"Red Balloon", as far as I can make out, is a song about scoring and using smack: "hidden in the red balloon/was the pinning of my eyes". Tim Hardin was a wonderful writer and singer. His first two Verve albums, "TH 1 and 2" still stand as classics, contemporary sounding even after forty plus years. TH's big problem was one of creative burn out after those first few great albums. He never realised his full artistic potential - sadly, he had to live with the consequences of his lifestyle (substance misuse) which made him very inconsistent as a performer.

I certainly do not want to get into a big discussion here about substance misuse and artistic limitation. Suffice to say, TH lost out, his friends and family may well have lost out, and the world of music lost out.

Some of his great songs - "Carpenter", "Hang On To A Dream", "Misty Roses", etc., clock in at about TWO MINUTES each. They're haunting and sparse and beautifully constructed. They may not have been written as "folk songs", but they will probably become so. They will still be sung even after people have forgotten all about the man who wrote them.