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Just before Sweet Baby James turned 60, he went back to his home town at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and did a moving retrospective that he called "One Man Band".  It's captured in a package of music CD and DVD.

While Sweet Baby James and Fire and Rain have long been a part of people of my generation, I heard Never Die Young (from 1988) only for the first time.  It is such a moving song, so poignant and bittersweet, from someone who refuses to admit that his youthful ideals have died.  Let's dream that we are just passing on the torch to the rosy children.  How I would like to believe that there are takers!

After all, we need something to believe in, and why not our golden ones?

Other hearts were broken
Other dreams ran dry
But our golden ones sail on, sail on
To another land beneath another sky

Never Die Young

For video, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXRUasAWKCw

For lyrics, see http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/james+taylor/never+die+young_20069231.html

by James Taylor

We were ring-around-the-rosy children
They were circles around the sun
Never give up, never slow down
Never grow old, never ever die young

Synchronized with the rising moon
Even with the evening star
They were true love written in stone
They were never alone, they were never that far apart

And we who couldnt bear to believe they might make it
We got to close our eyes
Cut up our losses into doable doses
Ration our tears and sighs

You could see them on the street on a saturday night
Everyone used to run them down
Theyre a little too sweet, theyre a little too tight
Not enough tough for this town

We couldnt touch them with a ten-foot pole
No, it didnt seem to rattle at all
They were glued together body and soul
That much more with their backs up against the wall

Oh, hold them up, hold them up
Never do let them fall
Prey to the dust and the rust and the ruin
That names us and claims us and shames us all

I guess it had to happen someday soon
Wasnt nothing to hold them down
They would rise from among us like a big baloon
Take the sky, forsake the ground

Oh, yes, other hearts were broken
Yeah, other dreams ran dry
But our golden ones sail on, sail on
To another land beneath another sky