Mitchell, Joni - The Last Time I Saw Richard Lyrics






The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe
"You laugh," he said, "You think you're immune,
Go look at your eyes, they're full of moon
You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies, pretty lies
When you gonna realize they're only pretty lies
Only pretty lies, just pretty lies"

He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer
And he pushed three buttons and the thing began to whirr
And a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
And she said, "Drink up now it's gettin' on time to close"
"Richard you haven't really changed," I said,
"It's just that now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head
You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs you punched are dreaming
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
When you gonna go get yourself back on your feet?
Oh love can be so sweet, love so sweet."

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright
I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
I don't want nobody comin' over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes, dark cafes
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days.





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Mitchell, Joni The Last Time I Saw Richard Comments
  1. A.... H....

    Rent a center with Poland spring!

  2. R.... B....

    Always preferred the live version myself but the prolonged piano intro is a magical piece of music likened to a piece by a classical composer.

  3. C.... C....

    How does she put words together like that so perfectly?

  4. B.... H....

    I listened to this last night and it played in my head all day.

  5. w.... w....

    this album simply ripped my heart to pieces

  6. M.... O....

    This masterpiece is a dialogue between hope and existential despair. What is achingly sad is that we don't believe those dark cafe days are just a phase

  7. D.... J....

    👍👍👏👏🎹🎼❤❤❤

  8. t.... ....

    So Beautiful!

  9. G.... P....

    I’m here from the comic ‘Kill or be Killed’ lmao

  10. H.... ....

    My first Joni Mitchell music was "Blue" on cassette, which I got really cheap. I was about 15, and that was important. It wasn't until a lot later that I heard this whole song. The cassette I'd bought was a bootleg and faded out at "put a quarter in the Wurlitzer...." Live and learn. But what an album!

  11. B.... T....

    I have loved Joni Mitchell's music since I first heard it in 1970. I never tire of it...I long for the music of the 70's

  12. M.... G....

    See I just don't understand why anyone would come here and dislike it. Wtf?

  13. g.... s....

    I miss him :(

  14. b.... c....

    This is not an album...this is a miracle...

  15. F.... J....

    pretty lies... when you gonna realise they're only pretty lies

  16. F.... J....

    'I don't want nobody coming to my table, I got nothing to talk to anybody about...' - I think I'll just hide in this dark cocoon

  17. t.... k....

    Her poetry overwhelms us. join in

  18. R.... ....

    Hey , my name’s Richard 🙄

  19. S.... K....

    amazing all the men out there who are taken back to youth or the edge of their feminine feelings by Joni"s music.

    S.... K....

    No, there's always one that got away.

  20. J.... L....

    Any worn ladies here looking for a good time?

  21. P.... K....

    They're is only one Joni Mitchell...No-one can compare

  22. H.... M....

    one of the most beautiful pieces of written word to music. can't even find the words to fully express what this song means to me.

  23. j.... s....

    Thank you Joni x

  24. L.... K....

    You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you all those pretty lies. Wow!

  25. H.... o....

    💎Perfect!!!💎

  26. L.... S....

    When I was a teenager I played an old acoustic guitar to the songs of the day, the late 60's and 70's. I am almost 59 as I write. The songs of Joni Mitchell among others I sang, to myself, alone in my room.
    My ex- husband, a recovered alcoholic, now belated, due to the complications of his disease, whom I had met when I was a secretary and he, a computer programmer, was heavily immersed in his drinking, his remedy for many years of depression he had suffered from. One night, in our marriage I found him, after waking up to no one beside me, in a pub on the riverfront, a place I later discovered he often frequented....He looked up when I entered, and ashamed would not speak to me...I quietly walked up to the stage, with my guitar and sang this...for his pain and for my own and apparently for that of many of the patrons there.... When I was done the room was silent...As I began to make my way out to head home, the patrons stood up, clapped, and hurried over to me, thanking me for reaching them....I know I reached my husband as well, and continued to be supportive of him, for 38 years despite our separation, divorce and relocation (I could not bear the children witnessing their father's pain) until his sad passing, less than 3 years ago. He was a hard worker, charming, intelligent, strong, proud and yet so fragile, a side he once admitted he showed only to me....how could I not love him, and continue to do so. If only I could have saved him, from all that haunted him....

