About The Song
“Old Hippie” is a song written by David Bellamy, and recorded by American country music duo The Bellamy Brothers. It was released in April 1985 as the first single from their album Howard & David.
The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in July 1985 and No. 1 on the RPM Country Tracks chart in Canada.In June 2014, Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Old Hippie” 95th in their list of the 100 greatest country songs
The song is about the unnamed title character, an aging hippie who uses marijuana, listens to the Woodstock-influenced rock music of the late 1960s, mourns the Murder of John Lennon in 1980, and for years refuses to let go of his lifestyle, despite societal changes around him. It is also explained that he was drafted to Vietnam and forced to “become a man while he was still a boy.” Afterward, he began waiting for something good to happen in his life, before adopting his lifestyle. Eventually, the man does change, taking up such interests as jogging while staying away from parties and nightclubs.
A decade after the song’s release, the brothers recorded a sequel song titled “Old Hippie (The Sequel)”. The song follows the same unnamed title character 10 years after the original. Just as with “Old Hippie,” the sequel sees the man—now with a thinning hairline—continuing to struggle with his memories of Vietnam and changes in society, only with updated references.The Bellamys re-visited the “Old Hippie” character on their 1996 holiday release, “Tropical Christmas.” This release sees the hippie and his family celebrating the holiday with a mixture of mainstream and hippie traditions. While the current state of the world worries the character, he feels that the answers “start right here with him / So he’ll visualize this sacred night a world that ain’t out on a limb.” In “Old Hippie 3 (Saved)”, from the 2007 album Jesus Will Come, the man—now 55—has found Jesus. “He still thinks about the crazy days but thanks his God above / that he traded in the love-ins for a greater kind of love.”
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Lyrics
He turned thirty-five last Sunday
In his hair he found some gray
But he still ain’t changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the backyard by the fence
He’s consuming what he’s growing nowadays in self defense
He get’s out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don’t make no sense
Yeh he gets off on country music
‘Cause disco left him cold
He’s got young friends into new wave
But he’s just too frigging old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock
And the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy
And the silence made him cry
Yea he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why
He’s an old hippie
And he don’t know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He’s an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain’t trying to change nobody
He’s just trying real hard to adjust
He was sure back in the sixties
That everyone was hip
Then they sent him off to Vietnam
On his senior trip
And they force him to become a man
While he was still a boy
And behind each wave of tragedy
He waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
But he just can’t change no more
‘Cause he’s an old hippie
And he don’t know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He’s an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain’t trying to change nobody
He’s just trying real hard to adjust
Well he stays away a lot now
From the parties and the clubs
And he’s thinking while he’s joggin’ ’round
Sure is glad he quit the hard drugs
‘Cause him and his kind get more endangered everyday
And pretty soon the species
Will just up and fade away
Like the smoke from that torpedo
Just up and fade away
He’s an old hippie
And he don’t know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He’s an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain’t trying to change nobody
He’s just trying real hard to adjust, yeah he ain’t tryin’ to change nobody, he’s just…