Music: Lyric Sheets

Police have arrested and charged `an individual' with offences relating to stealing rubbish from record company offices and pop stars' residences. In the Seventies, Bob Dylan's trash was pillaged by AJ Weberman in an attempt to divine the star's direction

The Dustbins of the Stars

So what is in the dustbins

Of the famous and the shameless

That the fellow who invades them

Should be charged and yet be nameless?

And why should they be nervous

All these shining ones who serve us

When it's garbage that we bay for

And have been content to pay for?

Among the champagne cases

And the broken bits of basses

Could be anything from dog-ends

To a member of Oasis

An ancient Floyd inflatable

A pop star who's un-datable

But bigger, if he'd made it,

Than The Beatles (it's debatable).

The torn and faded pages

Of a contract's early stages

Where the company, hereafter

Known as Profits, Seers & Sages

Undertook to pay the piper

Half the money that they owed him

If he led the rats and children

To the outlets that they showed him

And what is in these dustbins

Of the famous and important

That the law should smite the scavenger

Who scrabbles where he oughtn't?

A portrait of the artist

Which they dragged out of an attic

When his songs got formulaic

Or he jammed on automatic?

One thing that's for certain

There'll be nothing that you think

Since they never throw out anything

Like money, drugs or drink

But if it isn't rubbish.

Which is something that I doubt

What are they so frightened of

And why'd they throw it out?