Okkervil River – Famous Tracheotomies (Guitar)

G             D
When I had my tracheotomy

       Am
I was blue and had stopped breathing

              Em               C
There was something wrong with me

G                          D
Doctors cut through the cartilage and skin

         Am
At the bottom of my throat

                C           Am          D
And then they snaked that trach tube in

         Bm              Em
And I was one and a half

          Am
I was my parents only kid

                 Em           C
And they had lost two before that

 Bm            Em                           C
And growing up, I always knew how close I'd come

                                  D
Well, that must have been scary, Mom

G                      D
Gary Coleman, he was "Arnold" on TV

          Am                     Em              C
Well, I grew up watching him and Conrad Bain and Kimberly

G                          D
It turns out that he had a trach scar too

           Am
Where they cut into his throat

              C            Am       D
And then they threaded that tube through

             Bm          Em
But that was much later on

        Am                                Em             C
In the year that he turned forty when his fanbase was all gone

        Bm                    Em
And his health was so touch-and-go

           C
His girlfriend proposed

                         D
But they broke up on a TV show

G                     D
Mary Wells, she was known as Motown's Queen

        Am                     Em        C
But laryngeal cancer left her unable to sing

G                         D
They tried radiation, multiple surgeries

      Am                                  C   Am    D
But she didn't have insurance and lost almost everything

     Bm                        Em
But Diana Ross helped with her bills

        Am                              Em           C
Aretha Franklin tried her very best to help out Mary Wells

       Bm                      Em
And Dionne Warwick did all she could do

                     C
And Mary Wells, she pulled through

                     D
For one more year or two

G                   D
Dylan Thomas looked completely pale and weak

      Am                      Em          C
On a trip to New York City to promote his poety

G                                           D
Three straight days of drinking out in Greenwich and Chelsea

       Am                     C         Am            D
He was taken to the hospital, turned blue and not breathing

  Bm               Em
And Caitlin Thomas said

          Am
When she walked into St Vincent's

       Em               C
"Is the bloody man dead yet?"

Bm                Em                             C
And later that day she got so drunk she was restrained

                       D
And her husband slipped away

G                D
Ray Davies had a tracheotomy

Am                                  Em           C
He was at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, aged thirteen

G               D
And during his long recovery

      Am
Nurses put him in a wheelchair

           C             Am       D
And they'd wheel him out onto a balcony (on a balcony)

Bm                            Em
And down that evening sun did sink

         Am                            Em                C
Painting London and the river and that freaked-out future Kink

Bm                           Em
Waterloo lit up for one sick kid

          C                       D
And, at 23, he recorded a song about it