Sixty Years On

Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics for the album, Elton John, which was released in the U.S in 1970, John's first U.S. release, and from which Your Song charted well (#8 on Billboard's top 100). John Lennon is quoted as saying [That is the first new thing to happen since us]. The U.S. was mired down in the Vietnam War, and there was much social unrest and protest by the young regarding the conflict, no doubt because the Korean War had abruptly ended with no clear victory for the U.S., with North Korea, a totalitarian state, resulting.

Sixty Years On definitely has an anti-war edge to it. The song has an instrumental introduction of strings playing a dissonant chord, which builds to a fevered pitch, then fades to a sound like a hive of bees, before John's piano fades in for the beginning of the lyrics.

Also of note, in British literary history, the novels 1984 and Brave New World were widely read in the States at this time (1970s). Taupin was only 20 twenty years old, and he is the voice of the protagonist of the song, perhaps the same age. If this is correct, the young man will be at the start of his 80s in 60 years' time, and also facing the dystopian society about which Huxley and Orwell sounded the alarm in the 1930s and late 40s. The protagonist is pessimistic he does not want to be alive in that future. He states that even by the time he's 60 he will be old and dependent, needing an arm to lean on as he walks to church. Sixty years is old to someone 20 years of age, and 80 certainly is.