The Lost Years
About ten years ago, I was sitting with my friend and bandmate of more than three decades in The O’bros, Jay Moran, in our usual spot on Genna’s Lounge’s outdoor patio. Like we so often did, we were tossing around scraps of songs and half-formed lyrics, chasing that feeling when a line just lands. By the time we were three drinks in, we had one phrase we couldn’t let go of: “The lost years, they won’t be lost on me.”
It came from something Jay said—something simple, but honest. I’d been about six years into my relationship with the woman who is now my wife, Pamela, and he was reflecting on it, measuring it against the wreckage of relationships we’d both seen before. He looked at me and said, “You’re the happiest I’ve ever seen you.”
Jay had seen every version of me there was to see. He’d watched me walk the line between reputation and infamy, drift through dead-end love, and sink into the quiet weight of depression when those things inevitably fell apart. He knew the chapters I’d rather forget—and the ones I couldn’t.
And that’s what made the line stick. Because for the first time, it felt true: the lost years weren’t really lost at all. They were necessary to bring me to the life I live now.
Jay and I agreed that day that we’d each write a song using that line. I’m not sure he ever did but about a month ago I was going through a folder of old lyrics and found what I had written:
Here we are
A place we’ve been before
Those nights apart
Have left us wanting moreSometimes I don’t know
Just what I was thinking of
There’s the things we do
And the things we do for love(chorus)
And after all this time
This is what was meant to be
The lost years
They won’t be lost on meBlinded by my future
A picture I could see
I built up that dream
Fear ruled over meYou didn’t say
What I couldn’t hear
So I marched on through the years
Marking only time
And making only tears(Bridge)
But yesterday’s not yesteryear
I see you now
And what you say I hear
Turns out
The blind can see
And the deaf have ears(chorus)
And after all this time
This is what was meant to be
The lost years
They won’t be lost on meThose lost years
They won’t be lost on me
(They won’t be lost on me)
I walked out into our backyard and it was that golden hour (more like twenty minutes actually) where the sun is setting to the west and it casts every shade of pink into the sky and dark, deep shadows onto the mountain to our east. I decided to write one more verse, a benediction of sorts, to finish the song. One that reflects how I feel now:
The sun we see now
The air so sweet
Was earned on the road
Through the land of the lost
To where you found me
I think a lot of people believe that songs are autobiographical. And there certainly are songwriters that write that way. James Taylor, for example says that he is a storyteller and that those stories come from his first hand experience in most cases. “Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone…” But for the vast majority of songwriters that I know autobiography is rare. They are usually creating a fictional narrative around a concept. “The Lost Years” is one of my attempts at pure autobiography.
Another unusual thing happened. I tracked the version attached here and then listened to it when it was done repeatedly and decided that I didn’t like it all that much musically. It felt a little too power pop to me. So I went back to the drawing board and completely rearranged it. So, this is version one. But I’ll be posting the second version here in the next few weeks as soon as it’s done.
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