Recorded: 1991, Del Mar, CA, to 4-track cassette.
Original Release: Bill & Pete, La Petite Orange, 1992.
Currently Available: Bill Foreman, Poison Against Poison, 2005.
Download: mp3
When I went back and collated my catalogue in 2005 into what turned out to be a hand-made box set called Poison Against Poison, this was the tune I started with, and for good reason: it was the first and, between 1988 and 1990, the only good tune I’d written. In the summer of 1988 I was driving from the beach in Del Mar to the Roberto‘s taco shop on Carmel Valley Road to meet with my friends Ross and Dave, when I looked at the gas gauge to find it full. It felt good to see, and the first words came to me then.
For the first time, I wrote something based not on what I imagined things to be but on something that was. From that starting point, the tune more or less wrote itself.
I got a full tank of gas
Got a full tank of gas
Got a body of metal
Got windows of glass
Got my foot on the pedal
It moves so fast
Take you out of my present
Put you into my past
Goodbye to your streetlights,
Cement and your grass
I’m leaving you, babe,
I got a full tank of gas
I got an engine of flame
Got an engine of flame
Call me a misfit
But don’t call me tame
I don’t remember this highway
They all look the same
I don’t remember your face
I forgot your first name
Goodbye to your causes,
Your books, and your games
I’m leaving you, babe,
I got an engine of flame
I got the wind in my face
Got the wind in my face
I can open the sunroof
And stare into space
I can run myself wild
I can go anyplace
I got all my money
I’ve packed my suitcase
Goodbye to your earrings,
Your bells, and your lace
I’m leaving you, babe,
I got the wind in my face
I got my head in the sky
Got my head in the sky
You can ask me what happened
But don’t ask me why
Tell me you’re hurt, girl,
But don’t start to cry
I’ve sprouted my wings
And now I’m going to fly
Goodbye to your movies,
Your dreams, and your lies
I’m leaving you babe,
I got my head in the sky
There’s a social danger in a white kid–I was 19 when I wrote this–using Black form, blues in this case. One needs to be up front about this and, quite the contrary to a manifestation of white guilt, it’s really the only way to move past guilt. I never felt a part of any place I found myself in, my high school for example. I love many of the people, even most, and was treated well, but I did not feel I fit in. This was, to be sure, my own issue, but I did, like many other white kids before me, identify as an outsider through Black art, jazz, blues, and funk in particular and in that order. I leave it to the listener to determine if and when I became anything other than an imitator and appropriator, though I will hasten to say that one thing I have not done is profit enormously off the cultural property of Black America.
This is not the first recording of this tune, but it is the best. By the time we cut this, the tune had been played countless times and all of its kinks worked out. Robert Fripp made a point in an interview I’d read that the reason Discipline was a better record than either Beat or Three of a Perfect Pair was that Crimson had gigged Discipline‘s tunes before they recorded them, and the opposite took place with the other two. He was right: everything comes out better if you gig tunes before recording them.
