Story Behind The Song

Written in 1978, the writer was looking for a primary theme expressing his feelings toward America in general and California in particular, as a fourth-generation Californian expatriate living in Ireland. An Hispanic melody in his memory offered itself i

Song Description

Singer identifies the American (northern, upper, "alta" as opposed to "baja", lower) half of the fabulous Spanish-discovered and -colonized western land as a place of ruin brought on by successive waves of colonization and exploitation.

Lyrics

There's no water in High California
for seven years out of ten,
and the fires that burn in her mountains
were burning before there were men.
'Fore the Indian tilled his sea-garden,
or slaved in the church orange-grove;
'fore the Yankee bear-flag republic,
or the miners who rushed to her gold.

Ah, Alta California! Ah, as far as you can go!
Ah, Alta California?Russian Mexico,
as far to the west as you'll go.
Where our white-faced bandit relations
(maybe meanest in all of creation),
made the first be the last in the name of the past?
smug and god-damned nation!
And the Okies and the dust-bowl battalions
gave the lie to her mouth-holy values,
and Woodrow Wilson Guthrie's the man
sang of our salvation
(if we ain't got that dough-re-mi).

There's no future in High California
for any children of men,
and the doom that hangs over her cities
smells like the wages of sin:
that's the sin of the great transformation?
where nothing from something was gained?
what was dry and was lonely in beauty
is the hell of the millions who came.

Ah, Alta California! Ah, as far as you can go!
Ah, Alta California?Russian Mexico,
as far to the west as you'll go.
Where our white-faced bandit relations
(maybe meanest in all of creation),
made the first be the last in the name of the past?
smug and god-damned nation!
And the Okies and the dust-bowl battalions
gave the lie to her mouth-holy values,
and Woodrow Wilson Guthrie's the man
sang of our salvation
('cause we ain't got that dough-re-mi).