Robbie Robertson - Take Your Partner By The Hand lyrics

She walks alone down a sleazy backstreet Around a corner, up an alley to a dead end There under a small blue light She enters an unmarked doorway (A low heartbeat, a low pounding escapes into the night) This is a place she goes to fulfill a very basic need Something people have been doing since the dawn of man To communicate without talking If she needs something She makes a gesture with her hand And mouths what she wants She wants to make a connection A certain kind of connection No this is not about something from the black market This is about no questions This is about smoke and sweat and beats This is about no message CHORUS: Take your partner by the hand He's a woman, she's a man What's so hard to understand Take your partner by the hand Mona in the promised land Take your partner by the hand Keep it simple if you can Take your partner by the hand At the club they circle around some s** goddess like vultures Flashbulbs popping Like bees around their queen She is completely indifferent to all the commotion And orders some mango tango ice cream by sign language She's approached by some wild-eyed poet drunk with love I like her easy refusal, the way she shakes her head She lives these days in the attic of an old dance hall That's been shut down for years And swears there's times when she can hear feet shuffling below And can see the shadows swaying, moving to the music CHORUS (first half) Elevator going up Fifth floor Lady's handbags, shoes, leather accessories, and electronics Wait a minute, where am I, on this elevator to nowhere Going up, going down Then like a hallucination I saw her out of the corner of my eye Studying some shoes very carefully She definitely had a particular purpose for these shoes in mind Then as quickly as she appeared, she disappeared Back into the slash and burn of New York Ah, stuck in traffic Crosstown, the stress of not moving She described it as like being locked in a car With a madman behind the wheel And the radio tuned to static CHORUS