This poster was included with the LP.
 
In 1975 a folk singer named Bill Clint released The Crying of a Generation. Seldom has an album had an apter title.

This album is about crying—it is seriously, and deeply, about the act of shedding tears. For instance, the refrain of the third song, “Christmas in July,” is “No one’s gonna hear you if you cry.” But we’re just getting started.

The undisputed centerpiece of the album is “Angels Don’t Need Friends,” an 11-minute song in which Clint actually bawls about the evanescence of life (I’m not kidding) for a full couple of minutes. Here are some of the song’s lyrics (if I couldn’t make a line out, I just skipped it):
 

Where’s the little boy that I’m lookin’ for?
That I used to be? Where’s he gone?
And are the teardrops dry? Can I cry once again?

I was told that angels don’t need friends.

Where’s the little house I’m lookin’ for?
I used to live? Where’s it gone?
I came runnin’ up the front door
I don’t live there anymore

I was told that angels don’t need friends.

Where’s the little family that I’m lookin’ for?
Used to be here and now we’re gone.
And I just want to see the faces and why’d we have to die?
To live in different places

I was told that angels don’t need friends.

Where’s the little world that I’m lookin’ for?
Used to be here, locked away inside.
And I’ve forgotten all the pain, and now I’m lost
And I just want to be Billy again.

And I was told that angels don’t need friends.

 
It’s at this point that Clint commences a session of tearful mourning of his lost childhood that lasts a couple of minutes. To be clear, Clint didn’t spontaneously start sobbing in the studio—it was undertaken consciously, as an artistic strategy. You don’t think of an actor crying as necessarily not in control of what he or she is doing, and something like that is what’s happening at the end of “Angels Don’t Need Friends,” even if it is a bit unusual.
 

 
If the first side is about regression into childhood, side B plunges headlong into infancy. The first two tracks on side B, which are called “Babe Is It Easy” and “Mama I’m a Baby,” take up the crying motif again—there’s an interlude in which Clint himself cries, only this time it’s the way an infant would cry, and the song rapidly segues to a snippet of an actual baby crying. At least I think that’s what’s happening.

Oh, and somewhere in there are these remarkable lyrics:
 

I just want your nipple, the bottle’s cold and dead
Plastic isn’t fleshy, the needle’s in my head

 
To be honest, I admire the hell out of Bill Clint. This album could so easily be ridiculous—it is a little ridiculous—but to Clint’s credit, the album remains fairly listenable and shows no small amount of craft. And for a male in our society to be that in-your-face about crying takes a huge amount of guts.

Sadly, Clint died of lung cancer just a few months ago, on December 29, 2015.

In 2009 a Korean label named Big Pink Music that seems to specialize in reissues of peculiar 1970s fare (Barbie Benton? Boondoggle and Balderdash?) put out a CD reissue of The Crying of a Generation.

Here’s “Angels Don’t Need Friends”—the crying part starts around 7:30:

 
And the full album:

 
via jeffogiba’s Instagram feed