Tax Free

[Verse 1]

Front rooms, back rooms

Slide into tables, crowd into bathrooms

Joke around, cheap talk

Deep talk, talk, talk, talk around the clock

Crawl home, lie down

Teeth chatter, heart pounds

I don't feel so good, I don't feel so good

Push a button to escape

[Pre-Chorus 1: Joni Mitchell & evangelist]

Preacher on the tube crying "Lord, there's evil in this land"

Rock and roll music!

"Cast down these dope-fiends and their noisy bands"

Damn their souls!

[Chorus 1]

Preacher preaching love like vengeance

Preaching love like hate

Calling for large donations

Promising estates

Rolling lawns and angel bands

Behind the pearly gates

You know he will have his in this life

But yours will have to wait

[Post-Chorus: Joni Mitchell, evangelist & man]

He's immaculately tax free

Multiple hundreds of thousands of

Tax free

Hundreds of millions of dollars

Tax free

A hundred billion dollars!

And who is paying the price?

Who, who

Your children are

[Verse 2: Joni Mitchell & evangelist]

Pissed off, jacked up

Scream into the mic, spit into the loving cup

Strut like a rooster, march like a man

God's hired hands and the devil bands packing the same grandstands

Different clothes (pot in their pockets!), different hair (sexually active!)

Raise a screaming guitar or a bible in the air

Theatre of anguish, theatre of glory

God's hired hands and the devil bands

[Pre-Chorus 2]

Oh come let us adore me

Lord, there's danger in this land

You get witch hunts and wars

When church and state hold hands

(Fuck it!)

[Chorus 2]

Tonight I'm going dancing

With the drag queens and the punks

Big beat deliver me

From this sanctimonious skunk

We're no flaming angels

And he's not heaven sent

How can he speak for the Prince of Peace

When he's hawk-right militant?

[Post-Chorus: Joni Mitchell & evangelist]

And he's immaculately tax free

Our nation has lost its guts!

Save me

Our nation has lost its strength

Tax free

Our nation has whimpered and cried

Save me

And petted the Castros

Tax free

The Khomeinis' and the Kaddafis'

Save me

For so long

Tax free

That we don't know how to act like a man

Save me

I think that we should turn the United States Marines

Loose on that little island south of Florida and

Stop that problem!

I am preachin' love, I am!