Old Friend by Chris de Burgh ,
reviewed by Dave Doohan
Album: Spanish Train & Other Stories
Old Friend is an easily overlooked song given the strength of the Spanish Train album. Situated as track number eight, it is a quiet song, seen maybe as a filler between the strong, somewhat brash Painter and the heart wrenching tale that is The Tower. However, to overlook or skip past Old Friend is to miss out on a classic piece of de Burgh storytelling. Read on, and if you have audio capabilities listen on, as the tale unfolds.
We begin gently, with a quiet guitar,
"Old Friend, so you're in trouble again, 
You asked me today, to try and find a little time,
And maybe buy a glass of wine, Old Friend"
And the scene is set, one of an old friend, perhaps someone
with whom you have lost contact. You meet up again, or perhaps it is just a telephone
call, and he tells you that he is in trouble, and asks if you could spare some time to buy
a glass of wine in his memory. The song continues, describing a memory from many years
before,
an old man (the friend) and a little boy (the singer) taken fishing by this man who alw
ays smiled and for which nothing was too much trouble where his young friend was
concerned. The song has a wonderful crescendo at this point, during the memory, as if it
has come flooding back in to the consciousness.
The song slows, and now you are looking ahead to old age, hoping that, when the time comes that you need someone, there will be an old friend to remember you.
"When the years are heavy, and my heart is growing
cold,
Well I wish that there'll always be … some Old Friend who'll miss me too…"
The finale, as the singer demonstrates his love for his
friend, he says in effect …never mind just a glass of wine, we'll meet up, anytime at
all, and we'll have a complete bottle, that's how much you mean to me.
If anything this song is a gentle reminder to us all to value our friends, because, perhaps, in a time of crisis, it is the friends we value most who will remember us the most, and will be there for us during a time of need.
This is a lovely song, a short story lost in a masterful album of stories, but definitely worth listening to over and over again.