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Excerpted from Chapter 59 of the book, "The Code"
Two Men in the Building
JFK, My Dad and the
There are three
themes running through my song, "Two Men in the Building." One is the assassination of President, John
F. Kennedy on
The second theme is the
generation gap. My dad's generation
lived through the great depression and World War II, not to mention the Korean
War,
In our conversations, I was
usually the idealistic and ill informed one, he the voice of reason. His experiences as lawyer and law professor,
Navy pilot, judge pro tem, sailor, skier, judo student, and pianist have all
informed our relationship. The song
deals with this kind of disconnect and attempts to portray the emotional damage
that the events in
The third theme has to do
with power, the powers that be, and all the struggles that accompany
power. This is represented by the
references to the Romans, the ruins at St. Germain
Des Pres, and the contemporary existence of symbols of the Empire including
Caesar's Palace, with all the connotations of Mafia power and their possible
implication in the death of President Kennedy.
Conspiracy theories abound
and most of them may be more distracting than productive. But, there is information in each of them,
and by resorting to the wider sampling of that information it's possible to
resolve fine points of detail. There
were conspiracies and cover-ups, but not always for
the expected reasons. There were plots
against Castro by our intelligence community, and many involved figures of
organized crime.
It's a good guess that Lee Harvey
Oswald was aware of many of these operations, and acted out of a desire to
strike at what he saw as an evil excess of American foreign policy. It's just as possible that he was an agent,
willingly or otherwise, in another layer of intrigue fashioned by black ops puppet
masters with the mandate to destroy the president.
The song derived from a dream
image of two or more gunmen firing from the 6th floor window of the Texas Book
Depository and the Grassy Knoll. So much evidence gathered on that day has pointed
to a large conspiracy, but after reading Gus Rosso's
book, "Live by the Sword" I've had to admit that I believe it is possible that
Oswald acted alone.
On the night before my 21st
birthday
November in
In a little hotel off the
Boulevard Michelle
Near the Roman Ruins at Saint
Germain Des Pres
Came a knock on the door,
said the word was on the wire
They've wounded your
President when he drove into the crossfire
He was hurt real bad and he
may not make it through the night
There were two men in the
building, two more in the bushes on the right
They say that Bobby was the problem, he was comin' down too
hard
On Hoffa and Marcello, Traficante and Giancana
They were angy
with the President, they were taking him out
He was breakin'
his promise to get the boys back into
They took the Teamster's
pension fund, they built the Caesar's Palace
They had a good thing going,
they weren't gonna let it go without a fight
There were two men in the
building, two more in the bushes on the right
By the time he was of age, my
dad was flying transports
Into Pelelu
and
Navigating in the dark, five
thousand miles of ocean
By stars I still haven't seen
He's been a judge and a
sailor, a skier and a piano player
And everything that a young
man could ever want to be
He's heard the wisdom and the
lies and everything in between
And for the longest time not
a word would pass between us
Experience and innocence
impatient with each other
Two generations waiting, waiting
for the heat to turn to light
And a long time to come
before I could lay me down at night
Without the two men in the
building, two more in the bushes on the right
Two Men in the Building
Words & Music by Steve Gillette
(C) 1998 Compass Rose Music, BMI
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To
view our live concert from the
Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center
Visit
the Kennedy Center archives.
If you don't already have RealPlayer
you can download it for free from Real.com
Please send any correspondence or requests for
information to:
Compass Rose Music
Direct your e-mail messages to:
Steve Gillette, gillette.steve@comcast.net
or to:
Cindy Mangsen, cindymangsen@comcast.net
Come back for more information, lots more Folk Music
resources on the Internet,
our concert schedule, and of course, the jokes.
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