(Alexander/Naydock) 
 
He was the king of the back seat  
Of drunk reverie  
Saw him escorted out of a Mets game  
On network T.V.  
Kept his head in the clouds  
With any cheap high he could cull  
In his cancered Impala  
And his hog shirts  
And his head tapes played dull  
 
He lived in a company house  
In the Pardeesville woods  
With a stir crazy dog  
And a graveyard of old "Jimmy" hoods  
Sundays we'd run for his stash  
At the New York state line  
That summer when moments of  
Circumstance altered like wine 
 
(Chorus)  
This is for the man  
This is for the days that we killed  
Was it my wind of change  
Or just a breeze at the top of the hill  
He didn't talk the gold ring  
He just schemed for a skeleton key  
But when you think you met thunder  
You only see what your head wants to see 
 
He threw back-mountain parties  
Five deep at the "well"  
With his girlfriend, Louise, who'd get lit  
And tell us all "go to hell"  
Then he'd get liquored up  
And throw me the keys and yell "drive"  
With him and Louise in the back  
Doin' "American Pie"  
 
He'd talk of out west over beer  
And the garbage that we ate  
'Bout the punk band he'd managed  
In Phoenix in '78  
I was this kid of sixteen the enamored  
Impressionable kind  
In the poetic pull of the passion  
Of life with the lines 
 
(Chorus) 
 
He just disappeared that mid-August  
Not even a shout  
Then I read in the news that September  
That his time had run out  
How he tried to outrun a state trooper  
Down 93 South  
A charge of possession is why he fled  
Said word of mouth  
 
The paper said nothin' was left  
But the seats and the frame  
And I read in the write-up  
For the first time his real name;  
Birthplace unknown, not from nowhere  
No close family  
Just a wild river running  
That cut it too fast to the sea 
 
I still raise a glass once a year  
On the night that he died  
Though hindsight says  
He only let me believe that we'd ride  
Lord, he still taps a vein in my mind  
Like a summer rain cools  
Long after that river ran dry  
And reality ruled 
 
(Chorus2x)