Blues for Michael
"Blues for Michael is just a blues. I wanted to write the simplest, easiest song -- when you're young, you want to write the most difficult forms because you want to prove you can do it. But sometimes doing the simple is really hard. This one goes back to Country Joe and the Fish stuff, the really slow simple stuff we did. The chords are simple, the lyrics are simple, it means exactly what it says And I hoped Jerry Garcia would play this song with me because we both knew Michael Bloomfield, we both know how easy it is to disappear, to die. It's real sentimental -- Jerry Garcia and Country Joe, singing about Michael Bloomfield, a very famous blues musician with a drug problem who died under mysterious circumstances about ten years ago. Sometimes a song has to be really personal, about your real life. This song is about me and how I feel about the fact that this friend of mine is gone."
Hey, hey, Michael won't you play the blues for me
Hey, hey, Michael won't you play the blues for me
To hear you play would be so heavenly
Hey, hey, Michael I bet you're over on cloud nine
Hey, hey, Michael I bet you're over on cloud nine
Playing blues for the angels and blowin' everybody's mind
I can still remember
Seems like yesterday
Down at the nite club
Where we used to play
Now your chair is empty
Your guitar left untuned
And it hurts so bad now
To not hear you play the blues
Hey, hey, Michael won't you play some blues for me
to hear you play would be so heavenly
© 1990 Alkatraz Corner Music Co. BMI
words and music by Joe McDonald
Lyrics used by permission. All rights reserved.
