Song
The song opens with the refrain I'm on the drug that killed River Phoenix and, as the song continues, talking about a wide variety of celebrities who died due to some sort of excess. As the song progresses, it becomes clear that the addiction is not about actually doing these things himself; rather, his addiction is vicariously following celebrities and their excesses and premature deaths. As with a number of TISM songs, it is a comment on the fairly vapid state of popular culture.
Example verse:
I drank the slab that Bon Scott drunk;
Injected some of Hendrix' junk;
I booked a seat on Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane;
Mama Cass's sandwich? I ate the same!
And ending in ...
Now I'm bored and there's no stoppin'
I need another celeb to fill a coffin
Where will I get my next drug action?
Odds on it'll be Michael Jackson
Read more about this topic: (He'll Never Be An) Ol' Man River
Famous quotes containing the word song:
“I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu--
Sing cuccu!”
—Anonymous. Cuckoo Song (c. 1250)
“This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to sudden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)