Henry's Songbook

When I was fifteen and a man of the world
I was madly in love with a Catholic girl
She had gray Irish eyes and the whitest of teeth
And a body that left the whole neighbourhood weak

It was the body of a fully grown woman sh woul'd have
In the spring of her years, in the summer of love
And for gentlemen callers, she had a dozen or more
But I was the one her dad let in the door

Sometimes in the small hours, with the whole town asleep
I'd crawl out my window and climb down my tree
I'd light up a cigarette and walk to her house
And I'd climb to her window to lure her out

And we would go to the park and lie in the grass
And we'd talk about life as it flew by so fast
And sometimes she'd kiss me, sometimes she'd let me
Touch her in the dark where I hadn't touched yet

And sometimes at her window I thought I would die
She'd already be out with some other guy

Shawn, where have you gone
It's nineteen sixty-eight, the Beatles are on
I've got nine cigarettes, that should last till dawn
Shawn, where have you gone

There was Bobby and Barry, Paul, Jim and Rick
You were so friendly I was literally sick
But when we were together I was more or less lost
Although I did what you told me, whatever the cost

Sometimes I would help you when you'd babysit kids
But for all that we knew they'd be dead in their cribs
It was late in October, I think, when I heard
Everybody was talking, spreading the word

Did you hear Shawn's pregnant, but she's keeping the kid
And she's not telling anyone who the guy is
When I met you I didn't know quite what to say
But I wasn't the only one speechless that day

Then I heard you had dropped out of school
And all your old suitors were playing it cool
So I went to your window and I climbed up your tree
And all that I knew was, it couldn't be me

You had left town, and you never came back
And later I learned that the baby was black

Shawn, where have you gone
It's nineteen sixty-eight, the Beatles are on
I've got nine cigarettes, that should last till dawn
Shawn, where have you gone

Now it's twenty years later, and I'm still the guy
With the fly-away hair and the smoke in his eye
It's our high-school reunion, everyone's here
Playing down the effects of the drugs and the beer

We are balding and grey, overweight and just tired
So is the rock 'n' roll band someone hired
Paul and Barry, and Jim, Rick and Bob
Are all doing okay, though Jim lost his job

We are married with children, mortgages too
And we can't believe all the things we used to do
We can still sing along to that song by the Byrds
Though it's harder each year to remember the words

But we look back and laugh, the memories are warm
And we still raise a glass to the old high-school song
And the music is playing a tune from that year
And all I can think is that you should be here

Because while we wax nostalgic, wistful, or sad
Do we celebrate something that you never had
A chance to grow slowly, a chance to find peace
You became an adult in thirty-six weeks

Now it's not mine to say to forgive or forget
I wouldn't presume that you're full of regrets
But I wish you could see how we've turned into men
Now we're all reunited again

And I wish I could know that you're doing all right
Because your name came up several times here today
And I wish I could see you, though I can't make amends
For abandoning you when you needed your friends

Shawn, where have you gone
It's nineteen sixty-eight, the Beatles are on
I've got nine cigarettes,that should last till dawn
Shawn, where have you gone

When I was fifteen and a man of the world
I was madly in love with a girl in school

(as sung by Iain MacKintosh)

 [1980:] Den Durchbruch brachte [1965] die Byrds-Fassung des Dylan-Titels Mr. Tambourine Man, die den Folk Rock as Stil etablierte und ihn gleichzeitig als Verkaufskonzept der großen Schallplattenkonzerne durchsetzte. (Siniveer, Folk-Lexikon 102)

 [1995:] The abrupt death of real innocence is the heart of Peter Nelson's Summer of Love, given to Iain in Delaware by Scottish expatriate Mike Dinsmore. (Notes Iain MacKintosh & Brian McNeill, 'Stage By Stage')

 [1997:] For 11 weeks in the long hot summer of 1967, earnest young things tried to make sense of Procul Harum's 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'. It was 30 years ago today that the record first topped the charts, reigning for nearly three months before being toppled by another anthem of the times, 'All You Need Is Love'. It was, and is, impossible to penetrate Procul Harum's opaque lyrics, but in that summer of love and dope people learnt to 'do their own thing' [...].

But there was more to 1967 than love-ins, happenings and drops of crystal liquid on sugar cubes (LSD). It was the time of the decisive break with 'old' Britain. The stuffy conformism of the long postwar period gave way to a new emphasis on personal freedom. In April of that year homosexuality was illegal, by May it was not. August saw the first prosecutions under the new Race Relations Act and, unnoticed by the male half of the population, the seeds of the women's liberation movement were quietly being sown. (Barry Hugill, Observer, 25 May)