Walking Barefoot
Your beauty took my breath away
In awe all day
Your company was so relaxing
Easy going ways
We saw the first signs of summer
And springtime change
Walking barefoot across the sand
I hadn’t planned to stay
Yeah we’ve been walking barefoot
All summer
It’ll be sad my friend
To see it come to an end
Why can’t we just quit
You are broke all summer
But you still sing
Don’t need money when it’s sunny
Don’t need anything
Just need music sun and laughter
And no currency
The sun on your bare shoulders
Comes for free
Yeah we’ve been walking barefoot
All summer
It’ll be sad my friend
To see it come to an end
Why can’t we just quit
Yeah we’ve been walking barefoot
All summer
Why can’t we just design
To live like this all the time
Why can’t we just quit
Sand ran through my fingers
And the land was hot
Anointed by Apollo
And his chariot
Disarmed by your charm
That night I felt it again
Addictive and consuming
Love’s sweet pain
Yeah we’ve been walking barefoot
All summer
It’ll be sad my friend
To see it come to an end
Why can’t we just quit
Our days are as the wind blows us
We are free
You’ve got a quiet life out of town
Of coastal ease
The wind it has no pattern
We take life slow
And when the night has fallen
Our cup overflows
When the summers gone
And the room is cold
When your looking at the rain
And it just wont go
Remembering when the sun was high
Up above
Remembering when the days were long
And we were in love
Yeah we’ve been walking barefoot
All summer
It’ll be sad my friend
To see it come to an end
Why can’t we just quit
Yeah we’ve been walking barefoot
All summer
Why can’t we just design
To live like this all the time
Why can’t we just quit
Song Notes
A track first played at an NME show at the London Astoria in January 2000. Surprisingly never released as a single in the UK, yet it did get a release in Australia, the song is a regular on Ash’s set list.
Rick: Yeah I agree; it’s a standout track and a great opener and a potential missed single in the rest of the world. Should it have been? Possibly but we were conscious of not putting out too many singles from the album. As it is, we released five. Any more and we felt we were straying into Michael Jackson territory; not a place anybody would want to be, on many levels. I don’t know which we would have dropped in favour of Barefoot? I guess you have to draw the line somewhere.
Rick McMurray during the Tim Burgess Twitter listening party for Free All Angels in May 2020:
The opener; and the single that wasn’t to be (outside of Australia anyway). to me this is what really differentiates Free All Angels from the previous records. It sets the optimistic tone from the start.
It sums up the recording session in Spain perfectly; Devil’s bar in Puerto Banus, El Cortijo in the mountains. air, guns, shrooms, swimming pools. Man we had such a good time making this album.