The Mercenary

Lyrics

[Intro] Well, a long time ago, I was a music student You wouldn't necessarily know that now, but I was, actually I had serious intentions and I thought I was gonna be composing for You know, large jazz ensembles And I studied that And I studied it in Boston, um, for a couple years And you decided to keep it all for yourself Did you guys hear that? He said, "And you decided to keep it all for yourself" Uh, that's the kind of prick I am Well, thank you! I may not be able to sing now Alright Okay, so he's gonna stop talking now so it's gonna be alright And it was the mid-sixties and it was the, the Vietnam period (Ow!) Is that because you were there or you weren't there? Like, what are we celebrating here? Ah, well, anyway I got offered a summer job I lasted, well, almost two years at, at music school But, and in between the school seasons there of course was a summer And, uh, and I got offered a job Which I came very close to accepting, for a minute And the job was with a guy who came back from Vietnam And he was a friend of a dorm-mate of mine, and uh, uh He had a plan, and his plan was to go down to Central America And spend the summer running guns to Cuba, uh Which he said would be a very lucrative enterprise, and And for some reason he wanted me to join him in this, and And I thought, "Wow, you know It beats playing in these crappy clubs in Chelsea And, you know, the crappy jug band that I'm in" And, you know, various other, uh, possibilities for the summer Um, and uh, you know, I was eighteen years old and I didn't have a very Well-developed sense of the moral implications of things like that And, and uh, so you know, I gave it some thought, but Until I realized that my job would consist of Getting between this guy and people that were trying to kill him And I felt, uh, under-qualified for that job, and uh, and I I felt further that anybody who thought that I was qualified for that job was Someone I would not want to be near when that stuff started happening So, so I declined, and Here you are And here we are, here we all are as a result, you know Choices, huh? And uh, so I tell you this story because, uh The person in question plays a very tiny part in the song I'm about to do And this is it