Written: 1970

Writers: David Jenneson, Alan Hovden

Status: Unrecorded and unpublished

Genre and Style: Addictive Burner Pop

Comments: Dave: I got the idea for this song after listening to Mel Torme’s 1960’s pop jazz hit Cast Your Fate to the Wind. I thought it was a stupid song and reacted by stealing the first three lines of the last verse and turning it into a drug song ostensibly praising the benefits of methadrine. The melody was set to the 1950 Teresa Brewer hit Music! Music! Music! (Put Another Nickel In). Combining these two disparate elements proved to be a winning combination as Methadrine was a mainstay of the Burner song list. It sometimes offended people who were too dumb to get the point, which was the intention. Nevertheless, fans remembered it for years afterward.

Comments: Al: Dave and I gave an impromptu concert for Joni Mitchell one night at one of her gallery openings. She was playing to the ultra hip bunch of invited guests when Dave and I stumbled into the gallery, grabbed her guitar and played her this song. She was the only one who clapped and laughed and demanded another but her body guards and entourage hustled her out of the gallery and into a waiting limo. So close…

Now I’m old I’m wise I’m smart

Just a man with half a heart

Wonder how it might have been

Without all that methadrine

Come and let me hold your hand

Got to make you understand

I’ll be yours eternally on methadrine

Love me do, love me don’t,

Ask me to shut up I won’t

Idle chatter ain’t no sin

Hey and let me tell you when

Me and Al and Steve and Tim

Too burned out to play or sing

But we solved the problem, we took methadrine

Methadrine, methadrine

I can’t take nothing worse

Methadrine, I like you,

Because you always work.

I love you, you love me

I feel like I’m fifty-three

You look like you’re sweet sixteen

Come and be my crystal queen

Kiss me with your frosted lips

Kiss me with a thousand hits

I just want to die in love on methadrine

Do me out, do me in,

Do me with a safety pin

If you want to talk to me

I’ll be right up in that tree

Thinking about the things I’ll do

When this crazy night is through

Nights like this should never end on methadrine.

Methadrine, methadrine

I can’t take nothing worse

Methadrine, I like you,

Because you always work.