Sixty-nine

I'll be sixty-nine in a few weeks
I'd like to say I'm a wiser man
Truth is I've learned nothing from life
I know no more than the day I was born
I roamed the world in search of knowledge
All I ever found was sweet illusion
Read all the classics and ancient texts
They added up to a lot of confusion

Sixty-nine
I survived the Cold War and Vietnam
Sixty-nine
Somehow escaped the atomic bomb
Sixty-nine
Five years of college for next to nothing
Sixty-nine
Soaked up my money and left me alone

My father checked out at seventy-nine
That means I've got another decade
Another decade to twiddle my thumbs
Beat my meat and try to get laid
The Grim Reaper's pursuing me now
He's persistent and won't be denied
It won't matter in a hundred years
No one alive to remember I died

Sixty-nine
I plowed through divorce and its aftermath
Sixty-nine
Learned the meaning of isolation
Sixty-nine
Cosmic loneliness that knows no bounds
Sixty-nine
A tragic character alienated

I turn sixty-nine, December twenty-nine
Mary Tyler Moore and I share a birthday
She'll be turning a ripe seventy-eight
Me and Mary are slipping away

Angus Young guitar

Sixty-nine
I survived the Cold War and Vietnam
Sixty-nine
Somehow escaped the atomic bomb
Sixty-nine
Five years of college for next to nothing
Sixty-nine
Soaked up my money and left me alone

jimcolyer.com

Depressing but great. There is not much to alleviate the gloom of one's twilight years.

Introspective lyrics can be very powerful and the old man in this story is examining his life - past, present and future. As for the bridge, it does not relate to or elevate the other parts. It puts the focus on another person, Mary Tyler Moore, rather than the old man; and thus decreases its value. Grade: Verse (B); Bridge (C); Chorus (B)