Birthday Song
And so another year has gone with notches on your heart
From ties that bound you out of spite before they broke apart.
But that was then, the time is done, now kiss the lips of fate,
Stay beside me for a while and let tomorrow wait.
So lie with me and be my love, and then I’ll lie for you.
A laugh, a dance, a sweet romance, that’s how we’ll see it through.
To last a day without a meal is quite a cinch to do.
To live a week without your face is hard, I’ve done that too.
A minute lasted twenty years when I could only phone,
But now the time is ours to share before you cycle home.
So lie with me and be my love, and then I’ll lie for you.
A laugh, a dance and a sweet romance, that’s how we’ll see it through.
You ask me what the future holds, I really couldn’t say.
As if it wasn’t hard enough just living day to day.
For now the summer’s coming and I have your Colgate smile,
As long as you’re beneath my eyes I’m happy for a while.
So lie with me and be my love, and then I’ll lie for you.
A laugh, a dance a sweet romance, that’s how we’ll see it through.
1978
PS
I’m pretty sure I meant this sincerely at the time, in the way of college romances, but there’s a worm in the apple somewhere. That line “and then I’ll lie for you”. No wonder she never fully trusted me.
But a lot of the rest of it was taken from life. We met at a party just a couple of months before we were each due to take our finals – I believe she was recovering from some kind of heartbreak – so the circumstances could not have been less propitious. I wasn’t eating much as I contemplated the mountain ahead of me – not just the exams, but the life beyond for which I felt completely unprepared – and she would dutifully cycle back to her digs at the end of the evening so she could study. She even went home at one point so she could concentrate properly on her revision, and our only communication was by phone, deathly from all points of view. But Colgate was the only adjective I ever considered using to describe her smile. She was sweet and gentle and talented and I never fully appreciated my luck. Soon after, she moved to New Zealand to get away from me. Or rather, she moved to New Zealand with her husband and started a family. I don’t blame her. I did at the time, but that’s not the sort of thing you can write a song about is it? This one will have to do.
Key? Oh, C major I should think, wouldn’t you? Don’t sweat it, I obviously didn’t did I?
(And I know I joke about my minuscule musical skills – for the same reason Roger Moore joked about his acting, to save anyone else the effort – but I still think if I was recording this now, on the line ‘For now the summer’s coming’ there would begin a sweet, long, low C on the violins, which then drops down, supporting the melody, step by step (‘chromatically’, I think is the proper term), as it winds gently towards its inevitable and soulful conclusion. A good arranger would save it till then. If you add something unexpected at the last, that’s the bit people will remember, which in turn will make them remember the rest of the song as being better than it actually was.)