Grass Roots – "I'd Wait a Million Years" (1969)

I’d wait a million years 

Walk a million miles

Cry a million tears 

The singer of “I’d Wait a Million Years” wouldn’t really wait a million years, walk a million miles, or cry a million tears just to have you near him.  

Those lines are an example of what the ancient Greeks called hyperbole – defined as an exaggeration not meant to be taken literally.

People often use the word “million” hyperbolically.  But sometimes a million is just a million – and sometimes a cigar is just a smoke. 

As you can see from the photo below, my wildly popular little blog recently had its millionth visitor.  (I had hoped to get a photo of the counter as it rolled over from 999,999 to 1,000,000, but that was like trying to catch lightning in a bottle – I blinked and I missed it.) 

Who the millionth visitor was and where he or she is from, nobody knows.  (About half of our traffic comes from the good ol’ U.S. of A.  The countries that contribute the most visitors after the U.S. are Russia, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Ukraine, Australia and Brazil, respectively.)

What we do know is that 2 or 3 lines continues to blow up after almost ten years in existence!

2 or 3 lines is purt near a stick of dynamite, boys and girls.  That’s as plain as the nose on your face – it don’t make me no never mind if you don’t agree. 

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“I’d Wait a Million Years” isn’t the first Grass Roots song to be featured on 2 or 3 lines, which is as it should be.

If you wanted to pick a quintessential 2 or 3 lines, you could do a lot worse than the Grass Roots.  

For one thing, they had their greatest success during what I like to call the golden decade of pop music – which consists of the years I was in junior high, high school and college.

Second, the Grass Roots’ hits were as eclectic as all get out, combining elements of folk rock, R&B/soul, and “British Invasion” music.  A lot of their singles featured brass instruments, something that was relatively rare at the time.  

Third, 2 or 3 lines has always had a soft spot for studio musicians in general and the Los Angeles-based “Wrecking Crew” conglomeration of studio musicians in particular.  The Grass Roots – who were the creation of P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri (who wrote “Eve of Destruction” for Barry McGuire, “You Baby” for the Turtles, and “Secret Agent Man” for Johnny Rivers) – originally relied on “Wrecking Crew” members like Larry Knechtel and Joe Osborn.

Eventually Sloan and Barri persuaded a Los Angeles band called The 13th Floor to become the Grass Roots.  While those musicians toured, Sloan and Barri continued to rely heavily on studio musicians for the group’s recordings.

Click here to listen to “I’d Wait a Million Years.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: