Roy Clark

* photo from USA Today

Watching musicians on YouTube has kept me occupied and contented over the quarantine period.  I've reconnected with some music that I sort of have forgotten, and some of these songs just placed me in a melancholy mood.

I remember reading a magazine article that someone once asked Jimi Hendrix what it felt like being the best guitarist in the whole world.  Hendrix replied to the man, "I don't know... you should ask Roy Clark..."

I never saw any episode of his TV Show Hee Haw, and I only remember him from his rendition of Yesterday When I Was Young.  I've been pretty lucky in love, so the specific lyrics don't apply to me, but the disheartening pall of the Coronavirus can make one think back on the errors in one's life...

Yesterday When I Was Young (Charles Aznavour)

It seems the love I've known
Has always been the most destructive kind
I guess that's why now
I feel so old
Before my time

Yesterday, when I was young
The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame
The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned
I always built to last on weak and shifting sand
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of the day
And only now I see how the years ran away

Yesterday, when I was young
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see
I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out
I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation I can now recall
Concerned itself with me and nothing else at all

Yesterday the moon was blue
And every crazy day brought something new to do
I used my magic age as if it were a wand
And never saw the waste and emptiness beyond
The game of love I played with arrogance and pride
And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died
The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away
And only I am left on stage to end the play

There are so many songs in me that won't be sung
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue
The time has come for me to pay for
Yesterday, when I was young