About The Song
“I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair” is a song written by Billy Yates, Frank Dycus and Kerry Kurt Phillips, and recorded by George Jones. It was the first single from his 1992 album Walls Can Fall.
Jones, who by 1992 had taken his place as one of the true legends of country music, used the composition as a personal statement, asserting his determination to carry on singing as he always had. Its final chorus is done as a call and response, with several other country singers providing the response: Vince Gill, Mark Chesnutt, Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt, Joe Diffie, Alan Jackson, Pam Tillis, T. Graham Brown, Patty Loveless and Clint Black. The song was praised by critics. In the book The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, Bob Allen describes it as a “boisterous musical declaration[…]about a man’s determination to keep right on honky tonkin’ into his golden years.” Richard Carlin, in the book Country Music: A Biographical Dictionary, called it “a good-natured but defiant statement of where this old fella’s comin’ from.” Brian Mansfield, in his review of Walls Can Fall, called the song “scarier because of George’s past”, while Jones himself described the song as “my attitude set to music.” However, the single only rose to No. 34, and Jones remained frustrated at how many country radio stations had turned their backs on him. “There has never been a time when country radio was so disrespectful to its elders,” he declared in his 1995 memoir. The song won the 1993 Country Music Association Award for Vocal Event of the Year.
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Lyrics
I don’t need your rockin’ chair
Your Geritol or your Medicare
Well, I still got neon in my veins
This grey hair don’t mean a thing
I do my rockin’ on the stage
You can’t put this possum in a cage
My body’s old but it ain’t impaired
I don’t need your rockin’ chair
I ain’t ready for the junkyard yet
‘Cause I still feel like a new Corvette
It might take a little longer but I’ll get there
Well, I don’t need your rockin’ chair
I don’t need your rockin’ chair
Your Geritol or your Medicare
I’ve still got neon in my veins
This grey hair don’t mean a thing
I do my rockin’ on the stage
You can’t put this possum in a cage
My body’s old but it ain’t impaired
Well, I don’t need this rockin’ chair
I don’t need your rockin’ chair (he don’t need your rockin’ chair)
Your Geritol or your Medicare (Geritol or your Medicare)
I’ve still got neon in my veins (still got neon in my veins)
This grey hair don’t mean a thing (his grey hair don’t mean a thing)
I do my rockin’ on the stage (does his rockin’ on the stage)
You can’t put this possum in a cage (can’t put this possum in a cage)
Yeah, my body’s old but it ain’t impaired (well, you know he ain’t impaired)
Well, I don’t need your rockin’ chair (and he don’t need no rockin’ chair)
My body’s old but it ain’t impaired (yeah, we all know you ain’t impaired)
I don’t need your rockin’ chair
Uh huh