Rarities & Unreleased

1997

He Wants You (Out)

words & music

Walter Becker (1997)

© Zeon Music LLC 2018

Well we all ride together in this world

Fall together where we stand

And we all got one slim chance to be heard

It's all written in the plan

This is all I ask of you

Tell me sweetness tell me true

From that very first soul kiss

You knew it would be like this

We all ride together in this world

Well didn't we just girl

He reads you — he reads you loud and clear

He wants you — he wants you out of here

He needs you — you and what army dear

He wants you — he wants you out of here

Well we all need protection from the pain

For protection we will pay

And we all seek the shelter from the rain

Here comes that rainy day

It won't make it real again

Not all the horses all the men

It won't do you any good

Not all the pills in Hollywood

We all need protection now and then

Here it is again

He loves you —he loves your story dear

He wants you — he wants you out of here

He sees you — he sees you disappear

He wants you — he wants you out of here

Well we all ride together in this world

Wait forever on the curb

And we all ask for much more than we need

And we get what we deserve

He hears you — he's seeming not to hear

He wants you — he wants you out of here

He's got you — he's had you up to here

He wants you — he wants you out of here

He needs you — you and what army dear

He wants you — he wants you out of here

He reads you — he reads you loud and clear

He wants you — he wants you out of here

Another one of Becker's infamous "Love Songs"!

Anyone woman at all familiar with his Whack work and demos would think long and hard before sweetly trilling "write me a love song, dahling!" -- knowing she was as likely to get one of these than an Almost Gothic or a Paging Audrey. That musical bouquet of his was always as likely to conceal a shiv than sweet-nothings.

This tune was one of three demos Walter sent me on a DAT in late 1997  (ever-thoughtful, he bundled it with a portable "Walkman"-type DAT player. Sort of like Voyager. I was impressed). I asked him: "so these are rejects from Whack?" to which he replied nah,  just a few things he'd been working on lately. By this time he was  deep into writing for Two Against Nature with Fagen, so it took me a couple of beats to realize that after his Whack work, he and his Opcode had apparently just kept on trucking along. 

He must have liked this one, must have been keeping it on his "potentially active" list, since he was still occasionally listening to it few years later... 

...as he was one afternoon in late '99 ....

PS: His vocals on these three '97 demos were uncommonly lackluster, to put it kindly.  One of them, in fact -- a tune called The Love You Ax -- will remain forever sealed, falling into the rare category of the demo vocal  he would never allow out of the box. It's a nice tune though; perhaps one day 'll post an instrumental of its solo and outro, for a sense of its feel. I just have to guess first  if that would make more of you pissed or pleased.