For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has asked us to find a song that is about children and/or families, suggested, once again, by Nancy, aka The Sicilian Storyteller. The song I’m going with this week is “Teach Your Children” from Crosby Stills Nash & Young.

“Teach Your Children” was written by Graham Nash in 1968 when he was still a member of the Hollies. The song was recorded and released in 1970 for the album Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. As a single, the song peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts that year.

The lyrics deal with the often difficult relationship he had with his father, who spent time in prison. But Nash was also genuinely concerned that if we didn’t teach our children a better way of dealing with our fellow human beings, humanity would be in great danger.

Nash allegedly wrote the song while under the influence of hash. He taught it to the rest of the band in one day in the studio. Nash said, “When I wrote ‘Teach Your Children’ and ‘Our House,’ we didn’t know what we were doing. This sounds pretty fun, we can sing this, let’s do it! And then all of a sudden people are singing it back to me forty years later.” He noted that ‘Teach Your Children” started out as a slightly funky English folk song but Stephen Stills put a country beat to it and turned it into a hit record.

Jerry Garcia performed the pedal steel guitar part of this track. He had been playing steel guitar for only a short period of time. Garcia played on this album in exchange for harmony lessons for the Grateful Dead, who were at the time recording their acoustic albums Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.

Here are the lyrics to “Teach Your Children.”

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.