?? to the Rangers had this home-coming in Harlem late last night
Magic Rat drove his sleek machine over the Jersey State Line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge, drinking warm beer, in the soft summer rain
Rat pulls into town, rolls up his pants, together they'd take a stab at romance
And disappear down Flamingo Lane
Maximum lawmen run down Flamingo, chasing the Rat and barefoot girl
The kids around here they're just like shadows, always silent, holding hands
And from the churches to the jails tonight there is silence in the world
As we take our stand
Down in Jungleland
Well the midnight gang's assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night
We're gonna meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light
Man there's an opera out on the Turnpike (and big man)
There's a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops, Cherry Tops, rips this holy night
The street's alive as secret debts are paid
Contacts made, they vanished unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street down in Jungleland
In the parking lots the visionaries dressed in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the DJ plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners
Desperate as the night moves on
Just one look and a whisper, they're gone (gone)
Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through the night so tender in a bedroom locked
In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender in the tunnels uptown
The Rat's own dream guns him down as shots echo down them hallways in the night
Nobody's watchin' when the ambulance pulls away
Or when the girl shuts out the bedroom light
Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy and then the poets down here write nothing
They just stand back and let it all be
In the quick of the night they reach for their own moment, try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded, always, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland
Featuring the best sax solo of all time, JUNGLELAND is the ultimate rock and roll opera, if you forget the
connotations of that term. Unlike the bloated remnants of glam and pop "opera" such as Queen's
Bohemian Rhapsody, JUNGLELAND weaves a story that is worth the telling as much as it is uplifting musically.
