In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer…woooo those were the days. Not sure why but it just came up. Nostalgic to say the least. The Beatles made land fall in the beginning of my junior year. Penny Lane was a few years away but the whole period is remembered as a happy time. My room mate Mike played guitar and we memorized every song in two part harmony. Skateboards (yes) were new on the scene and we all wore what we called “wheat jeans”. khaky colored Levi’s. Sent them out to the laundry and had them starched to the point they would stand up on their own. Bass wejuns with no sox became the thing. Popular in the Southeast but just now reaching mid-America. Some years later Joe Jackson (no not one of the Jackson 5) would sum it up this way:
Of all the stupid things I could have thought this was the worst
I started to believe that I was born at seventeen
And all the stupid things, the letters and the broken verse
Stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer, they’d always been
And now I plough through piles of bills, receipts and credit cards
And tickets and the daily news and sometimes I just
Wanna go back to my home town
Though I know it’ll never be the same
Back to my home town ’cause it’s been so long
And I’m wondering if it’s still there
We think we’re pretty smart, us city slickers get around
And when the going’s rough we kill the pain and relocate
We’re never married, never faithful not to any town
But we never leave the past behind, we just accumulate
So sometimes when the music stops……….
I seem to hear a distant sound
Of waves and seagulls, football crowds and church bells and I
Wanna go back to my home town
Though I know it’ll never be the same
Back to my home town ’cause it’s been so long
And I’m wondering if it’s still there
Back to my home town
Though I know it’ll never be the same
Back to my home town ’cause it’s been so long
And I’m wondering if it’s still there
irreverendt 