Lyrics Okkervil River – Famous Tracheotomies

When I had my tracheotomy
I was blue and had stopped breathing
There was something wrong with me
Doctors cut through the cartilage and skin

And I was one and a half
I was my parents only kid
And they had lost two before that
And growing up, I always knew how close I’d come
Well, that must have been scary, Mom

Gary Coleman, he was «Arnold» on TV
Well, I grew up watching him and Conrad Bain and Kimberly
It turns out that he had a trach scar too
Where they cut into his throat
And then they threaded that tube through

But that was much later on
In the year that he turned forty when his fanbase was all gone
And his health was so touch-and-go
His girlfriend proposed
But they broke up on a TV show

Mary Wells, she was known as Motown’s Queen
But laryngeal cancer left her unable to sing
They tried radiation and multiple surgeries
But she didn’t have insurance and lost almost everything
Poor thing

But Diana Ross helped with her bills
Aretha Franklin tried her very best to help out Mary Wells
And Dionne Warwick did all she could do
And Mary Wells, she pulled through

Dylan Thomas looked completely pale and weak
On a trip to New York City to promote his poety
Three straight days of drinking out in Greenwich and Chelsea
He was taken to the hospital, turned blue and not breathing

And Caitlin Thomas said
When she walked into St Vincent’s
«Is the bloody man dead yet?»
And later that day she got so drunk she was restrained
And her husband slipped away

Ray Davies had a tracheotomy
He was at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, aged thirteen
And during his long recovery
Nurses put him in a wheelchair
And they’d wheel him out onto a balcony (on a balcony)

And down that evening sun did sink
Painting London and the river and that freaked-out future Kink
Waterloo lit up for one sick kid
And, at 23, he recorded a song about it