I was down at the New Amsterdam

staring at this yellow-haired girl
Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation
with this black-haired flamenco dancer
She dances while his father plays guitar
She's suddenly beautiful
We all want something beautiful
I wish I was beautiful

So come dance this silence down through the morning
Cut up, Maria! Show me some of them Spanish dances
Pass me a bottle, Mr. Jones

Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
I want to be someone who believes

Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales
Stare at the beautiful women
"She's looking at you. Ah, no, no, she's looking at me."
Smiling in the bright lights
Coming through in stereo
When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely

I will paint my picture
Paint myself in blue and red and black and gray
All of the beautiful colors are very very meaningful
Gray is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso
I would buy myself a gray guitar and play

Mr. Jones and me look into the future
Stare at the beautiful women
"She's looking at you.
I don't think so. She's looking at me."

Standing in the spotlight
I bought myself a gray guitar
When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely
I want to be a lion
Everybody wants to pass as cats
We all want to be big big stars, but we got different
reasons for that

Believe in me because I don't believe in anything
and I want to be someone to believe

Mr. Jones and me stumbling through the barrio
Yeah we stare at the beautiful women
"She's perfect for you, Man, there's got to be
somebody for me."

I want to be Bob Dylan
Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more
funky
When everybody loves you, son, that's just about as
funky as you can be

Mr. Jones and me staring at the video
when I look at the television, I want to see me staring
right back at me

We all want to be big stars, but we don't know why
and we don't know how
But when everybody loves me, I'm going to be just
about as happy as I can be

Mr. Jones and me, we're gonna be big stars...

it's funnier since I learned what "Mr. Jones" refers to :D

Adam Duritz (the singer and writer of the song) says - "It's really a song about my friend Marty and I. We went out one night to watch his dad play, his dad was a Flamenco guitar player who lived in Spain, and he was in San Francisco in the mission playing with his old Flamenco troupe. And after the gig we all went to this bar called the New Amsterdam in San Francisco on Columbus and we got completely drunk. And Marty and I sat at the bar staring at these two girls, wishing there was some way we could go talk to them, but we were too shy. We kept joking with each other that if we were big rock stars instead of such loser, low-budget musicians, this would be easy. I went home that night and I wrote a song about it. I joke about what it's about, that story. But it's really a song about all the dreams and all the things that make you want to go into doing whatever it is that seizes your heart, whether it's being a rock star or being a doctor or whatever. Those things run from 'all this stuff I have pent up inside of me' to 'I want to meet girls because I'm tired of not being able to.' It is a lot of those things, it's about all those dreams, but it's also kind of cautionary because it's about how misguided you may be about some of those things and how hollow they may be too. Like the character in the song keeps saying, 'When everybody loves me I will never be lonely,' and you're supposed to know that that's not the way it's gonna be. I knew that even then. And this is a song about my dreams."

best songs are just straightforward storytelling from personal experiences.

I don't know if you're a Deadhead or not, but look at some of their best stuff for examples, The Other One (about Neal Cassady), Birdsong (about Janis Joplin), Might As Well (about the Festival Express train tour across Canada), Truckin' (all kinds of little road stories based on their experiences in that song). Like I say those are just examples.

But yeah, the simplest concepts can sometimes make the best songs, you don't always need imagery or metaphors :)

:headbang:

Such great memories.