Richard Ramirez Died Today Of Natural Causes

Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes

Got amped up on speed and broke into houses

Bludgeoned people to death and wrote shit on their skin and left 'em

They finally got him and he went to San Quentin

His last murder was south of San Francisco

A guy named Peter Pan from the town of San Mateo

A little girl in the Tenderloin was his first

In the laundry room took a dollar from her fist

His last days were at the Bristol hotel

I was reading Night Stalker when I went and rang the bell

Door man buzzed me, said you're just like them all

Gave me a key and a black cat and led me down the hall

Had a flight today from Boston to Cleveland

Got a death in the family, gotta do some grieving

Lost a relative and it's eating me up

And I'm aching real bad and I need a little love

Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes

These things mark time and make us pause

Think about when we were kids scared of taps on the window

What's under the bed and what's under the pillow

And the Jim Jones massacre got in our heads

And the TV headlines: Elvis Presley is dead

And the Ayatollah Khomeini hostages

And Ronald Reagan dodging bullets

While I'm there I'm gonna stroll through the old neighborhood

Rick Stan's my age and still lives with his mom

When he's not in jail for menacing or stalking

Or writing bad checks or cocaine charges

Mark Denton had such a beautiful smile

We always sat on his porch passing the time

And drinking a beer and smoking a pack

Until one day poor Mark had a heart attack

Friend Ben's got a good job as a electrician

Sister married the pool shark Jim Evans

My next door neighbors whom I love so

Loved me too but they passed long ago

And if you walk just a few blocks down Stahl

There's a house that was the scariest of them all

A cute little palm with a sign: For sale

But for those Sexton's kids' life was hell

And I'm telling the truth and if you don't believe

Pick up the Lowell Cauffiel's House of Secrets

Had to fly from Cleveland to SFO

Got 3 months off until my next show

Gonna spend time with my girl, make a record this summer

Fix my kitchen up and hire a plumber

The headlines change so rapidly

Then I came to the studio to work on something pretty

And I saw the news on James Gandolfini

While I was eating Ramen and drinking green tea

The Sopranos guy died at 51

That's the same age as the guy who's coming to play drums

I don't like this getting older stuff

Having to pee fifty times a day is bad enough

Got a nagging prostate and I got a bad back

When I fuck too much I feel like I'm gonna have a heart attack

I woke up today I saw the headlines

An airline crashing, two people died

And I'm at a barbecue in San Rafael

And everybody's drunk and feeling pretty well

At fifty-three Richard Ramirez died but in '83

He was very much alive

He was the scariest killer in the band

He had a pentagram in the center of his hand

And everybody remember the paranoia

When he stalked the suburbs of Southern California

And everybody will remember where they were

When they finally caught the Night Stalker

And I remember just where I was

When Richard Ramirez died of natural causes