[1997:] I wrote this song in 1977, on the beautiful island of St. Thomas, one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. I had just come through the toughest part of my life; my performing career had almost ended due to the damage on my vocal chords caused through overwork, but a period of silence (no talking or whispering for three months) allowed the chords to heal. Then I had to start on the long and difficult process of learning to sing and talk without doing the same damage again [...]. My time in St. Thomas was to be a recuperation period, a time when I could forget all the problems of the recent past and concentrate on getting fit again for performing. And it worked. I came to make some major decisions about my future [...]. Extreme times make one assess one's life and values. I began to realise what was important and what could be discarded. Success is a relative concept - it depends on one's criteria. Establishing the criteria is the difficult part, and this is often influenced by extreme experiences. I began to realise the value of friends and how I wished some of them could be with me to share the island. It was in this mood that the song began to develop. My ex-wife Kathy, more in this than any other song I have written was a great help offering rhymes and ideas as I tried to form the song.
Of all the songs I have written, this has been the most recorded by other performers, of quite diverse styles. It has been recorded as a Country Song (Don Williams), as an M.O.R. song (Nana Mouskouri) and as a soft Rock song (Frankie Miller), apart from the many versions by folk music performers. My favourite version is by Alex Campbell, who had a minor hit with it in Denmark. I had taught him the song backstage at the Norwich Folk Festival, around 1978 and he had taken it and made it his own. In fact when I first went to Denmark and sang the song many people would tell me that I shouldn't sing it as it was Alex's song! He knew how to sing the song because he had lived it, and as far as I know it was the last song he ever sang in public.
Note: When Alex Campbell recorded the song he changed the last line of the second verse to: "Sometimes there's one, oftimes there's none," which I think is a better line than the one I wrote.
When Frankie Miller recorded the song he changed the last line of the chorus to: "It's good to see you, to be in your arms". (Taylor, Songs 46)