This song was recorded and released in 1975. I first heard it that same year as I walked into the first bar I ever visited in Boston, The Last Hurrah located in the Omni Parker House Hotel, that is where Billy Joel’s uptown girls visit. Imagine that, a lost hippie peacenik revolutionary pretty much non-drinker walking into The Last Hurrah in Boston at around 4 on a hot afternoon, this is uptown business and financial district so you can imagine I was not dressed like the rest but I do think I impressed and they served me. The Parker House and The Last Hurrah Bar were the unrivaled political hotel and restaurant of Boston, thanks to their location across the street from Boston’s City Hall, it was built-in 1865. People like James Michael Curley (mayor of Boston who is said to be the model for Edwin O’Connor’s protagonist in his 1956 book The Last Hurrah) often were seen at The Parker Houses’ main dining room. And by the way, I had no idea about any of this before a year or so later, hell I was just a long-haired hippie peacenik a rebel without a cause for the first time in my adult history and figured I’d try a beer. As I seated myself at this long wooden bar and looked around at the overall well-polished rustic look of the place the piano player was still holding my attention and he was playing and singing this song and I have been loved, and I have loved, and I have loved this song from then on and every once in a while I have met an old lover. https://youtu.be/Q5Eoax6I-O4
Rambling Harbor 