Once When I Was Young
"Once When I Was Young" is an extremely desolate song, with its faceless character drifting helplessly through a barren wilderness of concrete cages and stone towers, its nadir coming in the lines, "We collected the tears and put them in water / And grew them instead of flowers". Musically the mood is depressed yet further by the deadening horizontality of the verses, droning through as if locked in a doom-laden dream.
The song might have grown obliquely from "Tim Maguire" since it shares a reference to "the girl with a smile like a flame" and might also borrow from the seed of "Tim Maguire", the earlier "Mick Maguire", which centres on a young man sitting by the fire. (The opening line of "Once When I Was Young" reads, "When I was young I would sit by the fire and dream...")
The first version of the song on Songs for Sceptical Circles has an energetic, French-sounding guitar behind the vocals, but as later recorded for the re-make of the LP, has been effectively slowed down. When revisted again for Love Loneliness Laundry, the song is considerably bleaker, with Martin Carthy's stark, skeletal guitar work.
The song might have grown obliquely from "Tim Maguire" since it shares a reference to "the girl with a smile like a flame" and might also borrow from the seed of "Tim Maguire", the earlier "Mick Maguire", which centres on a young man sitting by the fire. (The opening line of "Once When I Was Young" reads, "When I was young I would sit by the fire and dream...")
The first version of the song on Songs for Sceptical Circles has an energetic, French-sounding guitar behind the vocals, but as later recorded for the re-make of the LP, has been effectively slowed down. When revisted again for Love Loneliness Laundry, the song is considerably bleaker, with Martin Carthy's stark, skeletal guitar work.
"Leon hates the dead parts of cities, the dead stink of bureaucracy, creating a picture of a man endlessly collecting official documents and commemorating the largest group of oppressed people in the country - 'And in the corner was a concrete cage, where the children played until their turn should come'." - Adrian Mitchell (sleevenotes to Songs for Sceptical Circles)
Recordings
Version 1 (1966)
Version 2 (1970)
Version 3 (1977)
Version 2 (1970)
Version 3 (1977)
Sheet music
- Songs For City Squares And Sceptical Circles p18. Includes the lines, "They gave me a weekly allowance of bird droppings / They gave me a stick and I started to write / Loudspeakers announced emergency measures / The stick broke and the fire wouldn't light", which appear nowhere else, and further additional lines, "I've forgotten the questions / I no longer know the answers, and it's too late to grieve", which do not appear in recordings of the song
- Look Here p54. Loses most of the lines cited above, but retains, "I've forgotten the questions / I no longer know the answers, and it's too late to grieve"
- Bringing the News from Nowhere p36