Close to Paradise

Well, I, I arrive here in the late '60s, '69 I think it was
And I found a paradise, something then I couldn't believe
I mean, it was a beautiful place with uh, fantastic weather
And the payéses and the extranjeros, they were here
They were, most of them were Americans, Canadians, Swedish
And, um, painters, artists
Fantastic people, there were no classes
The houses, they were open, nobody closed the doors
It was a great way of, uh, life

I came in 1972
And, um, I came, I arrived to an island which was virgin nature
And sunny, there's flowers and everything was green and
Uh, it was just so overwhelming that I couldn't believe it
It just, uh, it just hit me so strongly
That I, uh, felt like being in paradise

In Spanish, it's Anna Maria, "Noche y Día"
It's mean Ana Maria, "Day and Night"
Because I was everywhere
I don't want to lose one minute of this party
Or in the beach or in the discotheques
Everywhere I was, I tried to be
All around the island, always twenty-four hours
I was sleeping nothing
Just few hours sometimes when my body was going to die
When I start to work in Pacha
They tell me, "You can, you can be a go-go dancer"
And I said, "Yes, but please with one clause allowed
At five o'clock in the morning, I want to go away"
And then, the boss of the dancer in this time
She say the, "Okay, you can do it, but shut up
Don't say this to anyone
And when it's five o'clock, you just take the door and go where you want"
And so, five o'clock every night, when I finished work
I ran to dance in another discotheque and
I ran to Ku to make more friends here around
Like this, uh, it was okay

The minute I came here
Just getting out of the plane, landing in Ibiza
I knew this was my place forever
I don't know, even the smell I adored
I felt this is my home
My name is Rossetta Montenegro, I was born in Venezuela
But I live many part of the planet so I got to meet so many people
Everyone came to see me in Ibiza during those days and now still
I work in Pacha, I work in Ku, I work in Amnesia
I work in, all over the places here
Imagine Ibiza in the '72, used to live with the payéses
And, uh, they were really nice people, you know
They didn't get impressed about our outfits that were really freak
You know, I mean, we were freak
We used to get whatever
A bottle of Coke, we'd cut it and we'd make, uh
Two things for a bra, you know?
It was really funny
The fantasy that all the people used to have that time
At least at that time, we used to have two or three pareo
You can, you can wear it on the head, over the shoulders as a shawl
And we only carry a basket, this Incan basket
With all our stuff there
So we didn't have to go to our house to get things, you know
No, it was easy going
You know, we used to go to the disco without, barefoot
In bathing suits with a pareo
And sometimes, people naked
Full of colors and things, you know, but uh, flowers all over

We were close to paradise, but we took the wrong way
I don't know, maybe this is the right way, we don't know, but
It didn't go the way we were expecting
When I say "we" I'm talking about
All these freaks then we had dreams
Somebody asked me about it and then, "What do you think about that?"
And I say that indeed, that's what I'd really believed
It was a paradise, absolute paradise
And, somehow, it took a way, then it became what it is now
And I'm sure people that arrive now are still thinking that that's a paradise
Definitely it's not the paradise that we knew, it's another paradise
But maybe now is the, I don't know, I'm not sure about anything
Reality is not the same for everybody, so
We use the words in a way like if it is an absolute truth, that don't exist
That makes the thing more complicated