| Sterling Hayden on a barge in Amsterdam
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| One of those backwater Dutch canals
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| A bottle of Johnny Walker between his legs
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| Drunk but articulate as hell
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| He was saying, «Yeah, I ratted on people
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| During the McCarthy hearings, huh, you haven’t the foggiest notion
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| Of the contempt I have for myself, maybe that’s why we drink, eh?
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| Some damn thing, shipwrecks the heart, huh? |
| Yah»
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| Sterling Hayden on a three-masted schooner
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| Kidnapped his kids and sailed 'round the globe
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| But a man can sail around in one big circle
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| And not escape his wounded sailor’s soul
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| So heave her up the main sail, boys
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| Heave her up and away we’ll go
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| We’re bound for the bay where the white whale plays
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| In the midnight straits of Jericho
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| And if ever I return, Pretty Peggy O
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| All your cities I will burn, yes, I would
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| With your cardboard sea and your paper moon
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| O’er the penny arcade called Hollywood
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| He ran guns through the German lines in World War II
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| The Viking God stood six-feet-five
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| Played in 'Johnny Guitar and The Asphalt Jungle'
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| 'The Killing' and 'The Long Goodbye'
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| I saw him once on the Johnny Carson show
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| Late in his troubled career
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| He said, «Just give me a room over lookin' the Hudson
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| With a mattress and a typewriter and I’ll write you
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| A helluva novel, my dears»
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| So here’s to all the tough guy actors
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| And the false gods who made 'em
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| And wherever he sails tonight on the Seven Seas
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| May the Lord sail with Sterling Hayden |