    L.... S....

    This is amazing. Great art illuminates our lives; how wonderful that you had the insight to apply this song like that. You fill my heart.

    L.... S....

    But I hope you know that no one can save anyone else -- and I hope you don't bear that particular pain (self-reproach) on top of everything else. I'm sorry for your, and your children's, loss.

  27. c.... ....

    Blue = Joni's masterpiece.

  28. c.... ....

    Just love those songs where the piano rules great summer music puts your soul at peace. Apparently her musical piers took to calling her Beethoven after she made Blue.

    c.... ....

    comeupandseememakeme: peers, not piers?

  29. F.... J....

    I can't go down and 'like' ALL the comments under this video ..... but if I had the time, that is what I would do.

    I love Joni, I love this song so much. Oh god, listen to the purity of her voice, listen to the words, listen to her keyboard work ....... !!!!!!!!

  30. K.... B....

    The whole album from cover to cover is one beautiful lament

  31. R.... L....

    OTHER-WORLDLY

  32. M.... A....

    This song really feels like a response to that kind of cynicism I really don't like, and I love it for that.

  33. R.... G....

    Fantastic!
    Look
    https://youtu.be/ueQlVlkF6p4

  34. t.... k....

    Special Lady, special listening. We are very blessed to hear her

  35. L.... R....

    The words are art , the music is art , putting the two together is genius. We all have been in that bar.

  36. T.... m....

    I'm in tears and utterly confused..wtf is a coffee percolator??😩😩

    T.... m....

    Are you kidding? It's a coffee maker where there's a basket at the top inside and a cylinder that leads up into the basket from the boiling water at the base. The water keeps cycling. There's a transparent window at the top where you can see the water "perk" - when the water is dark, the coffee is made.

  37. j.... d....

    Possibly the best song ever recorded. Certain among the best of the best.

  38. T.... N....

    A Brazilian singer played this song years ago... you guys should try. His cover is very nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiKlx1JQsWE

  39. g.... l....

    Last time I saw Richard was detroit in 68
    And he told me all romantics meet the same fate
    Someday, cynical and drunk and boring someone
    In some dark cafe
    You laugh, he said you think you're immune
    Go look at eyes
    They're full of moon
    You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
    All those pretty lies, pretty lies
    When you gonna realize they're only pretty lies?
    Only pretty lies, pretty lies

    He put a quarter in the wurlitzer, and he pushed
    Three buttons and the thing began to whirl
    And a barman came by a fishnet stockings and a bow tie
    And she said: Drink up now it's getting on time to close
    Richard, you haven't really changed, I said
    That's just now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head
    You've got tombs in your in your eyes, but the songs
    You punched are dreaming
    Listen, they sing of love so sweet
    When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?
    Oh and love can be so sweet, love so sweet

    Richard got married to a figure skater
    And he bought her a dish washer and a coffe percolator
    And he drinks at home now most night with the TV on
    And all the house lights left up bright
    I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
    I don't want nobody comin'over to my table
    I've got nothing to talk to anybody about
    All good dreamer pass this way someday
    Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes
    Dark cafes
    Only a dark cocoon before
    I get my gorgeous wings
    And fly away
    Only a phase, these dark cafe days

  40. M.... S....

    Mds até chorei.

  41. C.... R....

    So amazing...
    <3

  42. A.... ....

    Read this link for a GREAT background on the album Blue. What a master songwriter.
    https://lithub.com/anatomy-of-a-perfect-album-on-joni-mitchells-blue/

  43. G.... B....

    Incredible

  44. f.... ....

    Pretty lies, only pretty lies, that's all love is...just pretty lies. I'll never fall again for those pretty lies....

  45. N.... B....

    What a song, and what a poignant story it tells!

  46. t.... k....

    Always love this women and the art

  47. b.... ....

    You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you all those pretty lies. Used that line a few times over the decades. Thanks Joni.

  48. N.... A....

    Renato Russo me trouxe aqui

  49. j.... d....

