Peter Hammill - The Ice Hotel (chords)


Chord transcription by Mikayel Abazyan mikayelabazyan@yahoo.com


Playing tips

Each song has a dedicated picture in the CD booklet. 
For this one there is a fretless guitar neck is shown 
with two fingers as if positioned for Em chord. In fact, 
the whole song is based on Em! You can simply lift 
specific finger up and then put it back, while lifting 
another one, thus switching between different combinations 
of Em, or maybe even some other chords. The result is 
amazing. Hence I decided to put one Em chord at the 
beginning and let plenty of space for your imagination 
and fingers play. However, I put two chords in the 
"Are we all so closed-eared?" line.

Em7(d)	0-2-2-0-3-0
Em(c#)	0-2-0-0-2-0


 Em
Mercury's down to zero, 
absolute time will tell 
we're only over-wintering as guests in the Ice Hotel. 

All that we build will crumble, 
every empire fades; 
humbled, we should admit impermanence marks the man-made. 

Under the Ice Hotel the permafrost is stacked 
but down along the walls the first melt starts to track. 
The wind's whipped voices up and swept them down the years 
but in the Ice Hotel the guests all have cloth ears. 

       Em     Em7(d)  Em(c#)  Em
Are we all   so     cloth -  eared? 

We're only here a season, 
paupers and presidents. 
Reason allows us only a temporary residence. 


Inside the Ice Hotel the mirror ball revolves 
while in the cinema the screen goes to dissolve. 
Over and over what's destroyed will be remade 
and in the Ice Hotel we're only passing trade. 

The walls are sweating 
as the Celsius starts to climb. 
Of all our works this is the transient paradigm. 

Each year another team will build it up anew, 
for in the Ice Hotel we're all just passing through, 
we're just passing through. 




Russian Peter Hammill / Van der Graaf Generator Page
Sergey Petrushanko hammillru@mail.ru, 1998-2024