You're Still A Young Man

This was the first song Tower of Power sax players Emilio Castillo and Stephen "Doc" Kupka wrote together. It was the band's first hit, and Castillo and Kupka became the primary songwriters.

Castillo: "The story line of the song, it's about a guy that's going with an older woman and he's totally smitten with her. He's in love as you could possibly be and she loves him too but she says, 'You're a young man and there's so many women out there your age.' In other words, she's thinking by the time they get older he's going to look at her like some old woman and wish that he had been with a younger girl. So she's cutting him loose and she's saying, 'You're still a young man, don't waste your time,' basically don't waste your time with me, there's so many other fishes in the sea at your age. It's based on a true story. I had a girlfriend that was six years older than me. I was 18, she was 24 and that's actually what happened. She had kind of cut me loose because of the age difference thing and the whole plea in the story is the young guy's saying, 'I'm not too young, I'm not wasting my time and I do love you like a man can truly love a woman.'"

Tower of Power is known for their horn section, which has played on albums for many other artists. The horn intro for this was inspired by a song from an album called This Is My Country by Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions. Says Castillo, "On that album there's a song called 'A Woman's Love' that starts off with beautiful trumpets really high. When we heard that we wanted to write a song with a great trumpet intro like that." (Check out our interview with Emilio Castillo. You can learn much more at his website, towerofpower.com.)

At a Tower of Power show in Las Vegas on March 7, 2009, they made a special dedication of this song. The band had received an email from Tim Lorenzen, who was in the United States army and stationed in Iraq. His request was for the band to dedicate "You're Still A Young Man" to his wife Mona, who would be at the show. He wrote that TOP was their favorite band, and on their last day together they took a ride in his convertible, top down, listing to TOP music, despite the fact that it was raining. Tim was able to get a furlough, come to the show, and surprise his wife with roses when TOP frontman Larry Braggs called her onto the stage.