Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes

[Refrain]
Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes
Got amped up on speed and broke into houses
Bludgeoned people to death and wrote shit on their skin and left 'em
They finally got him and he went to San Quentin
His last murder was south of San Francisco
A guy named Peter Pan from the town of San Mateo
A little girl in the Tenderloin was his first
In the laundry room, and took a dollar from her fist

[Verse 1]
His last days were at the Bristol hotel
I was reading Night Stalker when I went and rang the bell
Doorman buzzed me, said, "You're just like them all"
Gave me a key and a black cat led me down the hall
Had a flight today from Boston to Cleveland
Got a death in the family, gotta do some grieving
Lost a relative and it's eating me up
And I'm aching real bad and I need a little love

[Refrain]
Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes
These things mark time and make us pause
And think about when we were kids, scared of taps on the window
What's under the bed and what's under the pillow
And the Jim Jones massacre got in our heads
And the TV headlines: "Elvis Presley is dead"
And the Ayatollah Khomeini hostages
And Ronald Reagan dodging bullets

[Verse 2]
While I'm there, I'm gonna stroll through the old neighborhood
Rick Stan's my age and still lives with his mom
When he's not in jail for menacing or stalking
Or writing bad checks or cocaine charges
Mark Denton had such a beautiful smile
We always sat on his porch passing the time
And drinking a beer and smoking a pack
Until one day poor Mark had a heart attack
My friend Ben's got a good job as a electrician
His sister married the pool shark, Jim Evans
My next door neighbors whom I love so
And they loved me too, but they passed long ago (Long time ago)
And if you walk just a few blocks down Stahl
There's a house that was the scariest of them all
A cute little palm with a sign, "For Sale"
But those Sexton kids' life was hell
And I'm telling the truth and if you don't believe
Pick up Lowell Cauffiel's House of Secrets
Had to fly from Cleveland to SFO
Got 3 months off until my next show
Gonna spend time with my girl, make a record this summer
Fix my kitchen up and hire a plumber
The headlines change so rapidly
Then I came to the studio to work on something pretty
And I saw the news on James Gandolfini
While I was eating Ramen and drinking green tea
The Sopranos guy died at 51
That's the same age as the guy who's coming to play drums
I don't like this "getting older" stuff
Having to pee fifty times a day is bad enough
Got a nagging prostate and I got a bad back
When I fuck too much, I feel like I'm gonna have a heart attack
I woke up today, I saw the headlines
An airline crashed, and two people died
And I'm at a barbecue in San Rafael
And everybody's drunk and feeling pretty well
At 53, Richard Ramirez died
But in '83, he was very much alive
He was the scariest killer in the band
He had a pentagram in the center of his hand

[Coda]
And everybody remember the paranoia
When he stalked the suburbs of Southern California
And everybody will remember where they were
When they finally caught the Night Stalker
And I'll remember just where I was
When Richard Ramirez died of natural causes