Song of the week #8
Imagine a Boy
There were several influences at work on my song from August 2019. Its title was suggested by this paragraph on the final page of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman:
“If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends.
And a summer that never ends.”
The chorus of the song begins with a paraphrase of a line from a poem by Wordsworth:
My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man
So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
I took the line “The Child is father of the Man” and changed it to:
For the boy is the father, the father to man.
simply because it sings better.
I often vary a word or in my song choruses each time they appear for the sake of variety but I'm rather pleased with the variation I used in the next line of Imagine a Boy because although the change is subtle it changes the meaning of the song. The line when it first apears is:
And he knows so much more than all the grown-ups can
This is the boy saying, rather petulantly, that none of the grown-ups in his world know about the things that he has discovered. However, when it appears in the last verse it has subtly changed to:
And he knows so much more than any grown-up can
This is now the adult making the sweeping statement that NO grown-up could possibly recapture that sense of wonder that a child can.
The couplet which ends the song is 100% mine:
And the man who remembers what once he held dear
Is a boy, still at heart, until the end of his years.
For me, those two lines encapsulate the song and are, I think, among the best lines I have written. I am immensely proud of them.
There exists a photo of me aged about seven taken either by my dad or my brother in the late 1950s dressed in “baggy short trousers” exploring the huge wild garden we had at the time. This is the boy you should imagine when listening to the song:
There is no introduction to the song. I learnt from Paul McCartney that sometimes it's best just to launch straight into a song. Listen to the start of Hey Jude, Let it Be and The Long and Winding Road for confirmation.
The instrumentation of Imagine a Boy is simple and very similar to that of Hampshire Born which I had written a couple of months earlier: acoustic guitar, piano, bass guitar and a drumkit played with brushes.
I moved house a few months after I'd finished recording Imagine a Boy and, to my horror, discovered when I set up my computer in my new house that I had inadvertently deleted the ProTools file of the song. So my first task after moving was to re-create the file from memory and from extensive notes that I had made. I don't think anyone would notice any difference between the re-created version and the original version which is on the YouTube video.
I entered Imagine a Boy in the Acoustic/Folk category of the 2019 UK songwriting contest - organised by the BRITs - and was delighted when it reached the final five:
Click the image below for the YouTube video of Imagine a Boy:
Imagine a Boy
Imagine a boy in the long summer’s heat.
In baggy short trousers the world at his feet.
He knows what he wants and how he’ll enjoy!
The thrill of the journey. Imagine that boy.
He’s trod ev’ry path and climbed ev’ry tree
He knows where the badgers and foxes might be
The brambles they scratched him so bad that he bled
In bracken so tall it hangs over his head
For the boy is the father: the father to man
And he knows so much more than all the grown-ups can.
Imagine a boy in paradise lost
His plans for the day: find a stream he can cross
To splash through the puddles and make lots of noise
His world is a wonder. Imagine that boy.
For the boy is the father: the father to man
And he knows so much more than all the grown-ups can.
Imagine a boy sixty years down the line
Though battered and care-worn he’s doing just fine
He stares in the mirror; the boy stares right back
He’s still not forgotten the fun that he had
For the boy is the father, the father to man
And he knows so much more than any grown-up can.
And the man who remembers what once he held dear
Is a boy still at heart until the end of his years.
