Famous Tracheotomies

G             D
When I had my tracheotomy
       Am
I was blue and had stopped breathing
              Em               C
There was something wrong with me
G                          D
Doctors cut through the cartilage 
and skin
         Am
At the bottom of my throat
                C           Am    
And then they snaked that trach 
      D
tube in

[Chorus 1]
         Bm              Em
And I was one and a half
          Am
I was my parents only kid
                 Em           C
And they had lost two before that
 Bm            Em                 
And growing up, I always knew how 
          C
close I'd come
                                  D
Well, that must have been scary, Mom


[Verse 2]
G                      D
Gary Coleman, he was "Arnold" on TV
          Am                     
Well, I grew up watching him and 
Em              C
Conrad Bain and Kimberly
G                          D
It turns out that he had a trach 
scar too
           Am
Where they cut into his throat
              C            Am  
And then they threaded that tube 
     D
through

[Chorus 2]
             Bm          Em
But that was much later on
Continúa después del anuncio
        Am                      
In the year that he turned forty 
          Em             C
when his fanbase was all gone
        Bm                    Em
And his health was so touch-and-go
           C
His girlfriend proposed
                         D
But they broke up on a TV show

[Verse 3]
G                     D
Mary Wells, she was known as 
Motown's Queen
        Am                     Em 
But laryngeal cancer left her 
       C
unable to sing
G                         D
They tried radiation, multiple 
surgeries
      Am                         
But she didn't have insurance and 
         C   Am    D
lost almost everything

Poor thing

[Chorus 3]
     Bm                        Em
But Diana Ross helped with her bills
        Am                         
Aretha Franklin tried her very best
     Em           C
 to help out Mary Wells
       Bm                      Em
And Dionne Warwick did all she could
 do
                     C
And Mary Wells, she pulled through
                     D
For one more year or two

[Verse 4]
G                   D
Dylan Thomas looked completely pale 
and weak
      Am                     
On a trip to New York City to 
 Em          C
promote his poety
G                                 
Three straight days of drinking 
          D
out in Greenwich and Chelsea
       Am                     C   
He was taken to the hospital, 
      Am            D
turned blue and not breathing

[Chorus 4]
  Bm               Em
And Caitlin Thomas said
          Am
When she walked into St Vincent's
       Em               C
"Is the bloody man dead yet?"
Bm                Em             
And later that day she got so 
                C
drunk she was restrained
                       D
And her husband slipped away

[Verse 5]
G                D
Ray Davies had a tracheotomy
Am                                
He was at St. Thomas' Hospital in 
  Em           C
London, aged thirteen
G               D
And during his long recovery
      Am
Nurses put him in a wheelchair
           C             Am   
And they'd wheel him out onto a 
    D
balcony (on a balcony)

[Chorus 5]
Bm                            Em
And down that evening sun did sink
         Am                      
Painting London and the river and 
      Em                C
that freaked-out future Kink
Bm                           Em
Waterloo lit up for one sick kid
          C                       
And, at 23, he recorded a song about
D
 it