I’m looking forward to the day
When everybody can stand and say
You can’t get away with that
What you take out you must put back
Help us to save our skies and seas
And don’t let them cut down all our trees
It’s time to stand up for what you feel
Make sure that what they say is real
Find out what they really mean
Is it what you have often seen?
What they invent turns out to be
The ruin of our society
So… listen to their words and look at their faces
Are they going to wipe out our wide open spaces?
Think about the noise you have to put up with
Is this the way you want your children to live?
I’m looking forward to the day
When I see the clouds all roll away
If the aeroplanes don’t fly
We can make out the blue in the sky
Let’s live the simple life again
And learn to get on with other men
So… listen to their words and look at their faces
Are they going to wipe out our wide open spaces?
Think about the noise you have to put up with
Is this the way you want your children to live?
Words and music by Ken Wilson
Vocals: Dede Wilson
Piano: Nigel Stewart
Acoustic guitar: Ken Wilson
Notes
The song is a vehicle for a lot of phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs, multi-part verbs – whatever! This is not the place to go into the semantics what to call these kinds of expressions. The fact is, you have a song here that’s packed with them, and there are various things you can do with it.
First of all, here’s a list of the verbs used:
Two-word verbs
take out put back cut down make sure turn out listen to
look at wipe out think about roll away make out
Three-word verbs
look forward to get away with stand up for put up with get on with
Teaching idea
Two-word verbs – Give student a worksheet with the second word missing. Let them try to fill in the missing words, and then listen to the song to check.
and/or …
Three-word verbs
Pre-teach and discuss the meanings of the three-word verbs, then give the students a worksheet with the whole three-word verbs missing and let them try to fill it in before listening to the song. Put the list of possible answers on the worksheet.
The song also has some environmental themes that you might want to discuss. Tell the class that the song was written and recorded in the 1970s. Have things changed since then? Have they improved or got worse?