the Threepenny Opera about four or five years ago, and I played Pirate Jenny in that production at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. And I love this translation, I think it’s so exceptional. In this song, Jenny who is a prostitute and a waitress in a, in a, in a shitty hotel, er, obviously on the docks, and, and Macheath is her pimp, is imagining, is having a fantasy of what she would do to those who oppress her if she could.