Until I'm 83

Until I'm 83 was written on 1974 on the same piano you can see in the attached video. It is a wonderful, beautiful Grand Upright built by Bradford & Sons estimated between 1890 and 1900.


It was a period of time before my wife and I started dating and loneliness was a major theme of most of my songs during that time. In fact I was actually working on a musical play based on teenage loneliness (a task now performed by Taylor Swift!). The musical included another song I wrote from a poem my brother penned called "Alone Is Never Quite Real". Unfortunately for the musical, my future wife and I started dating and the musical never was completed!
It was a time when I used metaphor which now is frowned upon in lyrics but I still admire songs that use that usage of storytelling because it makes the listener think a little. Today, if you don't spell it out plain and simple your song doesn't make it - so it appears.

So I used "Tears are the legs of the actor, pain is the blood of the poet" to show the loneliness we all endure at one time or the other. Now when I sing the song I get tilted heads indicating "What??"

At age 18 when the song was written, 83 seemed like such a long way off! Now it appears ever so close at age 54 and the song seems dated. Yet the theme remains, just changed by the times we live in.

I hope you all enjoy "Until I'm 83"!
Dave