    My take on this song is profoundly deep, sad, and powerful. It's about the two soul mates who felt like they were meant to be but could not make it be. So even though they move on, and their new lives look complete on paper, they never really moved on. No should mate in their life was meant to be. The one that was meant to be wasn't mean to be. Powerful songwriting - about contradiction, paradoxes and torment. A masterpiece genius song. Many of us can relate to this experience.

  50. N.... A....

    She. Is. Amazing!

  51. m.... d....

    You are no Unschuldsengel But I love you........

    m.... d....

    Drunken and undrunken And I hope for the Rest of.our Live-Sendung..... Live-Sendung.....

  52. T.... P....

    Legião URBANA AAAAAAAH

  53. T.... F....

    These dark cafe days.....

  54. f.... ....

    Just genius...Joni is way ahead of anybody.

  55. I.... L....

    Stunningly brilliant song. Prophetic too. Because Joni became Richard. 😢

  56. P.... L....

    This is easily the best song of the album.

  57. g.... k....

    This song has haunted me every time I hear the name Richard.....Blue is such a solid foundation of my musical memories.

  58. M.... R....

    I love the lyrics of this song. Richard got married to s figure skater, and bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator. it's genius, she paints a whole domestic scene of normality in a few words before taking a look below the surface, and things get dark.

  59. A.... M....

    JONI MITCHELL
    THE LAST TIME I SAW RICHARD

  60. W.... G....

    No one does it better than our girl Joni! <3

  61. I.... ....

    Some albums are part of the soundtrack of our lives, this is one them for me. Exquisite poetry in every sense.

  62. A.... K....

    Thinking of a friend and the last day I saw him 3 years ago. We shared a love for this song. It helps me shed necessary tears for the memories which are all I have left.

  63. G.... S....

    VERY VERY BEATIFULL

  64. S.... N....

    Hey to the 50 scumbags who clicked thumbs down to this track: FUCK YOU!!

  65. A.... M....

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueQlVlkF6p4

  66. l.... ....

    Without Joni Mitcell, our generation would have been completely lost... & i would definately have been totally confounded, lol ♡

  67. D.... N....

    Joni - you touched everyone who came within a 1,000 feet of you

  68. t.... k....

    WE still here. even thought I haven't really changed

  69. D.... N....

    The album Blue- are you fucking me? So brilliant, so naked

  70. J.... S....

    Adoro essa música, conheci na voz do Renato, e a sua interpretação do Renato é simplismente fantástica!!!

  71. E.... L....

    “You’ve got tombs in your eyes...”

  72. E.... L....

    This song was used in the Kill or Be Killed Comic book, and I came here to listen.

    This is life-changingly good.

  73. K.... U....

    And that last chord, what can you say........?

    K.... U....

    indeed! it killed me in 1971 and it kills me today.

  74. s.... ....

    all the thing I failed to be, love richard

  75. e.... ....

    What a voice!

  76. t.... k....

    no one ever been Joni Mitchell. blessed artist. just love her

  77. J.... M....

    An incredible song on an incredible album. The perfect ending too... that final chord gives me goosebumps.

  78. t.... k....

    Still the same........

  79. x.... ....

    This works better as a poem than as a song, as do some of her other songs. I know it's heresy to say that.

  80. j.... A....

    Beautiful music, but it got better with Renato Russo...I just think so

  81. J.... D....

    This song reminds me of a life-course encounter that some people unfortunately experience in their lives. Two soul mates who were meant to be could not find a way to be. Both may move on and find perfect lives on paper - marry and have children, but may always look back that one failed relationship as the deepest, darkest secret regret of their lives. Joni captures the depth of this deep experience magnificently. This is my subtle interpretation of what this song is truly about. A glorious number. The power of this song may force one to reflect on the notion of Que Sera, Sera. Perhaps what was meant to be won't eventuate, sometimes.

  82. C.... L....

    melhor renato russo cantando huehuehuehue

  83. M.... W....

    A CLASSIC, imho!

  84. I.... ....

    wow her voice is shit.

