Backs Turned Looking Down the Path

This is an incredibly poetic song. Very interesting lyrics. I love the first line the best... "I was caught between the years/cost me nearly all my tears" Great way to start a song It's melancholic and bluesy, filled with the regret and heartache and anger that a lot of his songs are But then there's that rock/punk sensibility on top of the blues quality that's like "I'm miserable but so what? I'm alive! I'm glad I'm alive!" Warren Zevon is really asn inspirational songwriter and performer He's like the Gospel singer or New Age singer for non-religious people His stuff is better and more honest than any self-help book or how-to-live manual God bless the guy.

I wish I could put into words my love of this song.

If "backs turned looking down the path" is reflecting on past loves, losses and regrets then this lyric must rate as one of the most accurate and poignant of all time!

Ten

Maybe this is a song about the true nature of love, not far outside Warren's usual writings. Instead of seeing, say, one's wedding day outside the context of where he's been, he sees it as a redemption from the past (perhaps alluding to themes from a number of his own songs, including Searching for a Heart, She's Too Good For Me, and others).

TheThornBirds is right -- this is an honest song about love, yet no less beautiful than Wonderful Tonight or any of the other classics.

I agree with tenace...this is an amazing song that I have loved for years, and I can't begin to capture all that it means to me in a comment. I feel Warren may have been wistfully reflecting on a life, his midlife most likely, with all its joy and pain. To me the song evokes a moment locked in the mind's eye...maybe he had a picture or memory from his wedding showing "the couple" with their obvious backs turned, hand in hand, laughing, with that synchronicity and solidarity you can only have with a mate. The song begins and ends in the singular, with the "we" in the middle. We come into the world alone and leave it that way. I'm left to reflect that life is a blur of bittersweet, mostly sweet. Warren made so many things sweet.

I'm stupid to have overlooked this a moment ago, but this song is not unlike David Gray's "Indeed I Will" or Steve Winwood's "Back in the High Life." In his later years, Warren did a cover of the latter song, to a very different sort of style than Steve. Definitely worth checking out.