From Robyn on Patreon in 2024
Here's another song from my first recording sessions, made in early 1974 with my old school friend Martz. The tune is mostly his, and the words are largely mine. We wrote it at the end of summer 1972. Two years out of school, we were hanging out and playing a lot together. He was studying law and I was at art college, so we both found ourselves in London.
The words reflect how, at 19, we already felt marooned in the world outside the late-1960s glasshouse bubble where our "education" had cocooned us. We were like little old men, gaping at the monstrosities of life. But still trying to get laid.
It was hopeless, really; we were holding each other back in our own personal time-warp. After a few years we went our separate ways, musically; he co-wrote a rock musical which has yet to reach the public, and I eventually launched the Soft Boys, which met much the same fate. But we remained firm friends and meet up whenever we can.
Martz and I have always bonded over the futility of human endeavour: he in a gentle, reasoned way, me being more gross about it. Now at the other end of our lives we ask ourselves: was our existence as pointless as we thought it would be? Maybe so, but what a hell of ride…