Turning Steel
Key:   D
Intro:  Last line

    D       A      G  D                   G        A
You wake up in the morning, the morn's as black as night,
     D        A        G      D                                  A
Your mother's shouting up the stairs, you know she's winning the fight,
                          D                     G                 A
So you venture out of the bed, me lads, for you know it's getting late,
     D        A          G      D         G           A       D
It's down the stairs and up the road, and through the factory gate.

Chorus:
A                  G      D                         A
Turning steel, how do you feel, as in the chuck you spin?
       D         A         G          D        G     A         D
If you felt like me, you'd roll right out, and never roll back in.


Sleet and dark the morning, as you walk in through the gate.
Eight o'clock - yon bell doth ring - eight hours is your fate,
So it's off with your coat, and up go the sleeves, and "Right, lads!" is the cry.
With one eye on the clock, and t'other on your lathe, you wish the time would fly.

Chorus

But time can't move as fast as a lathe, so work you must,
With the grinding, groaning, spinning metal, the hot oil and the dust,
And it's many's the time I've been with me girl, walking through the park,
While gazing on that spinning steel, and the welder's blinding spark.

Chorus

Old Tom Mack, last week, his final bell did ring,
With his hair as white as the face beneath that oily, soaken skin.
Well he made his speech, and he bid farewell to a lifetime working here:
As I shook his hand, I thought of Hell as a lathe and forty years.

Chorus

When my time comes, as come it must, it's then I'll leave this place.
I'll walk right out, past the charge-hand's desk, and never turn me face,
Into the street, into the sun, and I'll leave it all behind,
With but one regret - for the lads I leave to carry on the grind.