Doc Pomus - Ben Folds, Nick Hornby

Man in a wheelchair, lobby of the Forrest

With frighters, hustlers, hard-up millionaires

Mobsters, cops, whores, pimps and Marxists

All human life is there

Man in a wheelchair listens to the chatter

Writes down all the insane crap he hears

He can’t move around but it doesn’t really matter

In the Forrest all you need is eyes and ears

And out they pour, the hits and the misses

«Turn Me Loose,» «Lonely Avenue»

And down in Nashville, Elvis sings «Suspicion»

Pomus/Shuman, 1962

And he never could be one of those happy cripples

The kind that smile and tell you life’s OK

He was mad as hell, frightened and bitter

He found a way to make his feelings pay

Back at the Forrest, in the steakhouse off the lobby

A diner gets three bullets in the head

Doc looks down, eating his linguine

Thinking up a lyric for the dead

And out they pour, the hits and the misses

«Turn Me Loose,» «Lonely Avenue»

And down in Nashville, Elvis sings «Suspicion»

Pomus/Shuman, 1962

Fred Neil, Jack Benny, crazy Phil Spector

Pumpkin Juice and Eydie Gormé

Damon Runyon, Jr. and the Duke’s orchestra

All superhuman life was there

And he never could be one of those happy cripples

The kind that smile and tell you life’s OK

He was mad as hell, frightened and bitter

He found a way to make his isolation pay

And out they pour, the hits and misses

«Turn Me Loose,» «Lonely Avenue»

And down in Nashville, Elvis sings «Suspicion»

Pomus/Shuman, 1962