Bye Bye Johhny

11/19/84 Kansas City, MI

This is a song... I wrote I guess around 1978. Everybody has certain events that kind of
mark their lives, you know, about things. And I always remember when I was about 9
years old, my mother had Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show. I had to run out and
get a guitar and started to take guitar lessons. They weren't teaching rock 'n roll in
1959, none of the lessons! I remember I was 13, I was in high school, when a kid came
running across the field and told us that the president, John Kennedy, had been shot.
And I was living in this farm in New Jersey when a friend of mine called me up and
told me that Elvis Presley had died. And it was hard to understand how somebody who
took away so many people's loneliness could end up feeling so lonely. There's all sorts
of isolation that can kill you, whether it's from the bottom or from the top. This is
called "Bye Bye Johnny".