Song of the Day- I'd Love To Change the World by Ten Years After

Image by pixel2013 (www.pixabay.com) Link

"I'd Love to Change the World" was a hit in 1971 for the British band Ten Years After, from the album A Space in Time. It was the band's most popular single, and their only top 40 hit. Written in troubled times, the song abandons the late 60's idealistic "peace and love" vibe that was found in so much popular music of the era. The protagonist of this song instead confronts the harsh and confusing realities of the world in the early 1970s. Although he still hopes for a better world, he confronts his own disillusionment, admitting that "I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do." It is a message that still rings true today. Times have changed, but the world is no less troubled, and there are still no easy solutions.

Image by pixel2013 (www.pixabay.com) Link

The following description of "I'd Love to Change the World" is from the Wikipedia article found here: Link

The song was written and sung by Alvin Lee. It discusses the confused state of the world, covering a wide variety of societal complaints, until it finally addresses the Vietnam War.^[1] The song features a folk-inspired chord pattern to support the melody.^[1]

"I'd Love to Change the World" was the band's highest charting single. It peaked at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971.^[2] When it was released, "I'd Love to Change the World" was a staple of both FM and AM radio, a rarity for the time.^[1]

Billy Walker of Sounds wrote that the "[a]coustic guitar, echoing vocals, and electric guitar build up the tempo with very good cool electric passages by Alvin [Lee], and while there's nothing new developing it's a very nice track".^[3] Matthew Greenwald of Allmusic highlighted Lee's guitar work as the "most expressive—and most tasteful—electric guitar performance of his career", and added "if there is a single song that can describe the overall vibe of the counterculture in 1969/1970, this may very well be it. The band and Lee never quite matched the song's supple power in their later efforts, but this song is representation enough of their awesome artistry."^[1]

Ten Years After (1970) (from Wikimedia Commons) Link

There is no video available featuring Ten Years After performing "I'd Love to Change the World" live. However, the following video from YouTube features the song lyrics set against a backdrop of multiple still images from the 1960s to the present, and is a moving and effective representation of the message of this classic song.

A Warm Place

Photo Courtesy of splitshire.com

An evening of sweet contentment at the end of a busy week...a golden place outside of time where worries and concerns melt away, and friends are truly happy in each others company. Sometimes we try too hard to create these special moments. The magical times in life that we always remember often come when we least expect them. The following passage is a remembrance of a warm, happy get together with a group of seemingly random friends almost 100 years ago, on a rainy night in California....

Roses and Rain

     Last night we sat in the quiet room--a few friends together--and heard the wind rattling the palm leaves outside in the garden, like some ghostly senorita clicking a pair of invisible castanets in tune to some haunting rhythm.

     The fire burned on the hearth, a fire of eucalyptus logs, with now and then a branch of aromatic leaves, flaming suddenly into leaping life and filling the room with their pungent and somehow exotic perfume.

     We put out the bright lights from the center of the room, and let the shadows fall from the little gleaming lamps that are like fire-flies, flitting in the dusk like so many swiftly passing thoughts and pleasant memories.

     There we were, the young couple so dead in love with each other, and so full of the joy of living. Sweet Sixteen, a little terrified at her vague glimpse of life—Twenty-one, virile and modest and somehow eagerly hopeful.

     The Home Woman, the Woman of the World, the Artist, the Genius, the Singer and the Priest. A strange company, strangely mixed, and yet there we sat in the quiet little room—together, like passengers on a raft picked up from the wild sea and held together by some strange accident of fate.

     We talked, not of politics, not of war or of diplomacy—not even of the high cost of living, or of the effect of the vote upon women.

     We talked of books and poetry, and of music, and one told a quaint little story of a wounded pigeon, and the rescue of it, and the fire burned and the wind sang, and gradually the stress of the world and the anxiety and restless, uneasy ambition of it fell from us like an outworn cloak. And there we were, like little children, talking together in the twilight of some great primeval forest.

     And one sang—a simple song of love and memory and tears.

     “Roses and rain” and the Artist smiled, and the Woman of the World sighed, and there were tears in the eyes of the Home Woman.

     The Genius it was who sang—and the Singer sat by the fire and listened.

     The Young Wife’s hand stole to the hand of her Husband, and the Priest sat like one in a deep reverie. Was he thinking of the roses that bloomed in the dooryard of his home across the sea, and the fragrance of them in the sweet June rain?

     And we didn’t care who was elected or who was defeated, and somewhere, far down in the city below, the (news) boys were calling “extra, extra, extra!”—all about something or other very important, which concerned us not in the very least.

     And the Singer was generous, and poured out for us like a libation on the altar of friendship his voice of molten silver—French songs he sang full of the quick and glancing grace of a fountain leaping in the moonlight. German lieder, simple and brooding, like the lullabies a mother sings to her child. Italian, too, he sang, and the room glowed with the fire and the passion of the melting music of Italy.

     “Eileen Allana”—how he sang it—the simple old ballad, and how we drank every lilting note of it, like thirsty travelers in a dry and arid desert.

     And so the quiet evening spent itself, and at the end she sang again, the woman with the strange dark eyes—“Roses and Rain”—and we were one with the sunshine and the dew and knew again the sweet and rapturous pang of youth and moonlight and the mystery of the stars.

     “Roses and Rain”—the wind in the palm trees, the fire on the hearth, dear faces in the soft dimness of the quiet room. What is there sweeter, what more beautiful, what more to be gained in life than these?

 --from Roses and Rain by Annie Laurie (1920)

Illustration from Godey's Lady's Magazine, January 1880