My Own Private Xanadu

on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle town
there lives the great Bill Gates, all finely bedded down
with his microchip computer brain and his wallet overflowing
he’s the miser of Medina and he’s a bigger shot than Boeing

but if you ask him he will say
I do what I wanna do in my own private Xanadu

well now, maybe I’m just jealous, that remains to be unknown
but fifty-five million dollars for a single family home
with people livin’ in cardboard boxes who can’t afford the rent
I’d say that fifty-five million dollars could be so much better spent

but if you ask him he will say
I do what I wanna do in my own private Xanadu

one of the many wonders of these great and wondrous times
is the size to which a greed can grow from some one’s fertile mind
and how everybody loves it when the money men declare
that little Billy Nobody is now a multi-billionaire

but if you ask him he will say
I do what I wanna do in my own private Xanadu

Now, he don’t walk upon the ground, he don’t shine his own shoes
he can buy himself a column in the big time daily news
he can write a book and push it like a new age Rockefeller
and even if he has to buy all the copies himself it’ll still be a million seller

but if you ask him he will say
I do what I wanna do in my own private Xanadu

now, I ain’t sayin’ you shouldn’t succeed, you know I think everyone should make it
but when your bubble gets too big somebody’s bound to come and break it
and history has a sense of humor that sometimes gets deranged
you could wind up walkin’ around Medina selling Real Change

but if you ask him he will say
I do what I wanna do in my own private Xanadu

so go ahead and play the lottery, you can roll your lucky dice
they say there’s fourteen karat gold in the streets of paradise
so if you’re going up to heaven, well you better be advised
better get yourself some Windows ‘cause it’s been computerized