I saw the best of my generation playing pinball

Make-up on, all caked up

Looking like some kind of china doll

With all of Adolf Hitler's moves down cold

As they stood up in front

Of a rock and roll band

And always moving upward and ever upward

To this gentle golden promised land

With the smartest of them all

Moonlighting as a word processor

And the strongest of them all

Checking IDs outside a saloon

And the prettiest of all

Taking off her clothes

In front of men

Whose eyes look like they were in some little hick town

Near Omaha

Watching the police chief

Run his car off the side of a bridge



I saw a men with dreams

Like the ones I'd had

Beg quarters outside the Seven-Eleven

Till it got so they didn't affect me anymore

Than the mailboxes I'd passed

'Cept that sometimes

I'd put somthing in the mailbox



I'd had the wind at my back

Now I felt it cold in my face

And for an awful long time now

You were the only one who ever

Called me late at night

And I really never noticed

Till after you stopped calling

And the emptiness

And silence

Got so heavy



Broken up in the wasteland

Broken up in the promised land

Broken up in Disneyland

Broken up in the plastic land

Broken up in the wasteland

Broken up in the wasteland

Broken up in the wasteland



I saw dead Marilyn Monroe

Strung up on every street corner in Hollywood

Like some two bit whore

Offering a discount rate

And I wondered how Joe Dimaggio felt

I saw dead James Dean's ghost

Wandering the sidewalk looking troubled

And I wondered how his mama felt

I saw signs that said