Among the great songwriting teams of the 20th Century, your Rogers and Hammersteins, your Lennon and McCartneys, you’ve got to include the two who wrote this song: Words by Bernie Taupin & Music by Elton John.
I think it’s fair to say that I’m one of the world’s worst banjo players. That’s not self-deprecating humor or humility, it’s a cold, hard fact. Most people stop doing something after 20 or 30 years of doing it very poorly. But I’m not most people. I love the banjo. Maybe it doesn’t love me enough. Did it ever think of that? Probably not as it’s a lifeless hunk of wood and metal.
Pour yourself a drink and join me, if you’d be so kind, in my quest to become “a genuine example of a social disease.”
My bulldog is barking in the backyard
Enough to raise a dead man from his grave
And I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing
Disturbance gonna crucify my days
And my days just get longer and longer
Nighttime is a time of little use
And I just get ugly and older
I get juice on Mateus and just hang loose
And I get bombed for breakfast in the morning
I get bombed for dinnertime and tea
I dress in rags, smell a lot, and I have a real good time
I’m a genuine example
Of a social disease
My landlady lives in a caravan
That is when she isn’t in my arms
It seems I pay the rent in human kindness
But my liquor also helps to grease her palms
And the ladies are all getting wrinkles
And they’re falling apart at the seams
While I just get high on tequila
And see visions of vineyards in my dreams
And I get bombed for breakfast in the morning
I get bombed for dinnertime and tea
I dress in rags, smell a lot, and I have a real good time
I’m a genuine example
Of a social disease
Words & Music by Mike Power 