Visions of Johanna (Live at the Delta Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, February 21, 1995)

[Verse 1]

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks

When you're tryin' to be so quiet?

We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it

And Louise holds a handful of rain tempting you to defy it

Lights flicker from the opposite loft

The country music station plays soft

Nothing, really nothing to turn off

Just Louise and her lover so entwined

These visions of Johanna conquer my mind

[Verse 2]

Empty lot where the ladies play

Blindman's bluff with the keychain

The all-night girls, they whisper out on the "D" train

We can hear thе night watchman click his flashlight

Ask himself if it's him or them, it's insane

Louisе, she's alright, she's just near

She's delicate and seems like the mirror

She makes it all too concise and too clear

That Johanna's not here

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face

Where these visions of Johanna have taken my place

[Verse 3]

Little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously

He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously

When bringing her name up he speaks of her farewell kiss to me

He's sure got a lot of gall to be so useless and all

Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall

How can I explain? It's so hard to get on

And these visions of Johanna, kept me up past the dawn

[Instrumental Break]

[Verse 4]

Inside the museums Infinity goes up on trial

Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while

But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues

You can tell by the way she smiles

The primitive wallflower freeze

The jelly-faced women all sneeze

Hear the one with the mustache say "Jeez, I can't find my knees."

Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule

Visions of Johanna make it all seem so cruel

[Verse 5]

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him

"Name me someone that's not a parasite

And I'll go out and say a prayer for him."

Like Louise always says "Ya can't look at much, can ya, man?"

As she, herself, prepares for him

Madonna, she still has not showed

We see this empty cage now corrode

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

The fiddler now steps to the road

He writes everything's been returned which was owed

On the back of the fish truck that loads

While my conscience explodes

Oh, the harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain

These visions of Johanna are now all that remain

[Outro]

These visions of Johanna are now all that remain