Songfacts®:

• This song dates back to 1974, thus the title. David Crosby recorded it that year, but it remained in demo form until 2018 when he completed it with his Lighthouse Band: Becca Stevens, Michelle Willis and Michael League.
  
  Crosby's demo had been digitized and was on a computer that League accessed while they were working together. When League discovered it, he asked Crosby if they could finish the song, which they did. It was released on Crosby's 2018 album Here If You Listen.
• In the first 30 seconds of the song, you can hear Crosby working out the song, singing a wordless melody. He says it's the only time he ever found a melody while he was being recorded.
  
  "It was a song without words that I was fooling around with," he explained in a Songfacts interview. "I used to do that a lot: I'd have a set of changes but I didn't have a set of words, so I would stack vocals like horn parts. I'm basically doing a horn record with voices. I had a bunch of those."
• Crosby's lead vocal is from his original 1974 demo. Michael League, Becca Stevens, and Michelle Willis wrote the lyrics and added the backing vocals and instrumentation, with with all three playing guitar, Stevens adding charango (a stringed instrument like a lute) and Willis piano and synthesizer. The lyric is about the transcendent power of love, asking the question, "Will our love beat on after we are gone?"
• Crosby often performed this song with The Lighthouse band, including on December 8, 2018 in a performance that was released on CD and DVD in 2022 as Live At The Capitol Theatre.