'The Canyon Lament'  
(Perhaps, maybe, who knows….
...you had to be there!)

    Was it a big deal back in‘67, maybe, maybe not, 
It’s all a bit of a haze, one great big colourful....haze.

Just like that guy with the ‘Strat, you know the one, only his haze was Purple, mine was all the colours of the rainbow, so to answer the original question, they could have been, maybe they should have been, so they probably were big back then and....
.... they were probably pretty cool, you had to be there…. MAN!

    We passed it all around, our joints, our pills, our highs and our lows, we knew everyone, perhaps only a brief encounter but we all knew each other, or did it just feel that way,
Perhaps, maybe, who knows....you had to be there. 

The colours in the clouds, the stars in the sky, 
The spins, the climbs, the faster drops,
We shared it all, sometimes up, sometimes down, 
Together we raised our hands, 
Some flew without wings, Some flew on strange wings, 
Some crashed and burned because they got too close to the Sun 
Others found the beauty within, that elusive happiness,
The ability to like and to be liked,
To love and to be loved, 
Some  found what they were looking for, whatever that was, 
Some are still looking, who for, what for, even they are not sure....
Man, you had to be there!

     Our music we loved, because we got it, it said things to us, it meant something to us, it could make us freak-out, it made us love and be loved, whatever, however, it was so cool….
Man,you had to be there!

Through yellow and blue lenses, fringes on our jackets and loons in our pants, Smiley's on our chests and  bandana's on our heads, 
We were truckin' and we kept on truckin', 
With an old school bus or a beat up Econoline, 
If it was free and making a stand against the MAN, we were there, From the East to the West, this Land was our Land  
We drove our vans or we bummed a ride to make our stand! 

 They gave us their chords,  their twelve string symphonies 
Those that would jangle and there were tambourines for us all, 
They shared their words with us, over and over, again and again, 
It was uplifting, it was joyous, it rocked and it rolled, 
It soared and it swooped all in perfect harmony, 
We all hung on to that 'Express when it came, 
We were A Long Time Gone, to where, I don't know….
Christ Man,you had to be there!

 we whirled and we span, we reached up to the sky and we touched the clouds, for what, who knew, who cared, we just did, it was a trip, our trip and we shared our ride,

Sometimes we came down with a bang, in tie-dye and puke, the sweats and the shivers, the hours that became days, 
Only to became long dark days.... but we got through, 
We swayed to the other side, well, most of us, 
Some turned off along the way,  they found their own Utopia,
Some kept on going and some...are still going,

But it was so good because we were free, we did not care, we had each other …MAN!

Did it mean something, ‘aint that the truth, 
It was something else….MAN!

Some were hit with a pulse, they collected the drone, 
That continuous drone from your head to your toes; 
They were the ‘Dead Heads', who moved in harmony for hours on end,  at one with their inner being, 
Shake rattle and……far out….you had to be there!

What did it mean, who the fuck knew, it meant something better we hoped, we just passed around the flowers and pulled on our joints, 

And the world that perhaps only we could see, 
We shared with our friends, the food that we ate,  
The wine that we drank, 
We shared with our friends, 
The men and women we loved, 
We shared with our friends , 
What was mine, was yours and what was yours was mine….
You had to be there!

To love was so cool, it was open and honest,

Today she was mine, tomorrow she would be his 
...And she would be his on Friday too, 
Because Friday was always on his mind, 
We shared the love, we shared with our friends, 
We had plenty of love, enough for everybody…..
Jesus, you should have been there!

Even the rashes and the sores, we shared with our friends, 
It may have turned sour but to us it was still love ….
Christ you should have been there!

Then, the MAN appeared, the MAN who had been watching,
He could see there was money to be made,

We saw the colours; We saw Nirvana,
He saw the dollar sign, he saw the cash cow grazing in our field,

We could see through him, any man is cool in a kaftan, 
At the weekends of course,

As long as he is back in his suit on Monday!
While we smoked to soften our edge,
The MAN snorted to sharpen his!

The dream became cynicism, a look out for number one,

…but for a while, life was good….MAN! 



(You've got to dream a little.....sometimes!)