Time for another track, perhaps.
This one is a long time coming as well. It started with the idea that this song has two faces.
One is the defiant, harsh, “screw you” character that puts it in the category with Positively 4th Street and Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. The cocky, major-key bravado that says: “you may think we have something going here, but we don’t.”
But there is also a more mellow angle to the song. All those things that it ain’t me that’s going to put up with — it’s not that they’re all that unreasonable, really, as long as they don’t turn into a lifestyle or a pattern of empty habit. In this light, the song becomes more of a second cousin of Idiot Wind or Sara — and a minor key would be much more suitable.
So I played it in A minor instead of C major, with exactly the same melody — and it worked.
And thus transformed from a put-down song to a breakup song, other references offered themselves up: Sympathy for the Devil, “there must be some way out of here”, etc.
The track is highly unfinished. I’m going to record a more polished version eventually, so take it for what it is.