Dirk Darmstaedter - I Was In Love With New York City (Official Lyric Video)

I grew up in a small town in northern New Jersey called Teaneck. Although I spent some of my teenage years in Hamburg, Germany, I was back in Teaneck for my senior year of high school.
It was 1982, I was 17 years old and not a big fan of hanging around small town America when the big, exciting, crazy city beckoned just a few miles down Route 4 and across the George Washington Bridge. So I'd take the bus across the river to the Port Authority Midtown Bus Terminal and start walking... I'd usually end up either in Greenwich Village, chasing the ghosts of Bob Dylan, Fred Neil and Phil Ochs, or at The Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway, at the corner of East 12th Street.
At night, I'd go to the Danceteria to listen to (and awkwardly dance to) the latest British new wave tracks. It had several floors, each with its own music, vibe and atmosphere, and was located at 30 West 21st Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Manhattan. What a place!
I saw some cool bands play CBGB's, although I missed Television, Blondie and the Ramones by a few years.

When we returned to NYC to record the third "the jeremy days" album (Speakeasy) at the Battery Studios, located at 321 West 44th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, in Manhattan with producer Fred Maher (Lou Reed, Material, Lloyd Cole, Matthew Sweet etc), I fell in love with the city again, spending my days in the studio and my nights roaming the streets. The band actually stayed at the Hotel Chelsea during our stay in NYC (among many other stories, Leonard Cohen famously wrote "Chelsea Hotel #2" about his relationship with Janis Joplin, another guest.) Classic!

Many, many years later I wrote this song about my love affair with the city. It's also a kind of "I'm sorry" to all the people I never really got to be with in Teaneck because my mind was always racing away, away to the big city, to bands, to poetry, to New York pizza slices that just called my name when I could have been playing Pac Man at the drugstore on Cedar Lane in Teaneck with all the rest of my friends. Again, I'm sorry, but I just had places to be.
Anyway, here's the song. I've just put together a little video that hopefully captures the vibe of being young and in love with New York City. Enjoy ....
D, Hamburg in late December 2024.

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