The good old days.

Nostalgia has always been integral for the baby boomers, more so than for any other generation. The post-war kids enjoyed a skyrocketing economy, an explosion of suburbs, lots of education, lots of free time, and plenty of money for toys and entertainment such as hula hoops, Slinkys, and Easy Bake ovens. Basically, an idyllic childhood for many.

This, of course, was followed by adulthood in a topsy-turvy world, a ball of confusion, assassinations, war, violence in the streets, and a lack of trust in government institutions. Total uncertainty. Why wouldn’t they want to look back to a simpler time? In the 1970’s, the boomers used nostalgia as a balm, a soothing escape (e.g. American Graffiti, Grease, Happy Days, Sha Na Na); in the 80’s they would use it as therapy (e.g. The Big Chill, and dozens of Vietnam movies).

So prevalent was this nostalgia in the 1980’s in movies (Stand By Me, Dirty Dancing, Peggy Sue Got Married, The In Crowd, and all those Vietnam movies), TV (The Wonder Years, Crime Story, and…all the Vietnam shows), and music (covers of “Mony Mony,” “I Think We’re Alone Now,” and “Venus” all re-topped the charts) that I, personally, have always maintained a “phantom nostalgia” for the boomer culture. I grew up listening to, watching, reading, and looking back on everything they did in the 50’s and 60’s, because that’s the media that was available. This song makes me feel that way, and I was born a year after its release.

Gunhill Road met in high school in New York in the mid-60’s. Upon officially forming a band in 1969, the trio became a regular opening act for comedians at The Bitter End, a legendary folk club in the city. Kenny “You got to know when to hold ’em” Rogers heard their first single and contacted their manager about covering it, which led to him producing the band’s second album.

The guys recorded a song with Kenny called “Back When My Hair Was Short,” which was slow, satirical, cynical, and referenced drugs and Christianity. But their record label head, Neil “I’m about to discover Kiss” Bogart, heard pop potential and suggested they speed up the tempo and make the lyrics more radio-friendly. Gunhill Road then rewrote the song as a look back at growing up and living through the 60’s.

Released as a single in 1973, “Back When My Hair Was Short” immediately started garnering airplay. DJs loved it. Boomers loved it. The song climbed into the US Top 40 but stopped right on #40 — that same week, Billboard changed the method by which they calculated chart positions and the single declined in the following weeks. Weirdly, despite its popularity, the song itself may have damaged Gunhill Road’s future because it was considered a novelty, and it wasn’t representative of their sound at all — which was more of a straightforward, folk-rock — but also because it was sung by their bass player rather than their usual lead singer. The band slowly dissolved in the mid-70’s, but reunited in 2014 to record an album titled Every 40 Years.

But let’s all look back 50 years.

(There probably aren’t many people my age or younger who know what a D.A. is in regard to hair, but that’s the kind of detail that triggers my nostalgia for a time that wasn’t even mine.)

(Also of note for any Gen Xers or Millennials out there, Glenn Leopold — the guy who wrote this song and sang lead on all the group’s other songs — later became a writer for the Hanna-Barbera animation group. He wrote episodes for dozens and dozens of shows over the years, but his greatest claim to fame is that he served as head writer for The Smurfs for the entire run of the show, as well as writing one episode of Small Wonder (!), and five episodes of Doug.)