Tulsa '67

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house

I had only two things on my mind

Paul Newman and a ride home

I've never been out of Tulsa before

I wonder what it would be like

I've never known anybody to leave

Most people get stuck here for life

My brother could have been a football star

People say he had a ticket out

My other brother suffers from a broken heart

From a girl he loved who up and moved away

We got no parents, we fend for ourselves

There's no one to show us the way

My brothers are trying but they're always out

Just working their poor lives away

My name is Ponyboy, the youngest of the three

I know there's so much more to life than what's in front of me

So I sneak into the movies just to glimpse the other side

Rather take the risk and see it than to never even try

When I am looking up and Newman's on the screen

The entire world just melts away

And for a moment, I'm not worried 'bout a thing

I just sit back and let the movie start to play

But unlike in the movies and the books I like to read

Nothing in this town plays out the same

They tell me it was different back when we could all agree

Somewhere down the line, we lost our way

We had places to go, we had things to do

So they took one town and they split it in two

The money went West, kicked the grease to the East

The train ran down the belly of the beast

Here we are now, I'm talking to you

When I get to the end, tell me what you would do

In a town that's torn in two

What's a Greaser from the East side s'posed to do?

This is Tulsa 1967

And there's just one thing you need to know

You've got Greasers and Socs

That's how it's always been

And that's probably how it's always gonna go

There's another side of Tulsa that I hardly ever see

It's like some kind of fairytale land

The grass is always greener and the streets are always clean

All the girls are pretty there, and all the guys are mean

We call them Socs 'cause they live like socialites

Barbecues and graduation days

With better clothes and better cars and better lives

Just one town, two very different ways

And over on the East side, the story's not the same

Another run-down building, another broken window pane

The car's no longer running, sitting idle in the yard

They're building up the West side while the East side falls apart

That right there is my best friend in the whole world, Johnny Cade

Just last week, some Socs beat the living hell out of him

He hasn't been the same since

This town, it only holds you down, there's judgement everywhere

And people think they know you by the way you wear your hair

If you're not born into money, then you're born into despair

And they'll do all that they can to keep your poor ass there

We gave ourselves a name 'cause we don't have a lot

We stick together 'cause each other's all we got

We take a lot of pride in how we grease our hair

People look us up and down and we don't even care

'Cause we're Greasers!

Making something out of nothing but it's something that a Soc ain't got

We are Greasers!

Ain't never gonna change and it really don't matter if you like it or not

'Cause this is Tulsa 1967

And there's just one thing you need to know

Just one thing

You've got Greasers and Socs, that's how it's always been

And that's probably how it's always gonna go

In a town that's torn in two

And that's probably how it's always gonna go

What's a Greaser from the East side s'posed to do?

And that's probably how it's always gonna go

Hey

That's probably how it's always gonna go