Sometimes When We Touch (1977)
You ask me if I love you
And I choke on my reply
I’d rather hurt you honestly
Than mislead you with a lie
And who am I to judge you
In what you say or do
I’m only just beginning
To see the real you.
Barry Mann, Dan Hill
And sometimes when we touch
The honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I want to hold you till I die
Till we both break down and cry
I want to hold you till the fear in me subsides
You may have noticed by now that my musical memories are bouncing around time at the moment. This song is no different. It is the truth of my relationship with Mona. It’s all well and fine to have my Moon in Scorpio, it’s quite another matter to be confronted with a partner whose Sun is there, too. Turbulence and jealousy would be the main themes here.
Our relationship was beginning to unravel in 1977, and this song symbolized the agony I was going through. This next excerpt puts it into context:
At times I think we’re drifters
Still searching for a friend
A brother or a sister
But then the passion flares again
By the time we’d moved back to St. Catharines in Ontario from Vancouver, our relationship kept limping along, until the day I met my future second wife.
The song is a dirge. It is hard to listen to and the meaning is too deep for a ‘normal’ hit, but a hit it became in 1978. It also became a national joke:
In 1996, This Hour Has 22 Minutes ran a comedic sketch in which Canada was taken over by terrorists who in turn were promptly defeated when the Canadian Armed Forces deployed the song as their secret weapon
Wikipedia
Here’s Dan Hill’s definitive version from 1994.
“I want to hold you ’til the fear in me subsides…“
cdsmiller17 