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Introduction

For those who have been involved in or witnessing the LTL search over the years, the greatest area of dispute has been the issue of its dating.

60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s have been proposed. Late 70s, early 80s have been the most common guestimates. However, Lostwave Forum concensus does not equal fact, as I will show following.

This page is a summary conglomeration of all the research I have done underlying dating LTL in pages 1 - 8, but under this one heading, because it is an issue which truly needs to be put to bed.

Firstly, I just can't begin to fathom anyone who says that the LTL recording is later than 1985  because "mid 80s" is when the tape-finder first said he found it in LA. Their input can only be explained by a lack of familiarity with the established timeline and sonic signatures of the era in which the song originated.

Secondly, all those who say that LTL is 70s or early 80s, I believe, are merely advancing a safe yet ignorant bet by dismissing the late 60s genre -- which they clearly did not live through, and could not have studied much in retrospect.

I can well understand people saying it sounds like (some) 70s or 80s artists, because, in music, a lot of things sound like a lot of other things which they aren't -- eg, Mozart and Haydn, R.E.M. and The Byrds, Echo & the Bunnymen and The Doors, Natalie Merchant and Light the Lanterns. Fair enough -- these things do sound like each other. But when you've been brought up in a particular generation of music, its not hard to pick discrepancies.

So for those without any preconceived ideas about the song's genre, let me now lead you through the facts.

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Musical Experts on Dating

When it comes to fact-finding, or even making educated guesses in life, unlike so many on social media, I tend to read widely and ask around, rather than publicise my own ignorance by offering unverified conjecture. So for 5 years, other than doing my own digging, I have been asking experts for THEIR educated guesses about the most likely time period (and location) for LTL which can be gleaned from the musical and lyrical EVIDENCE we have. So let's now take heed of some experts, instead of unqualified commentators.

It's The San Francisco Sound

One very credible source for the dating was Joel Selvin; b.1950; a Berkeley native; retired SF Chronicle music critic 1972 - 2009; sometime rock muso; respected musicologist; author of 22 books; Consulting Producer on the MGM Documentary "The San Francisco Sound; A Place in Time". [1] [2]

I sent Joel the original LTL recording and simply asked -- "Ever heard this song? Can you estimate a where and when and who for this song?".

Being a Very Busy Man, his reply was suitably confident and concise.

"Fairly generic, SF 68-69".

That was it. So if ANYONE of a different mind wants to argue with that position, argue it out with HIM NOT ME.

In addition to Selvin's own experience, there are innumerable other academic papers, audio compilations, and documentary expositions on the famous San Francisco Sound of 1965 - 1972. Explore these following links and I'm sure you'll come away with a better ear for the correct decade of Light the Lanterns.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_sound
• https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZTBwu4t3mKDsy39yUMdLFZfbmLnyPQAf
• https://youtu.be/f6pdSB5OZIk
• https://youtu.be/Hoa-XrHcb8M,
• https://youtu.be/j_VZni4WbXk (The Demise of the Happy-Hippie Scene)

The Unusual Fretless Bass

This particular rendition caught my ear early on. So I put the song up on several bass forums, requesting the skill-assessment and dating from expert bass players. Despite no-one venturing any authoritive solid dating info, many said " Ask Bruce Johnson. He'll know". So I looked him up. [3].

I told Bruce nothing about the track, just asked if he could identify what era of fretless playing he thought it was ... believing he'd be unable to provide specifics due to the low-fidelity audio. But this was his reply -- verbatim.

• "I can confirm that track sure sounds like the fretless Ampeg AUB-1. They were made from September 1966 through late 1968. The original AUB-1 has a unique type of pickup that no other bass of that time had. It detects the movement of the whole bridge, rather than the individual strings. The sound has a very percussive attack curve with a noticeable pop and warble. And the mid-range is exceptionally rich with background coloration. But it's not mushy, like a Fender with tapewounds. It's possible to get close to that sound with a Fender, with some good musician skill and recording technique. But my guess is that this is the real thing, somebody playing their cool new late 60s Ampeg AUB-1, and probably through an Ampeg B-15 amp."

Well, to be honest, I was astounded that someone could identify the exact bass guitar model, year, sound and even the amp. And yes, it might well be someone playing that model at a later time. But, it still indicates a late 60s or early 70s recording, given that Fender soon dominated the industry with its own far cheaper fretless P-Models from 1970 onwards, and bass players moved to a more rock-sound than the Ampeg. So the Ampeg AUB-1 apparently only survived as a preferred fretless bass for just that window of 1966 to say 1972, maximum. [4]

I later spoke with an old bassist friend of mine who owns a vintage 1962 Fender "Pre-L Series" (fretted) bass. I asked " How can someone like Bruce Johnson pick a vintage instrument so specifically?" He answered "You just can".

The Pre-70s Bar Structure

A pop music historian explained this to me:

• LTL has an Intro (8 bars), Verse (14), Chorus (14), Bridge (14), Chorus (14), Lead break (8), Chorus (14). This 14-bar phrasing is a structural giveaway. In the late 60s folk-rock transition, songwriters wrote to the natural breath of the lyrics rather than a rigid timing sequence. A 14-bar section (4+4+4+2) creates an asymmetrical, irregular feel, common when folk melody met pop.
• By the mid-70s, the influence of drum machines and high-fidelity production forced songwriting into rigid, "square" 8 or 16-bar boxes. A 70s or 80s producer would have found a 14-bar loop intolerable and forced the drummer to add the "missing" 2 bars to make it radio-friendly.

