‘Love’s Wounds Unseen . . .’

 by whiteray

As we continue the exploration of my five favorite singles of all time, we get to No. 4, and I find myself in a quandary. 

Oh, I know what the record is. It’s been in my Top Five since the early 1970s. The problem is, I am not at all certain where I first heard it. 

During one of the summers of my late teens, bored and somewhat at odds with the world, I would take long Saturday evening bike rides through the city of St. Cloud (Minnesota), the city where I was born, that I left in 1977, and that I returned to twenty-five years later. 

I’d ride on those 1971 evenings along the Mississippi River down to the rickety structure that was called the Tenth Street Bridge, certainly built in the Nineteenth Century. I’d look down as I crossed on the pedestrian walkway, seeing glimpses of the water below through the gaps between planks. And I’d make my way up the long hill on the western bank of the river, with the greater portion of the campus of St. Cloud State College – where I was working that summer as a lawn-mower and janitor – on my right. 

I’d ride through the South Side of the city, past the high school whose doors I’d recently exited, past the junior high school I’d left three years earlier, and then past the homes of two young women whose impact on my senior year of high school – sometimes unhappy – still cannot be measured fifty years later. 

Then I’d make my way back toward downtown, stopping every week at the Municipal Swimming Pool, where I’d lock my bike to a rack and head to the concession stand. I’d buy a Frozen Milkshake bar, sit in the bleachers adjacent to the pool, and listen to the music on the PA system as I ate my frozen treat. 

And it was there, my memory tells me, that I first heard a sad orchestral introduction – one that made me catch my breath – followed by the rest of Linda Ronstadt’s 1970 single, “Long, Long Time.” Penned by guitarist Gary White, the plaintive ballad found a place on Ronstadt’s album Silk Purse: 

Love will abide, take things in stride
Sounds like good advice but there’s no one at my side
And time washes clean love’s wounds unseen
That’s what someone told me but I don’t know what it means
’Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think I’m gonna love you for a long, long time 

Caught in my fears, blinking back the tears
I can’t say you hurt me when you never let me near
And I never drew one response from you
All the while you fell all over girls you never knew
’Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think it’s gonna hurt me for a long, long time 

Wait for the day you’ll go away
Knowing that you warned me of the price I’d have to pay
And life’s full of flaws. Who knows the cause?
Living in the memory of a love that never was
’Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and change your mind
And I think I’m gonna miss you for a long, long time

’Cause I’ve done everything I know to try and make you mine
And I think I’m gonna love you for a long, long time 

The record came out in 1970, as I noted above, and as I also noted, my first memory of it comes from the summer of 1971. I’d listened to a lot of pop radio during 1970, and the record went to No. 25 on the main Billboard chart. I wonder now – as I have at moments during the past fifty years – why I hadn’t heard it sooner. Or if I did – and I think I must have – why hadn’t noticed it? Did it need the contemplation provided by resting in the bleachers for me to truly listen to it instead of just hear it? 

I dunno. But as I sat there and ate my frozen treat, looking at the Saturday evening swimmers without really seeing them, the sad intro and the sorrowful story of the record pierced the seventeen-year-old me, fresh from two painful attempts at romance. And it pierces me today, survivor now of many more failures and at last a grateful partner in the most loving pairing of my life, with my Texas Gal. 

Here’s the album track of the song. The single version was a little more than a minute shorter.