Rosalind and I spent a lot of time talking about “feelings” which I particularly enjoyed since I felt I was somewhat emotionally repressed. Since I was reading a lot of New Age stuff at the time, I channeled the language to talk about my journey. What’s interesting to me is that the song has an emotional component, at least I get that when I listen to it, particularly at the key change in the chorus.
If ever anything I wrote speaks for itself, it’s this song, both in the lyrics and the sadness. When Rosalind and I parted, it took me a long time to let go. And I don’t think I ever entirely did.
This song was great fun to write, is great fun to sing, but is a bear to play, so I really never performed it anywhere. Even recording it I ditched the guitar for a simple piano part.
I grew up with a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan and the influence of Gilbert’s patter songs can be seen here.
No recollection of where this came from, just that it was in the period I was seeing Rosalind, the late 70s, and it reflected the kinds of things we talked about. Another song rescued by an Elliot arrangement.
Typical of the self-bashing songs I was drawn to write at a certain point, particularly on my inability to get to my feelings. That was a big issue for me for a long time but my five years with Rosalind was a wonderful tonic for that. It was the only language she spoke and since I loved her I needed to learn it. These lyrics have a slight country flavor, since self-bashing songs are a staple in that genre. Can’t imagine that anyone would care but I channeled the theme from the film The Great Impersonation, written by my favorite film score composer, Heinz Roemheld, in the third and fourth lines of the song, and unlike what happened in other songs where I accidentally borrowed a theme, this was intentional.
In the late ’70s I met a lawyer named Sarah Thorne who was clerking for one of my alltime favorite people, Judge Ira Gammerman. I developed a crush on her (unreciprocated) and at the end of her tenure with the judge, as she was about to embark on a trip to Africa, I wrote this song. But whatever I thought I was writing when I wrote it, it clearly is about Rosalind. There is another recording of this tune done by Willow III on the album we recorded, with some wonderful guitar by Elliot.
In the period after Rosalind and I had split up, I wrote this song. I subsequently lost the lyrics and tried to piece it together from what I remembered. Years later I found part of the song written in one of my notebooks. This version is a combination of all that, but it’s still not what I originally wrote, which is a bit frustrating. And in any event, it doesn’t really reflect our relationship. But it’s fun to sing.
