Well Martin's dream
Has become Rodney's worst
Nightmare
Can't walk the streets
To them we are fair game
Our lives don't mean a thing

Like a King, like a King, like a King
Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King
Like a king, like a King, like a King
How I wish you could help us Dr. King

Make sure it's filmed
Shown on national T.V.
They'll have no mercy
A legal lynch mob
Like the days strung up from the tree
The L.A.P.D.

Like a King, like a King, like a King
Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King
Like a king, like a King, like a King
How I wish you could help us Dr. King

So if you catch yourself
Thinking it has changed for the best
You better second guess
Cause Martin's dream
Has become Rodney's worst
Nightmare

Like a King, like a King, like a King
Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King
Like a King, like a King, like a King
How I wish you could help us Dr. King

Like a King, like a King, like a King
Like a King, like a King, like a King
Like a King, like a King, like a King
How I wish... like a King, like a King

Like a King, like a King, like a, like a King
Like a King, like a King, like a King
When we will look to the past
Look to the past to learn ?
I wish...
Like a king, like a king, like a king
Like a king, like a king, like a king

Bye and bye we must go to see the King
Bye and bye we are gonna face the King


Musicians

Ben Harper: vocals, Weissenborn.
Rock Deadrick: drums & percussion.
John McKnight: bass.
Backing vocals: Mutonic Four (Clarence Butler, Clabe Hangan, Kenneth McDaniel, John Taylor).


Also appears on

Live From Mars (double album live) 2001 - Virgin Records America, Inc.

Notes

Ben Harper : "I could spend all of my time singing about hatred, condemning gangs, machismo, violence and it wouldn't change anything. So I sing about love. Even 'Like a King', my song about Rodney King is a song about love, with a soft, non-violent chorus. It's not a call to hatred.

One of the first songs I played to JP (Plunier) was 'Like a king' and he loved it. One day, we were in the elevator of a record label with some important-looking guy in a suit next to us and he was humming 'Like a king'. He must have heard the demos we'd sent them. A couple of days later, we had a meeting with the boss of the label, and we had been advised not to play this song. It turned out that it was exactly the same person. I therefore played it and it was his favourite song.

On 'Like a king', there is several rhythms because this piece consists of three songs added on end to end to each other to give a symphonic impression. All of these rhythms have a different significance, they evoke healing, spirituality and more aggressive aspects, but you'd have to be a musicologist to detect them. The most important is to feel things with your heart, whatever the origin. The drums and congas are the raw material, the basic foodstuff, the guitars are merely some kind of seasoning.

The remix isn't taken from a sample, it's a real drums because we are lucky enough to play with real musicians."

You can hear quotes from "How many miles must we march" ("When we will look to the past to learn") and "Bye and Bye I'm going to see the King" ("Bye, bye we must go to see the King").