Seen as insulting or maudlin by some, Ballad Of Sad Young Men is not exclusive to gay guys. A visit to any bar can tell you that. Yet, the song still reflects the ostracism and the loneliness felt by queers in the 1950s and 1960s, pre-Stonewall. For generations of LGBTQ people, especially those for whom walking into the sometime secret and darkened doorway of a gay bar was often the first step in their coming-out process. The bars have long held a significant place in our personal histories, and in the 1950s and 1960s they could be scary. You could be arrested just for being in one.
I visited my first gay bar when I was still in high school. It was the only gay bar in Spokane and it didn’t seem to have a name and was referred to simply as “The Bar”. I had fake I.D., but no one asked to see it. I went to stupidly try and find a guy who loved The Beatles, Andy Warhol and Ken Russell films and would want to have sex. I ended up with a Nixon-loving, anti-hippy Republican boy with red hair. We made out in the back. I found his politics repulsively erotic.
Ballad Of The Sad Yong Men paints a picture of the desperate search for love and companionship in the only place most gays could think of during that era: the darkness of a bar.
With lyrics are by Fran Landesman and music by Tommy Wolf, it was featured in the very odd beatnik Broadway musical The Nervous Set (1959), along with a perhaps more famous song, Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most: A wealthy publisher and his wife from suburban Connecticut suburb explore Greenwich Village, that was pretty much the plot. The show featured a young Larry Hagman and lasted 23 performances.
Wolf and Landesman via youTube
Most people don’t seem to know this song, but it is one of my favorites. Rod McKuen was the first to record it, but it has been covered by such disparate artists as: Jane Monheit, Boz Scaggs, Marc Almond & Antony Hegarty, David Sanborn, Kurt Elling, Steve Lawrence, Johnny Hartman, Mark Murphy, Rickie Lee Jones, Petula Clark, Mariam Makebam, Johnny Mathis, Shirley Bassey, and Roberta Flack.
Is the song about sad, young gay men? Many think so.
Here are the lyrics:
Sing a song of sad young men
Glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again
Kiss your dreams goodbye
All the sad young men
Sitting in the bars
Knowing neon lights
And missing all the stars
All the sad young men
Drifting through the town
Drinking up the night
Trying not to drown
All the sad young men
Singing in the cold
Trying to forget
That they’re growing old
All the sad young men
Choking on their youth
Trying to be brave
Running from the truth
Autumn turns the leaves to gold
Slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old
That’s the cruelest part
All the sad young men
Seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold
For a little while
Tired little girl
Does the best she can
Trying to be gay
For a sad young man
While the grimy moon
Watches from above
All the sad young men
Play at making love
Misbegotten moon
Shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light
Guide them home tonight
All the sad young men