The Strophic Hybrid

The music historian elaborated:

• LTL lacks the formulaic Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus structure of the 1970s singer-songwriter era (e.g., Carole King). Instead, it uses a repeating A-B pattern deeply rooted in the traditional 1960s folk revival. Even the Bridge follows the exact 14-bar symmetry of the verse, a characteristic of ballad-style writing before 70s pop standards demanded a shorter, 8-bar "Middle 8" diversion.

The Folk-Style Strumming

An elderly folk guitarist pointed out:

• The rhythm guitar uses a constant, open-chord eighth-note strum without the syncopation or "palm-muting" that became standard in 70s rock. This is the rhythmic signature of the 1960s "Hootenanny" era.

Melodic Naivety

The melody is strictly diatonic (staying within the major scale). This "innocent" style was the hallmark of 1960s folk-pop (like The Seekers or Peter, Paul and Mary, The Mamas & the Papas) before the 1970s introduced more complex, "moody", jazz-influenced chords.

Vocal Delivery

In the 60s, the performance was king. If the singer went slightly flat or a harmony wavered, it stayed on the tape. By the 80s, even demos used "punch-ins" to mask flaws. LTL’s raw, uncorrected vocal is a distinct pre-1975 telltale.

Production Indicators of Dating

My sound engineers noticed this about the song's original recording:

• The drums (lol, all two of them!) are classified as "dry." There is none of the digital reverb or "gated snare" sound that defined every single recording from 1979 to 1985. (Looking at you, Phil Collins). [6]
• No hi-hat, no cymbals is typical of an amateur/basement pre-70s session.
• The technical "mush" and the intermittent tambourine volume prove this was recorded with a limited number of microphones in a single room, a telltale recording methodology that was superceded by the high-fidelity multi-tracking of the mid-70s.

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Lyrical Indications of Dating

Within the lyrics, even without knowing the shipwreck or the Atkinsons' story as I detailed on Page 4, there are two very telltale lines:

"I was already on the outside"

• This is what many teenagers feel as they rebel against paternal and social conditioning. Outside of what? Essentially, everything you were born into. It's a badge of honour in a 14 - 20 year old. What cultural milieu was our singer born into? The pieces point to Fort Bragg, Ca, 1942 - 1964.

"I wanted to be what I wanted to be"

• I easily recognised this phrase from my older sister's uni days in the late 60s. So I cast around for its true origins. And I found this:

• This isn't just hippie vernacular. It is the specific terminology of the Humanistic Psychology Movement, Maslow’s "Self-Actualization", which saturated global counterculture from 1967 onwards. [5] It's peak was 1966 - 1972, after Maslow published his seminal 1962 book "Toward a Psychology of Being", thereby defining the movement and much subsequent hippie lingo.  [REF] In California, these concepts migrated from Brandeis University to the Esalen Institute to Haight-Ashbury and up into rural communes like those in Mendocino. By 1970, the "Free School" movement and alternative curriculum models in Northern California had incorporated Maslow’s hierarchy. By 1972, after Maslow’s 1971 book "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature", [REF] the phrase had progressed from a radical university philosophy to a standard aspiration for local high-school-aged youths. 

So we can deduce that, had the songwriter been in (for example, Fort Bragg) high school after 1972, she would NOT have felt much of an outsider to her peers in that era. She felt "outside" to the conservative local environment of Fort Bragg in 1960 - 1965. And she would never have felt an outsider within The Bay after 1965. Mendocino was a sort of halfway "scene".

These self-ascribed tags, confirms that the song's lyrics were unlikely to have been written down in 1962/1963, but more likely written later, around the time of the 68-69 recording, after the singer's later SF influences.

Grace left Mendocino in 1965-1966, and Quong's closed up in 1966, further proving that the narrative SITUATION (but not the recording) was sparked before 1966 and these hippie phrases were retrospectively inserted.

Flower Power Earnestness

The lyrics are earnest and romantic without the cynicism or gloss of the mid-70s, or the neon-drenched metaphors of the 80s. It feels like a lyric written by someone influenced by the 1967 "Summer of Love" who hasn't yet seen the darker, more commercial turn the music industry took in the 70s.​

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Conclusion

It's quite clear from all the above reasons that LTL is a late 60s song. I can understand how people who don't really know stuff like to make guesses. That's human nature. But when confronted with evidence, people have to stop saying they "know" that Light the Lanterns is from the 70s or 80s -- because clearly it isn't.

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Page References

Joel Selvin
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Selvin

The San Francisco Sound; A Place in Time
[2] https://youtu.be/-JBj1UhK4Ag.
[2] https://youtu.be/rQsfDLKd_8I

Bruce Johnson
[3] http://www.xstrange.com/
[4] http://www.xstrange.com/aeb1.html

Abraham Maslow
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Gated Snare Reverb
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_reverb