THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For me, 1967 was the portal between childhood and the adult world, where these songs flickered in the air to greet me like hummingbirds,” says Robyn Hitchcock.
“They’re full of saturated colour and melancholy, just as I was charged with hormones and regret as one part of me said goodbye to the other. Perhaps I peaked then — at the supernova of boyhood — the black hole of the grownup world awaited me with its dwarf-star mentality, all beige and hell and compromise.
“Forever after, I’ve wandered beneath the dayglo Waterloo Sunset and burned the Midnight Lamp, yearning for that time. A Whiter Shade of Pale, she’s the wan ghost that haunts me in summer twilight, all the way down to the river where the spectre of Emily plays, Ophelia-like, with strands of green waterweed. Look — they’re full of dead minnows! See, now she’s draping wet strips of it over her hair!
“By coincidence, the world was changing as fast as I was, and music embodied that change. The world grew hair, became infused with new desires and crawled out of its grey nest to test its fresh, multicoloured plumage. We all crash eventually, but at least some of us take off first: If we are left only with sullen cravings and a sense of loss, well, so be it. 1967 is a phantom heart that glows inside me, lighting me up like a lamp on a good day. ‘So long, Mum! Thank you, Dad! I’m off to infinity! Please leave my dinner in the oven.’ “
