Lyrics

[Cal]
All of your life you wake up to the taxis and the chimes
To the bathroom with the roaches and the breakfast with the Times
And you subway to school with kids whose folks all live in twenty blocks
In a high-rise rented carton or a co-op brownstone box, with double locks

West End Avenue
Babies in carts and poodles barking
West End Avenue.
Planning your day around the parking
You tell yourself, "I will be free."
West End Avenue
You won't get me

All of your life you watch the shrinks and lawyers on parade
Watch the brokers in their worsted and the ad men in their suede
While upstairs a soprano tries to sing the waltz from "La Boheme."
And you watch 'em and you listen and you judge and you condemn
You're not like them

West End Avenue
Delis and laundromats and gay bars
West End Avenue
Only a block away from Zabars
But you were meant to really fly.
West End Avenue,
Good bye, good bye

And then suddenly you're out there on your own
But you forgot that free could also mean alone
And when all that freedom gets too much for you
Ooh, what do you do?

You pack up your boots and blue jeans and your records and your pride
And you tell yourself you ventured and you tell yourself you tried
So it's back to the surly doormen and the canopies you go
And the buses seem to chuckle and the towers seem to crow
"We told you so."

West End Avenue
Find me a golden cage to perch in
West End Avenue
Open your arms to one more urchin
Who's crawlin' back to mama's den
West End Avenue
You win again!