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Arlo Guthrie




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Arlo Guthrie Lyrics

"Motorcycle (Significance of the Pickle) Song" lyrics


[singing]

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorcycle
And I don't want a tickle
I'd rather ride on my motorcycle
And I don't want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy-cle

[spoken]

You know, it's been about twelve years now that I've been singing this dumb song. You know, it's amazing that somebody can get away with singing a song this dumb for that long. But, you know what's more amazing than that is that someone can make a living singing a song this dumb. But, that's America.

You know, I told about everything there was to tell about it. When I wrote it, how come, why, what for. But you know, the one thing that I always used to neglect to explain was the significance of the pickle.

It was the time I was riding my bike. I was going down a mountain road. I was doing 150-miles-an-hour. On one side of the mountain road there was a mountain, and on the other side there was nothing. It was just a cliff and the air. But I wasn't paying attention, you know, I was just driving down the road.

All of a sudden, by accident, a string broke off my guitar. It broke, you know, right there, went flying across the road that way, wrapped itself around a yield sign. But the sign didn't break, it didn't come out the ground, the string stayed wrapped around it, it stayed in the other end of my guitar. I held on to my guitar with one hand, I held on to the bike with the other. I made a sharp turn off the road. Luckily I didn't go in to the mountain: I went over the cliff. I was doing 150-miles-an-hour sideways and 500-feet down at the same time. I was looking for the cops 'cause, you know, I knew it was illegal.

I knew that that was it. I knew I didn't have long to live in this world. And in my last remaining seconds in the world I knew that it was my obligation to write one last farewell song to the world. Took out a piece of paper. I pulled out a pen, and it didn't write, I had to put another ink cartridge in it. Sat back and I thought a-while. And then it come to me, it come like a flash, like a vision burnt across the clouds. I just wrote it down. I leanrt it right away:

I don't want a pickle; Just want to ride on my motorcycle; And I don't want a tickle; I rather ride on my motorcycle; And I don't want to die; Just want to ride on my motorcy-cle.

Hey, I knew it wasn't the best song I ever wrote. But I didn't have time to change it.

But, you know, the most amazing thing was that I didn't die. I landed on the top of a police car, and it died.

I come in to town with the screaming 175-miles-an-hour singing my new motorcycle song. I stopped out in front of the deli, and out in front of the deli was a man eating the most tremendous pickle: a pickle the size of four pregnant watermelons. Just a huge, monster pickle.

He walked up to me, pushed the pickle in my face, and started asking me questions. It was about the same time I noticed the pickle in my face, I noticed a cord hanging from the long end of the pickle, going up his sleeve, down his shirt, into his pants and shoes, and out into a briefcase he had near his feet. I knew it wasn't an ordinary pickle.

But it was about the same time I noticed the cord hanging out of the pickle that a 4-foot cop arrived with a 5-foot gun. A cop that one time must have been about 6-foot-3, but was met at the bottom of a mountain by a flying-singing-writing-weirdo-freak. He walked up, and his one tremendous hand he grabbed the pickle away from the other guy. He threw it 100-feet straight up in the air. And while the pickle was half-way between going up and coming down, he took out his gun and put a 3-inch bullet-hole right through the long end of the pickle. It started coming back down. He stuck out his foot. He caught the pickle on his big toe. And balancing the pickle on his big toe he reached his huge hand into his little pocket, pulled out a 10-foot ticket. He borrowed my pen. He wrote it up. Then he rolled it up, and stuffed it in the bullet hole in the middle of the pickle. He took the pickle with the ticket, and shoved it down my throat. It was at that very moment that the pickle with the ticked was going down my thoat that I knew for sure that I didn't want a pickle.

[half-singing]

I don't want a pickle.
Just want to ride on my motorcycle.
And I don't want a tickle.
I'd rather ride on my motorcycle.
And I don't want to die.
Just want to ride on my motorcy-cle.

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