engineers:
Mark Linett
Greg Penny
Roger Nichols

Flying Cowboys is a kind of anthem for me, a really important song for me, a big picture of my landscape. It's fairly representative of my life - sorrowful and yet hopeful, part of a question that's not answered yet. This song was written in a little country house outside of Paris right around the time when I met the Blue Nile. Pascal was playing this repetitive line on the synthesizer, and Sal was visiting. He played this guitar line that I liked and I made him play it over and over while I wrote the lyrics.

The music and first verse came together that night, and then the second and third verse was written after we moved to Ojai. It was all spoken and then there was a verse that I sang. The recording of it was done with a drum machine and we didn't want to duplicate it because we like the drum machine sound. But then Peter Erskine played it with one hand, doing all those sixteenth notes. I remember it being a really exciting session. Walter (Becker) came out from behind the board to play bass, and Sal flew in to play guitar. Dean Parks played those lines that had been branded in my head for a long time.

Flying Cowboys
(Rickie Lee Jones/Pascal Naber-Meyer/Sal Bernardi)

Down there by the river is a man
Whose born is twisted into shapes
Unknown to the wicked and the wise
And he bears the look of an animal
Who's seen things no animal should ever see
He has been driven beyond all towns
And all the systems until now though it is
Long past too far he keeps going

Because it's a desert
Because it's a desert

We come to the river
We'll walk away from all this now
We come to the water
We'll walk away from all this now

She first saw him he was standing in the doorway
Illuminated from behind by a light
Though imaginary posses chased them
To these distant adobes
Standing on the cliffs today
I thought I saw you below
My shadow growing smaller

It's a desert because
Because it's a desert
They'll be asking me about you forever
I guess

We come to the river
We'll walk away from all this now
We come to the water
We'll walk away from all this now

Long coats on the prairie
Lying in the dust
Who can I turn to ?
Who can I trust ?
Were you walking on the water ?
Playing in the sun ?
But the world is turning faster
Than it did when I was young

When I was young
When I was young

Oh, when I was young I was a wild, wild one