Orpheus Unplugged by Bob McAfee

My daddy was a big hair rock star, riff master

Taught me the chords and fingering

To work this Fender Stratocaster

I play all the legendary licks and then some

Stairway to Heaven, Crossroads, Aqualung,

Freebird, Layla, Comfortably Numb

I love my bandmate, Eurydice,

My Star is Born chanteuse,

Sexy lady, Olympian lover, heavy metal muse

Dancing with her backup singers,

Fentanyl and China White, the needle

Punctures in her vein resemble cobra bite

Her chariot, the long black hearse,

Leaves the Jackson funeral home

In rural Ithaca NY an hour south of Rome

I play a tribute concert in Dodger Stadium

With my friends, Hashish on keyboards,

Captain Morgan on the drums

I dream the concert venue Hell

Play for the devil and his wife

To reanimate Eurydice, bring her back to life

I raise the rafters with my song

They love the requiem music so, they call

My darling to the stage, promise me that she can go

They give me this warning like the sticker

On the Cadillac, message from my fellow Deadheads,

Don’t look back, you can never look back

She has just to follow me

Up the good-intentions path, I must keep my eyes

Averted to avoid the devil’s wrath

But as I approach the surface something’s missing

From our song, I turn around

To sing her home but she’s already gone

My loyal fans, the Maenads, watching on TV,

Now want me dead, they’ll have my head,

This is the end of me

My body is dismembered, cast into the sea

A nymph wandering on Miami Beach

Finds my bloody head, just like the prophesy

My guitar’s a constellation set into the sky

Look up and you can hear me play, my head still singing

In the window of the Bronx Hard Rock Cafe