Scenes From An Italian Restaurant

(album: The Stranger - 1977)

A bottle of white, a bottle of red
Perhaps a bottle of rose instead
We'll get a table near the street
In our old familiar place
You and I-face to face

A bottle of red, a bottle of white
It all depends on your appetite
I'll meet you any time you want
In our Italian Restaurant.

Things are okay with me these days
Got a good job, got a good office
Got a new wife, got a new life
And the family's fine
We lost touch long ago
You lost weight I did not know
You could ever look so nice after
So much time.

Do you remember those days hanging out
At the village green?
Engineer boots, leather jackets
And tight blue jeans
Drop a dime in the box play the
Song about New Orleans
Cold beer, hot lights
My sweet romantic teenage nights

Brenda and Eddie were the
Popular steadies
And the king and the queen
Of the prom
Riding around with the car top
Down and the radio on
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the
Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more
Than that out of life
Surely Brenda and Eddie would
Always know how to survive.

Brenda and Eddy were still going
Steady in the summer of '75
When they decided the marriage would
Be at the end of July
Everyone said they were crazy
"Brenda you know you're much too lazy
Eddie could never afford to live that
Kind of life."
But there we were waving Brenda and
Eddie goodbye.

They got an apartment with deep
Pile carpet
And a couple of paintings from Sears
A big waterbed that they bought
With the bread
They had saved for a couple
Of years
They started to fight when the
Money got tight
And they just didn't count on
The tears.

They lived for a while in a
Very nice style
But it's always the same in the end
They got a divorce as a matter
Of course
And they parted the closest
Of friends
Then the king and the queen went
Back to the green
But you can never go back
There again.

Brenda and Eddie had had it
Already by the summer of '75
From the high to the low to
The end of the show
For the rest of their lives
They couldn't go back to
The greasers
The best they could do was
Pick up the pieces
We always knew they would both
Find a way to get by
That's all I heard about
Brenda and Eddie
Can't tell you more than I
Told you already
And here we are waving Brenda
And Eddie goodbye.

A bottle of red, a bottle of white
Whatever kind of mood you're in tonight
I'll meet you anytime you want
In our Italian Restaurant.