Even though I grew up in the 1980s — the decade that music videos really took off — MTV (or, rather, the Canadian equivalent Much Music) wasn’t a big part of my life. I tended to get my music off the radio. So, there were few music videos that I carried with me from my childhood.
Except for this one. I saw John Fogarty’s “The Old Man Down the Road” once or possibly twice. The song, in my opinion, is brilliant, with some great guitar riffs, and old reliable lyrics about looking back on growing old, but it’s the music coupled with the images that really stuck with me. The long (but not complete, I notice) panning shot of the world’s largest extension cord (winding through John’s life, apparently) was something I remembered and kept coming back to, even though the song wasn’t a part of my music collection. When I pulled together my list of fifty-or-so “rock essentials” for my iPod, I finally decided to go to iTunes and purchase this song. But I’ve only now gone out and found the original video. I enclose it below.
Like many things eighties, viewed with today’s lens, the video is at times weird and a little cheesy, but I think it holds up quite well.
While I continue to rest my writing, I’ll leave you with this. I won’t comment on why I should be thinking about this song so much now, when I’m less than two years from my fortieth birthday.