Written by Bill Spooner · Album: The Completion Backward Principle
"Don't Want to Wait Anymore" is a 1981 power ballad by The Tubes, written by Bill Spooner and released on the band's fifth studio album, The Completion Backward Principle. In a catalog full of theatrical statements and hard-edged rock, this track stood apart: a direct, emotionally unguarded love song that showed another dimension of Spooner's songwriting entirely.
The song became one of The Tubes' biggest chart hits, finding an audience that may not have previously associated the band with this kind of unadorned sincerity. Where tracks like "White Punks on Dope" built their power through accumulation and spectacle, "Don't Want to Wait Anymore" worked through restraint — a building melody, a vocal performance of real feeling, and a production that let both breathe.
Produced by Todd Rundgren, the track benefits from the same clarity that defined The Completion Backward Principle as a whole: clean, precise, without the layering and theatrical density of earlier records. Rundgren understood that the song's strength was its directness and mixed it accordingly.
The Completion Backward Principle is often discussed as the record that brought The Tubes to a mainstream audience — and it did, largely on the strength of "Talk to Ya Later"'s MTV presence. But "Don't Want to Wait Anymore" is the album's emotional counterweight: the moment where the irony drops and the song just means what it says.
That balance — wit and sincerity existing on the same record, sometimes in the same song — is a signature of Bill Spooner's songwriting. The Tubes were always more than the spectacle suggested, and this track is the clearest evidence of that.
The song has been performed live throughout The Tubes' career. The version below is one of the best-documented recordings of the band playing it — worth watching for Fee Waybill's performance alone.