Mr. Wendal

Album: 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of... (1992)
Charted: 4 6
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Songfacts®:

  • Arrested Development lead vocalist Speech wrote this song. He told us: "The song is not based on a person named Mr. Wendal at all, but it is based on some experiences that I have had in Atlanta, which is where I live, and sung to the homeless people that I had become friends with here, and just their way of looking at it. Some of them were more like hobos where they purposely were wanting to be homeless, they didn't want to play to the way society was going, and they just decided to go off another beaten path. Others were hungry, had a run of bad luck, and just couldn't survive with the competition of the real world. So they were out there. One of the people that I look to the most as the real Mr. Wendal, to me, died the year that that song came out. So he never got to hear the song and the tribute to him. We gave half of the proceeds of that song to the National Coalition For the Homeless in the United States, because of how closely all of us felt to the cause of the homeless, and the fact that everybody, whether they're homeless or not, there's some times in all of our lives when we need some help, we need a boost." (Check out our full interview with Speech.)
  • This samples the drums from "Sing A Simple Song" by Sly & The Family Stone, which can be found on their 1969 album Stand!.

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