Luminous Rose Releases Gigs Lyrics Comments Tablature

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Author
Robyn Hitchcock
According to our records, Robyn has played this song 46 times, most recently at Robyn & Emma's house on October 03, 2025. He first performed it at Graffiti Club on April 05, 1988, 37 years and 5 months earlier.

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From Robyn on Patreon on 2025
Here’s the remixed version of “Luminous Rose” which appears on the forthcoming Globe of Frogs (Remixed & Remastered). It’s the same vocal as on the original A&M release and incorporates some of the same keyboard overdubs, but now features a backing track that had lain buried for 38 years.

I remember walking through Bloomsbury in London in the autumn of 1987, listening to a rough mix cassette of this on a Walkman. It didn’t sound quite right. The music was too complicated to mix, so we wound up shedding the entire backing track and just keeping the overdubs. In the days of tape, it could take a long time to set up and balance a mix, but now that everything on the recording console is digital, any combination of instruments can be set up, changed, recalled or mutated. So it took very little time for Brad Jones, who was remixing the song here in Nashville, to get the old multitrack into the shape that had eluded us way back in the 20th Century.

Here it is, a tale of a serviceman drowned in the amorous grasp of the ocean, and slowly dissolving in the lungs of the sea. But the singer remains on land, in the twilight, somewhere on the South Coast of England.

Lyrics

Oh, the bodies of drowned sailors and dead airmen
Flounder upside down beneath the roaring wave
And the fishes eat the flesh from off their fingers
And the sea is so much deeper than the grave

And the pale English stone
Stands alone
Over me

Oh, the bodies rise and falling in slow motion
As the flesh gives way to coral and her charms
If you listen hard, you'll hear the sea is breathing
And she's waiting there to hold you in her arms

And the pale English sun
Shone
Over me

Oh, the telegram is lying on the table
You left it there, you can't believe it's true
God finds you naked and he leaves you dying
What happens in between is up to you

And the luminous rose
Glows
Over me
Over me

Tablature

Luminous Rose-Robyn Hitchcock, arr. by Marc Dacey

Capo: 2nd fret

Intro: G6-Em7-Cadd9-Asus4-A7-A7sus2
G6-A7sus4-G6    Cadd9            G6-A7sus4-G6
Oh, the bodies of drowned sailors and dead airmen
                        Cadd9            G6
Flounder upside down beneath the roaring wave
                        Cadd9               G6
And the fishes eat the flesh from off their fingers
                       Cadd9           G6
And the sea is so much deeper than the grave
                     Cmaj Cadd9 Em/5+ C7(no5) 
And the pale English stone
   Gmaj A7sus4/F# Em7
Stands alone
     G6 Cadd9
Over me

(Repeat pattern)
Oh, the bodies rise and falling in slow motion
As the flesh gives way to coral and her charms
If you listen hard, you'll hear the sea is breathing
And she's waiting there to hold you in her arms

And the pale English sun
Shone
Over me

Oh, the telegram is lying on the table
You left it there, you can't believe it's true
God finds you naked and he leaves you dying
What happens in between is up to you

And the luminous rose
Glows
Over me
Over me