About The Song
“Yesterday When I Was Young” was first known as “Hier Encore,” or “Only Yesterday.” The song was introduced byFrench singer-songwriter Charles Aznavour in 1964. Josie Pickering’s real life experience inspired the creation of the poem, that later turned into a song. She was housewife from Manchester, who became so dissatisfied with her married life that she turned to lesbianism and eventually became a dominatrix.
Hee Haw host Roy Clark premiered his hosting career with his cover of the song in 1969. It eventually landed in the Top 10 on the country chart. Clark dramatically started the song with a spoken word that lead into the somber recollection of a wasted youth that led to a lonely adulthood.
Country singer Roy Clark, who had just started his long-running gig as the co-host of Hee Haw, covered the song in 1969 and landed in the Top 10 on the country chart. Clark’s spoken-word intro leads into a subdued recollection of a wasted youth that led to a lonely adulthood:
It seems the love I’ve known
Has always been the most destructive kind
I guess that’s why now
I feel so old
Before my time
The the song isn’t his original, he sings it as if it is his. He gets the inspiration from his teen to adulthood experience, where he admits being wild and carefree. he delivers the song in a different meaning from its original. He emphasized that one should not take things for granted. And he totally agree overindulgence to anything can cause chaos. Clark’s rendition marked the list being one of the first country tunes to break in on the rock ‘n roll radio.
Clark honored a request from Mickey Mantle and sang this at the former New York Yankee’s funeral in 1995.
Video
Lyrics
Yesterday, when I was young
The taste of life was sweet like rain upon my tongue
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game
The way an evening breeze would tease a candle flame
The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned
I always built to last on weak and shifting sand
I lived by night and shunned, the naked light of day
And only now, I see how the years have run away
Yesterday, when I was young
There were so many songs that waited to be sung
So many wild pleasures that lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see
I ran so fast that time, and youth at last ran out
And I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation that I can recall
Concerned itself with me, and nothing else at all
Yesterday, the moon was blue
And every crazy day brought something new to do
And I used my magic age as if it were a wand
I never saw the waste and emptiness beyond
The game of love I played with arrogance and pride
And every flame I lit, so quickly, quickly died
The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away
And only I am left on stage to end the play
Yesterday, when I was young
There were so many songs that waited to be sung
So many wild pleasures that lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see
There are so many songs in me that won’t be sung
‘Cause I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue
And the time has come for me to pay for yesterday
When I was young