(written + recorded in 2005)
lyrically, the song was initially inspired by a sewn painting (where the different-colored threads form the picture) that I had owned since I was a baby and which now hangs in my parents’ bedroom, with the quote “Anyone can be a father but it takes someone special to be a daddy”, the painting depicts a Father Bear hoisting his young cub on his shoulders, the cub has a balloon in his hand and they are both smiling while observing a rainbow in the upper left corner…
I have noticed that pop songs that deal with father/son relationships often have a prevailing melancholy sentiment (Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s In The Cradle”, Paul McCartney’s “Put It There”, etc) and as I was writing this one, I found myself echoing this type of melancholy…I watched a moving scene from “Wall Street” for inspiration: stockbroker Bud Fox returns to work after finding out that Gekko plans to destroy Blue Star Airlines only to find that his father is in the hospital after suffering a heart attack, he rushes to his bedside and through tears he vows to save the company and asks permission to speak for his father…that scene inspired my final verse, and I added some religious implications in my lyrical choices for Verse 3…I also looked at early pictures of my father and I…two pictures in particular that were major sources of inspiration was me when I was less than a year old lying on my father’s chest in his bed; we would nap together and watch Sesame Street in the early evening while my mother went to the YMCA…another picture was of me at age 1 1/2 standing near the ocean; after that picture was taken, a wave crashed over me and got me soaked, so my parents had to go to the boardwalk to buy me new clothes…
(this was the first of the batch of songs I wrote, I remember that right after I finished writing the song, Loren called me from Guitar Center to schedule a job interview for the next morning)