"Same Old Lang Syne"
Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
I stood behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve
She didn't recognize the face at first
But then her eyes flew open wide
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried
We took her groceries to the check out stand
The food was totaled up and bagged
We stood there lost in our embarrassment
As the conversation lagged
We went to have ourselves a drink or two
But couldn't find an open bar
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store
And we drank it in her car
We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how
She said she's married her an architect
Who kept her warm and safe and dry
She would have liked to say she loved the man
But she didn't like to lie
I said the years had been a friend to her
And that her eyes were still as blue
But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw
Doubt or gratitude
She said she saw me in the record stores
And that I must be doing well
I said the audience was heavenly
But the traveling was Hell
We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how
We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to time
Reliving, in our eloquence
Another "Auld Lang Syne"
The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away
Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And, as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain
New Years always reminds me of this song. I guess anyone with an old lover whom they meet somewhere long after their romance feels the lyrics. In the song, two people meet at the supermarket and try to “reach beyond the emptiness” before they eventually part. A chance meeting – a reminisce – a walk away. Its reflective, much like New Years.
“Same Old Lang Syne” was issued as a single in November 1980. It was included on Fogelberg’s album The Innocent Age, which was released 10 months later. Many people, including me, love the song. This is evidenced by data from Spotify in December 2020 – by then it had been streamed exactly 9,397,307 times.
But others dislike the tune for its schmaltz, and some, like Christopher Borrelli, feature writer for the Chicago Tribune, believe “Same Old Lang Syne” is the worst Christmas song in the history of Christmas songs. He believes it’s too “rooted in melancholy,” and “aches more specific than the general good tidings of other carols.” Borrelli puts the song in the same category as “The Christmas Shoes” (boy wants to buy shoes for his terminally ill mom, so she will look nice for Jesus) and “Wonderful Christmastime” (repetitive Paul McCartney lyrics as torture device). These are songs evoking great sentiment … some think far too much.
Dan Fogelberg (August 13, 1951 – December 16, 2007) was an American musician, songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. In addition to “Same Old …,” he is known for his 1980s songs, including "Longer" (1979) and "Leader of the Band" (1982).
For much of his career, Fogelberg lived on a ranch near Boulder, Colo. Although he was a solid touring act playing to sold-out venues, he never relished life on the road, preferring home life.
Diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2004, Fogelberg encouraged his fans to be aware of the disease and advised men to have annual prostate examinations. He died of cancer at home in Deer Isle, Maine, at the age of 56.
Roughly ten years after the singer's death, Jean Fogelberg, his wife, arranged for a CD tribute to Dan's work, A Tribute to Dan Fogelberg, with performances by his old friend and producer Joe Walsh with the Eagles, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill, Amy Grant, Jimmy Buffett, Michael McDonald, Randy Owen, Donna Summer, Boz Scaggs, Dobie Gray, the Zac Brown Band and other artists.
Part of the Plan is a musical using the music of Fogelberg. Starring Harley Jay and Kate Morgan Chadwick, it opened September 8, 2017, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) in Nashville.
Fogelberg was also inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.
"Same Old Lang
Syne" By Dan Fogelberg
The melody
phrase at the beginning of each verse ("Met my old lover at the
grocery store...") was taken by Fogelberg from Tchaikovsky's
"1812 Overture."
Smooth jazz giant Michael Brecker
played soprano saxophone on this song. His part is featured in the
ending, and is an improvised, jazzy snippet of the classic holiday
tune "Auld Lang Syne."
As Fogelberg tells it on his
official website, the song is totally autobiographical. He was
visiting family back home in Peoria, Illinois in the mid-'70s when he
ran into an old girlfriend at a convenience
store.(www.songfacts.com)
After
Fogelberg's death from prostate cancer in 2007, the woman whom he
wrote the song about came forward with her story. Jill Greulich dated
in Fogelberg in high school when she was Jill Anderson. As she
explained to the Peoria Journal Star in
a December 22, 2007 article, they were part of the Woodruff High
School class of 1969.
Jill Anderson and Dan Fogelberg dated throughout high school. After graduation, she left for Western Illinois University, and he left for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; they stayed in touch. But then he moved to California, and Jill married and moved to Chicago.
Dan went to Colorado to pursue music.
After working for TWA, Jill taught elementary school in Northbrook.
They had lost touch.
Christmas Eve 1975, both were in Peoria, both at childhood homes in the Abington Hill neighborhood. Neither had spoken in a while. Dan left the house to buy whipped cream to make Irish coffee. Jill left to buy more eggnog. The only place open was a convenience store at the top of Abington Hill at Frye Avenue and Prospect Road, and that's where they had their encounter.
The rest you know from the song, the silences, the awkward wait as a cashier rings up their purchases, the feelings of emptiness and longing to connect to someone. She seemed dissatisfied with marriage; he loved playing live but hated the traveling. They bought a six pack of beer and drank it in her car for two hours while they talked.
Five years later, Jill heard "Same Old Lang Syne" on the radio while driving to work, but she kept quiet about it, as Fogelberg also refused to reveal her identity. Her main concern was that coming forward would disrupt Fogelberg's marriage.
Then, years later, backstage after a show, Dan apologized to Jill: He changed her eyes from green to blue because blue rhymed better. Also, she was married to a physical education teacher; in the song, he’s an architect. (It's unlikely Fogelberg knew his profession anyway.) Either way, her marriage ended. In the early ’80s, Anderson (remarried as Greulich) moved to St. Louis.
Regarding the line, "She would have liked to say she loved the man, but she didn't like to lie," Jill won't talk about it, but she had divorced her husband by the time the song was released.
You may look toward the traditional song “Auld Lang Syne” for the lasting appeal of Fogelberg's song. The speaker in the Scottish song with words attributed to the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, is asking whether old friends should be forgotten, as a way of stating that obviously one should not forget one's old friends.
Should we be able to appreciate the virtues of reconnecting with old friends and thinking about old times … even if they are lovers of our past?
Whatever your answer, you can blame it all on the whipped cream and the eggnog, two ingredients of generational customs that brought old friends together once more. And since “Same Old Lang Syne” immortalized that meeting for public consumption, the song has become a holiday tradition.
“He (Dan Fogelberg) was beautiful, an angel. People either don’t know it or don’t remember it, but he had the highest harmonies. He sang above Don Henley and J.D. Souther on those tracks. My favorite song of his (‘Same Old Lang Syne’) was about running into an old lover in a supermarket on New Years – I shouldn’t admit it, but it made me cry. It encapsulated the passing of time and the revisiting of former hopes and dreams. He was a really emotional songwriter and a beautiful singer.”
-- Jackson Brown, friend and fellow artist in Rolling Stone shortly after his death.
Because I Liked You
Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.
To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
'Good-bye,' said you, 'forget me.'
'I will, no fear', said I.
If here, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the *trefoiled grass,
Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his
word.
A.E. Housman
* clover
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