Mike Oldfield – Five Miles Out
(including – vocalist Maggie Reilly, drummer Morris Pert, and guitarist Rick Fenn)
What do you do when your falling
You’ve got 30 degrees and you’re stalling out?
And it’s 24 miles to your beacon
There’s a crack in the sky and the warning’s out
Don’t take that dive again!
Push through that band of rain!
Five miles out
Just hold your heading true
Got to get your finest out
You’re Number 1, anticipating you
Climbing out
Just hold your heading true
Got to get your finest out
You’re Number 1, anticipating you
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
Calling all stations!
This is Golf-Mike-Oscar-Victor-Juliet
IMC CU. NIMB… icing
In great difficulty, over
The traffic controller is calling
“Victor-Juliet, your identity
I have you lost in the violent storm!
Communicate or squawk ‘Emergency’!”Don’t take that dive again!
Push through that band of rain
!Lost in static, 18
And the storm is closing in now
Automatic, 18!
(Got to push through!)
Trapped in living hell!
You’ re a prisoner of the dark sky
The propeller blades are still!
And the evil eye of the hurricane’s
Coming in now for the kill
Our hope’s with you
Rider in the blue
Welcome’s waiting, we’re anticipating
You’ll be celebrating, when you’re down and braking
Climbing out
(Climbing, climbing)
Five miles out
(Climbing, climbing)Five miles out
Just hold your heading true
Got to get your finest out…
(Climbing, climbing)Five miles out
Just hold your heading true
Got to get your finest out…
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: M Oldfield
Five Miles Out lyrics © Stage Three Music (catalogues) Limited, Oldfield Music Ltd
Mike Oldfield had gained his pilot’s license in 1979, and a flying incident a year later provided the inspiration for the title song of the 1982 album Five Miles Out. In August 1980, Mike was piloting a two-engined Piper Navajo over the Pyrenees mountain range in Spain when the aircraft was caught in a thunderstorm.
We were tossed about like a pancake and there was ice collecting on the propellers and rain on the windscreen and everybody was going “Aaargh”!
He told an interviewer. The incident was also commemorated in a painting specially commissioned by Mike from a renowned aviation artist.’
