Category: Songs

I recorded a version of this in the early 70s in Manchester, but never did anything with it, and I no longer have the tape. I’ve changed a couple of minor things in the lyric that mildly irritated me, but the vocal arrangement is much as I remember it, though it was originally purely acoustic and I’ll be adding some instrumentation. It’s very much a 20-something song, and I didn’t want to do a 60-something update.

Backup:

Age of the Hero

Deep down I know I should forget you
Get out with my ego intact
My head knows the end of the game
Is historical fact

But my heart never quite seems to make it
I can’t seem to learn to let go
It’s a one-way ticket to nowhere
But where else to go?

I took someone else to a party
In hopes of a two-way high
And stayed for a while in search
Of an alibi

Slipped out for some air and some distance
Got to thinking and wondering and then
I wasn’t surprised to get back and find
She’d gone home with somebody else

Now I lie on my bed, my mind racing
Watching dawn seeping in from the East
And the Age of the Hero is over
I can let go of that game at least

And I wait for the future to tell me
Whether angels are still to be found
And I’m trying hard not to stop hoping
That there’s still enough love to go round

 

Words and music by David Harley
© 1973

A blast from the past, and more personal than my later songs, though not quite as personal as it sounds. You may notice that the words below are not quite the same as the ones I sing. That’s because I came across an older version of the lyric with a couplet I like better than the one I’ve been singing in the last few years: I’ll have to update the recorded version. I don’t know why I changed the words, unless it was just because I spent a lot more time in the Glanrafon than in the Globe. But then I probably spent much more time in the Union bar… And if the first couple of verses make Bangor sound rather grim, that’s more to do with the situation described than it is with the shortcomings of the city itself, which is actually in rather a lovely part of Wales.

Remastered:

Backup captured from live video:

A dusty sunbeam brushed my face
and splashed the bedroom wall
as I rubbed my eyes and answered
the landlady’s morning call.
I hoped to get a line from you
but I don’t know what you’d say
still I comb the static from my head
on another Bangor day.

And over breakfast coffee
I watch the new day born
Into the multi-coloured boredom
of another North Wales dawn
and it seems to me I had a dream
in waking from a dream
but the thought slips through my fingers
as I pass the egg and beans.

And talking sociology
at lunchtime in the Globe
Janey said she liked me
but there was this bloke at home
and I shrugged and let her tell me
she was sorry just the same
but I shouldn’t bring on substitutes
this early in the game.

Six weeks since I saw you
and another day half-gone
and autumn blunts my memory
as another term rolls on
and there’s still a space left in my life
where you once used to be
but even my nostalgia
isn’t all it used to be.

copyright David Harley, 1971

Singing in the silence: copyright David Harley 1974

Backup:

It was cold waking up this morning
Just like all the lonely nights before
But there’s hope in my heart even yet
Rising early to meet the road

My heart sings in the silence
Racing down that old white line
A sweet voice whispers in my ear
That I’ll maybe get to see you one more time

Every time the road gets longer
It gets harder to pin down that dream
Racing for the scenery
Escaping from the scene

My heart sings in the silence
Racing that same old white line
That same voice whispering in my ear
That I’ll maybe get to see you one more time