Helpless Dancer

Words and music by PETE TOWNSHEND
From THE WHO album QUADROPHENIA (1973)

The last two lines of the first verse are depressingly familiar today, over 30 years since the song was written.

When a man is running from his boss
Who hold a gun that fires "cost"
And people die from being old
Or left alone because they're cold

And bombs are dropped on fighting cats
And children's dreams are run with rats
If you complain you disappear
Just like the lesbians and queers

No one can love without the grace
Of some unseen and distant face
And you get beaten up by blacks
Who though they worked still got the sack

And when your soul tells you to hide
Your very right to die's denied
And in the battle on the streets
You fight computers and receipts

And when a man is trying to change
It only causes further pain
You realize that all along
Something in us going wrong...

You stop dancing.