Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems  

The Cement Octopus

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1964 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1992. A song sung at a rally in Golden Gate Park to save the area from a proposed freeway (which was not built).

There's a cement octopus sits in Sacramento, I think.
Gets red tape to eat, gasoline taxes to drink.
And it grows by day and it grows by night,
And it rolls over ev'rything in sight.
Oh, stand by me and protect that tree
From the freeway misery.

Who knows how the monster started to grow that way,
Its parents are frightened, they wish it would go away,
But the taxes keep coming, they have to be spent
On the big bulldozers and tanks of cement,
Oh, stand by me and protect that tree
From the freeway misery.

That octopus grows like a science-fiction blight,
The Bay and the Ferry Building are out of sight,
The trees that stood for a thousand years,
We watch them falling through our tears,
Oh, stand by me and protect that tree
From the freeway misery.

Old John MacLaren won't take this lying down,
We can hear his spirit move in the sandy ground,
He built this Eden on the duney plain,
Now they're making it a concrete desert again,
Oh, stand by me and protect that tree
From the freeway misery.

The men on the highways need those jobs, we know,
Let's put them to work planting new trees to grow,
Building new parks where kids can play,
Pushing that cement monster away,
Oh, stand by me and protect that tree
From the freeway misery.

Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- The Muse of Parker Street
---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook

Other place(s) where the music to this song appears:
---- Broadside No. 46 (30 May 1964)
---- Jim Morse and Nancy Mathews: The Sierra Club Survival Songbook (San Francisco and New York: The Sierra Club, 1971)

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- Malvina Reynolds (2007)
---- Cassandra Records CS-52 (7-inch 45 rpm disc, 1971; flip side "Little Boxes")

Recordings by other artists on which this song is performed:
---- Pete Seeger: God Bless the Grass (Columbia CL 2432, 1966)
---- Fred Starner: Ecology; The People Are Scratching (Kimbo Educational KLP-9000, 1971)
---- listen to youtube.com video