Reflections Of My Life

The sunlight of youth has faded to the moonlight of old age. The person looks back on his life through tear-glazed eyes of longing for his past. He recognizes the greetings of other troubled people because he too is troubled. He is alone in their company - forever more alone. He remembers his childhood/the best times of his life, and contrasts those times to the harshness of adulthood and lost innocence. He is bitter and scared. "Take me back, to my old home."

For an especially poignant version of this song, check out Dean Ford's 2014 acoustic version on YouTube. It's intercut with footage from the original recording. The cello will break your heart, as will seeing the lead singer as a much older man singing the lyrics he wrote back in 1969. Especially plaintive is the line “The world is a bad place / A bad place / A terrible place to live / Oh, but I don't want to die.” That’s the human condition, isn’t it? For while it’s true that the world is a badly broken place, it is also a beautiful place, a wondrous place. And so we celebrate! This song will haunt you with its beauty!

I remember this song well from back in my early high school days and always loved the music, voices and instrumentals. That said... I was 14 and lyrics were not really a primary consideration at the time. I stumbled across it again very recently while in a more "complentative mood" and believe for the first time ever I actually absorbed the lyrics in their entirety. As beautiful.... as nearly perfect as the song is in every respect, I was truly shocked by how depressing the message is. I honestly can't believe I never picked up on this before... call me Shallow Hal!

maybe i'm wrong. but, the picture that comes to my mind is a soldier (perhaps in vietnam war, since the song was written around that time and vietnam war was one of the most gruesome one in modern days) having nostalgia for his home and expressing how he hates fighting there and wishes he was back at home.

My first impression was formed in 1969 at the age of 15. I enjoyed the song but there were so many songs that this song did not have the time to go deeper into my person and I being 15 was not fully able to discern either its lyrical content or its musical roots. In fact I had long forgotten this song when just this week I re-discovered it thru a friend's FB page on which he posted his cover of this song. Who is The Marmalade? I said to myself. I went seeking. I played the song over and over and I really experienced its greatness this time. Once I had absorbed it emotionally and artistically I began to wonder about its meaning and my immediate feeling was that this kind of emotional depth would have to belong to something very difficult and so I felt it was about the experience of Viet Nam and felt the date was also right. Today I listened to British DJ who recently interviewed Dean Ford. Dean did not say that the lyrcis were written about VN but he did say that many Viet Nam vets related to the song and liked it. This song is one of those creations by an artist (or group of artists) which goes beyond the artists themselves and has, because of its greatness, a life of its own. I really have loved watching the young Marmalades in various videos perform this song. In it I can see all of my heartfelt ambitions as a teen to become a professional singer / performer / and songwriter. They did it and did it very well. Thank you Dean Ford and The Marmalade.

"take me back to my own home" the lyricist tells of his disappointment with finding home in the world and longs for a perfect place that he feels was once there in a beginning he may only remember fragments from that are vivid and more intense than anything encountered in his life. He is musing about this perfect place of love and home and how it doesn't seem attainable in the current world surrounding him today.

It's about longing for deep inner fullfillment and to be found in a world that doesn't understand the need to be loved and find yourself home in someone. Thus home becomes something in the most primordial beginning, maybe metaphysical even in the mind of the singer. It's most definitely about love.

The changing of sunlight to moonlight, reflections of my life, oh how they fill my eyes. Junior Campbell was driving, as it was going dark he noticed the reflections of car headlights. That gave him the idea for the song, nothing else, nothing sinister. The rest of the song? Who knows? It’s just a brilliant song. RIP Dean.

I first heard the song in 1970. I was a senior in HS in a small town in Ohio. I suffered in grade school and high school with severe depression. Somehow, I didn’t give up and had this bit of optimism that things would get better. Upon graduation, I was facing the draft and I didn’t know what I wanted out of life. I wasn’t ready for college but had older kids that I knew who ended up in the war. They said to avoid it. I ended up in college with a deferment but they switched to the lottery system which was more equitable . I was #26 and had the draft physical. Miraculously, the draft ended before induction. Someone was looking out for me but I know that a lot of kids never got back home. Luckily, during my lifetime we have made advances in mental health treatment through both talk therapy and medication. I worked hard and was the beneficiary of that treatment. It’s not perfect but at 70, I feel like I’ve reached that home he talks about in the song. It’s not perfect but I am at peace. Along the way, there has been a lot of hardships. I have experienced great love and friendships. There’s also great beauty in the world. I’m glad that I didn’t want to die. In the 2014 video, he has his older self performing with his younger self. I like when he’s looking at the beautiful sun over the mountains at the ending. I think he’s looking back over times at the good times and bad but he’s glad to be alive in that moment. It was worth it. To me, for a 17 year old, the song described how I felt. It helped me because I knew other folks felt the same way. I was in a bad place but didn’t want to die.

To me this is the English blues, not musically, but lyrically. I think it's all about expressing these deep blues feelings and the power in doing that. It's a beautiful song that takes you back.

My feeling is that this is a man looking at the world after the love of his life has spurned him. He's gone along in the world for a long time with his love for her always with him, so it became part of the world. After he asked her, and she said no, then he saw the world in a horrible new light. He transfers his pain and misery onto everyone else he sees, hence the, "people in trouble" line.

I actually find this an uplifting song, because, even though the world sucks, he still wants to be in it, so it can't suck all that bad.

I guess there's not a lot in the lyrics song to suggest my interpretation, it's just the melancholy, depressed music.

But I don agree that only two comments on this song is incredible. I thought it was more popular than that. It certainly deserves to be. If the Beatles had written this song everyone would be singing it. Marmalade has a whole catalog of songs but this is the only one on here.