Society’s Child - Intro

[Spoken]
So I decided when I was about two or three years old that I wanted to, to grow up to do this. And, um, of course it's very hard to take a five year old saying that seriously. My grandparents really hoped that I would go to college and be something respectable like a doctor. In fact, when Seventeen became a hit my grandfather was pretty overjoyed 'cause he thought now I would have the money to go to college, so—

I wrote this song when I was fourteen years old and I was just starting to sing in public. And um, I had made friends with all these folksingers in New York and was hanging around in the Village, you know, feeling— Those were the days when if people wore a work shirt and had long hair then you really knew where they stood politically. And life was much simpler then, you know? 'Cause you could spot someone and know they'd lend you money or whatever. Nowadays everybody has long hair and work shirts. Well, enough about history. 

Um, anyway, I made this record. And I'd never been in a studio before and they let me do what I wanted. So I had this great time, and the record came out. And I was real excited 'cause I thought, "Wow, it comes out, it gets played on the radio, it's a hit record, you get to work." Everybody hated me. Now the right wing hated me because the song is about a black boy and a white girl, and I wasn't supposed to be talking about that. The left wing got angry because in it the white girl says to the black boy that she's copping out, she can't see him any more. And then all the folksingers hated me because there were drums on the record.