  85. A.... ....

    Probably the most sincerely existential 'pop' song ever written: on the surface, a personal moment; more broadly, an elegy for a particular generation; and in the greater scheme, something for all of us in the raw, honest portrayal of the small apocalypse that waits within us when, with time, magical thinking evaporates and we know that we are dreadfully insignificant and then must choose or not how to react. Could there be anything more catastrophic than '[marrying] a figure skater, [buying] her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator [and drinking] at home most nights with the TV on all the house lights left up bright"? Make no mistake - this arresting image cannot be read only literally; and yet it carries no ham fisted doctrine, only one's subjective sense of its bleakness.

    Ms. Mitchell is, despite her iconic status, still highly underrated compared to her contemporaries - some of who have even recently won major prizes; what makes her so brilliant is that it is too easy to only read her lyrics from the surface, to see deception in her lyricism, and to dismiss her 'prettiness' of melody and poetic word play. She is neither overtly political nor a chic nihilist, nor 'the 'voice of a generation'. If she seems too 'personal' (a charge some might levy against another under-ratee, Paul Simon) one can counter that this remains within her songbook: she is not the 'performed' public persona that some were and yet, a feminist with her own vernacular, she frustratingly, arrogantly, and brilliantly posits herself as the artist hero (Beethoven, Van Gogh, etc.) in a Paris dress with runs in her nylons. If she is heavy handed, it is still lighthearted compared to her fellow men, though she is incorrectly seen as lightheaded. To lock her in to a particular time and generation is to do her - and many songwriter/artists, a disservice.

    The continuity of albums in the years following 'Blue' represents a high artist ascending. The song 'For the Roses' is probably the best popular document about fame yet written, accompanied as it is by the subtle melancholy of 'The Judgement of the Moon and Stars', and the totality of 'The Hissing of Summer Lawns' and the radical, yes, radical 'Hejira' ("I'm going to write an album almost entirely for acoustic guitar and invoke Amelia Earhart and Mohammed and Toller Cranston while I sing in the 'male' voice of, "Yeah, I'm a love 'em an' leave 'em a-hole, but I just gotta wander because I'm going toward and running from 'cause that's what the guys do.") cannot be dismissed with a simple comparisons to other icons of her generation.

    You don't have to agree with me, but I think she does need to be reconsidered alongside some of the fellows whose names slip very easily from the lips.

    Oh, one more thing. She can sing, too. Imagine that.

    A.... ....

    @Autostade….damn. Far more insightful/intelligent and substantive than 75% of what passes for "music review" out there in the media nowadays. And...here on YT, of all places. Well-stated, and cheers.

  86. F.... J....

    Legião Urbana me trouxe aqui 😀

  87. J.... M....

    The most beautiful song and recording ever sang and its full of mids. As in the past recordings. I hope the come back recording this way again.

  88. m.... ....

    "All good dreamers pass this way someday"......Yup.

  89. K.... F....

    MARAVILHOSA!!!!!!!

  90. J.... F....

    I miss you, Pinky. (Richard) ie: King Muffin. ( :

  91. M.... O....

    Oh, Richard.......

  92. m.... ....

    check renato russo - the last time i saw richard

  93. J.... S....

    The one moment on this album where she completely stumbled into the maudlin.

  94. l.... ....

    It always amazed me that so much power could be wrought from just Joni Mitchell's voice and her piano.

  95. d.... b....

    If you love Joni, check out Buffy Sainte Marie. Someone suggested her to me & I was pretty grateful. "The Big Ones Get Away", "C'odine" and "Still This Love Goes On" are some great songs of hers,

  96. K.... B....

    My nephew Richard Scott passed away today such a shock for some reason this song just came on to my YouTube such a sweet song such a sweet boy

    K.... B....

    My condolences to you and friends and family

  97. B.... ....

    Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away
    Only a phase these dark café days

    B.... ....

    BonoLightier I built a butterfly costume in my costume days. I unfolded it to pacobel. Wings we're 6 feet floor to ceiling. Got a standing ovation. Released me. I got my wings. Joni's songs and some others helped me build it.

  98. D.... d....

    Renato Russo me fez conhecer essa mulher incrível!

  99. m.... p....

    this song reminds me of ian withal - an pld friend friend from junior school who s probably dead now - any body who know s different let me know
    he was my friend goosewell junior school john hore

  100. l.... g....

    Hello i am Brasil very beautiful this song