Lyric of the Week: I CARE FOR YOU

I waited up all night for you

I came in from out of town for you

Though I never really talked to you

Did you ever think I care

Don’t be getting all upset at me

Don’t play your foolish games with me

Don’t get sentimental on me

I wouldn’t know how to take it

Well, I saw you last night with your old boyfriend

I thought you said you didn’t care for him no more

Don’t tell me that I just don’t understand

‘Cause I’ve seen all this happen before

Don’t make me see your point of view

Don’t tell me that you’re sorry too

Don’t ask me why I came for you

I just might say I care

Don’t search any further past this hard face

You might find a heart of gold

Don’t even try to ask about the future

You’ll find a man who wants to live before he gets old

Don’t ask me why I came for you

Don’t ask me why I’m all dressed up too

Don’t ask me how I feel about you

I just might say I care

©2025 The Hesh Inc.

Don’t be getting all upset at me, don’t play your foolish games with me.

I wrote this one in early 1985, as a hopeless romantic pursuing a certain girl through the downtown Jerusalem nightlife. She was just about the most beautiful among the cohort of students doing their "gap year" in the city that year, and just about every red-blooded straight male that laid eyes on her wanted her. But as is so often the case, she was quite discriminating as to who she'd allow into her inner circle. Not that I could blame her or anything, but I just believed I was a cut above the average yutz of the type she was fending off. (I'm sure all the other yutzes felt the same way.) But at one point my signal did seem to cut through the noise and she gave me the time of day, and after some conversation, she let herself get asked out by me, and she consented! I felt like I had just hit the jackpot. But when the time came to pick her up several days later, she was nowhere to be found ... and another girl, presumably her roommate, came out to tell me that the person of my interest was in bed with a 103° fever. (Got a fever of a hundred and three ... now where have I heard that before.) We'll let the reader decide if I got stood up and played for a yutz among yutzes. I wrote the lyrics, with an assist from my best friend Izzy Kieffer, when I was hanging out at his house afterward while nursing the sting of rejection. A month or two later we went into the studio to record the first of our demos that could be rightly called rock'n'roll, and this was one of the four tracks we did. Unfortunately my vocal made me sound a bit too whiny, so I never really promoted it. I can only look back at all this and laugh. (And as it happens, the girl and I are still friends, some four decades later, thanks to the wonders of social media.)