September Cones Releases Gigs Lyrics Comments

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Author
Robyn Hitchcock
According to our records, Robyn has played this song 52 times, most recently at Kamera at Lloyd and Platt on October 24, 2025. He first performed it at Tower Records on April 04, 1988, 37 years and 6 months earlier.

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From Robyn on Patreon in 2025
In the British Isles, September is a time of fruition and melancholy: the harvest is gathered in, the sun is retreating, and endless wintertime looms after our brief excursion into summer.

Cones are signifiers. They are deployed, in the world of vehicle traffic, to make you notice them and what immediately surrounds them.

In this song, I picture a cone appearing in the corner of each verse: beside the lovers, the horses, the phone-booth on the shore, the glider crashing into the hillside (an incident my father described to me from WWII) and the teenage werewolf. Each scene, in my mind, occurs at dusk in that magic hour of luminescence when colours grow more intense even as they fade into the twilight.

In the middle eight, I picture an Alice-in-Wonderland figure counting blades of grass and looking in the mirror, awaiting entry to the Looking-Glass World. I imagine Lennon and McCartney found themselves in there sometimes, too.

These cones glow, they do not burn. They’re there to mark my visions and memories, so you can share them too. Cone on, my friends...

Lyrics

I'll find a way
To make you see
Just what your love
Has done for me

Right from my skin
Down to my bones
September cones
September cones

The horses tramp
Beneath the tree
Their breath is mist
It seems to me

They're solid ghosts
Each one alone
September cones
September cones

The phonebox glows
Beside the sea
There's no one there
But you and me

So let's make love
In the ozone
September cones
September cones

And when she's lonely 
She just gazes in the glass
And when she's lonely
She just counts the blades of grass

The glider crashed
Into the hill
Where your time stopped
My time stood still

And overhead
A bomber drones
September cones
September cones

Here comes a boy
He's looking pale
He's growing horns
He's grown a tail

He needs a love
To call his own
September cones
September cones
September cones
September cones