I wrote “Gotta Lotta Livin’ To Do” in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980’s, which was spreading like wildfire through the Gay community.
My daughters Megan and Willow joined me when I went to perform at a California Men’s Gathering back then, ... and the men kept coming up to ‘thank me’ for coming to sing and bringing my daughters along. There was so much fear back then about contracting HIV from gay men. No one knew for certain yet, how this deadly virus was transmitted. People were terrified that they or one of their loved ones might get infected from just being near a gay man. Many folks avoided their gay friends and co-workers, which was tremendously painful for everyone! Eventually we learned the virus is transmitted from intimate physical contact. Because of our homophobic culture and administration, important governmental support for finding a cure was essentially non-existent at first. Here’s one of the songs I sang at that Gathering.
GOTTA LOTTA LIVIN’ TO DO (D)
I’ve got a friend with AIDS, D-G
He’s just like me and you D-G
I’ve got a friend with AIDS, D-G
We gotta lotta livin’ to do! A-D
Somedays we get sad, D-G
So here is what we do, D-G, D-G
We play together as much as we can D-G
And I love him a lot ‘cause he’s my friend, yeah, D-G
Me and my friend with AIDS, D-G
Gotta lotta livin’ to do! A-D
V1: What is AIDS? It’s a virus bug G-D-A-D
What can you do? Well, I give’m a hug G-D-A-D
You hug your friend? Sure, and he hugs me G-D-A-D
But aren’t you scared? Well, I used to be A, G-D
I’d be scared! Well, you’d learn alot A, D-A-D
What would I learn? What’s safe, what’s not A, G-D
Could I get AIDS? That’s hard to do A, D-A-D
But some kids have it Yes, that’s true A, G-D
Where’s the AIDS? It’s in his blood G, D-A-D
What if he bleeds? We patch him up G, D-A-D
Cause AIDS won’t let his blood cells fight. G-D-A-D
So I shouldn’t touch his blood? Y’got that right!! A-A7
I’ve got a friend with AIDS,
And someday he might die
But someday, so will you,
And someday so will I
Somedays we get sad,
So here is what we do,
We play together as much as we can
And I love him a lot, ‘cause he’s my friend, yeah,
Me’n my friend with AIDS,
We gotta lotta livin’ to do!
What if he cries? We wipe his eyes
You touch his tears? There’s no need for fears
What about his ears? With a cotton swab
You clean his ears?! No! That’s his job!
What about his spit? He swallows it!
What about his hair? No virus there!
His breath is fine? It smells just like mine!
Does he feel ashamed? No, he’s not to blame!
I’ve got a friend with AIDS,
And someday he might die
But someday, so will you,
And someday so will I.
I’ll tell you what I’m thinkin’ of,
When we’re afraid, we just can’t love
And loving’s how I want to be,
So I don’t let fear take over me!
Here’s what we can do,
We can play together as much as we can
And I love him a lot ‘cause he’s my friend, yeah,
Me and my friend with AIDS,
We gotta lotta livin’ to do,
Gotta lotta livin’, gotta lotta livin’,
Gotta lotta livin’ to do!
Written by Peter Alsop, ©1989, Moose School Music (BMI)
On Peter’s ‘Pluggin’ Away’~ ‘Songs On Loss & Grief’ ~ ‘Ebenezer’s Make Over’
https://www.peteralsop.com
In the late 1980’s, a wonderful woman named Elizabeth Glaser called to tell me she was a fan, and that her children, Ariel and Jake, loved my songs. I thanked her and we said good-bye with no idea that we would meet again. When she called me a few years later, she shared her ‘back story’.
She had contracted HIV in a blood transfusion in 1981 while giving birth to her daughter Ariel. She and her husband, actor Paul Michael Glaser, of “Starsky and Hutch” fame, later learned that Elizabeth had unknowingly passed the virus on to Ariel through breast milk and that their son, Jake, had contracted the virus in utero. The Glasers discovered, in the course of trying to treat Ariel, that the drug companies and health agencies had no idea that HIV was prevalent among children. The only drugs on the market were for adults; nothing had been tested or approved for children.
Little Ariel lost her battle with AIDS in 1988. She was 7 years old. Fearing that Jake’s life was also in danger, Elizabeth rose to action. She and her close friends, Susie Zeegen and Susan DeLaurentis formed the Pediatric Aids Foundation to raise money for pediatric HIV/AIDS research.
In 1989, the Foundation held its first fundraiser and awarded its first grant for research on the immune dysfunctions in children living with HIV. Dozens more Washington trips and research grants followed, but neither the Bush nor the Reagan administrations did much of anything to help end the AIDS epidemic.
I was greatly flattered when Elizabeth called to invite me to come sing at the Pediatric AIDS Fundraiser that the Disney Company was putting on at the Universal Amphitheater. Willow and I would get to meet and perform with a slew of “television and music industry celebrities”, like Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, Randy Newman, Bobby McFerrin, Ted Danson, Patti LaBelle, Woody Harrelson, Paula Abdul, Salt-N-Pepa, and the list went on!
I was sure they would ask me to sing “Gotta Lotta Livin’ To Do”, because there were no other songs like it. It’s a musical way to inform kids, parents and teachers, while it helps us talk about the subject, so it’s not so scary.
But when I finally spoke to the Disney Record executives, they said they didn’t want a song about AIDS! They said it was a fund-raiser for ‘AIDS research’, and they wanted me to play my song, ‘I Am A Pizza’ instead! They said “the musical content of the CD has to be non-threatening in any way, so we can sell lots of CD’s. If we’re careful not to offend or scare anyone, we can make lots of money for the Foundation!”, … which they did!
I felt that their ‘caution’ was exactly the same kind of fear that was keeping the general public insulated from the devastation that was happening in the gay community, … and I was ready to tell them I wouldn’t come if they didn’t let me do that song! I suspect they would have just said “Fine with us!”, ... but instead, they explained to me that in the video portion of the show, they would be including a lot of the clear messaging and information between the songs that I thought was so important. And those messasges would be informing the audiences who saw the video about AIDS safety and caring. I struggled, but finally agreed to sing “I Am A Pizza” with Willow.
If you’d like to find a link for the album, it’s called “For Our Children: the concert”, (click on the cover!)
In 1994, ... Elizabeth Glaser lost her own battle with AIDS, and to honor her legacy, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation was renamed the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). If you have a chance, ... click on her name to go online and check out the incredibly stirring speech she made at the 1992 Democratic Convention. It’s really worth watching.
Fear runs some people’s lives, and there isn’t much space left for love when we’re full of fear. If we can get solid scientific information and keep our hearts open, we won’t feel so afraid. We won’t have to ‘stuff and cut off’ our feelings. When we run into scary painful experiences like AIDS, or CoVid, or Authoritarianism, we get a chance to stretch and grow spiritually by finding support, and learning how to walk through our fears and hold onto our loving attitude at the same time, even though we’re still afraid. There’s a lot more living and learning that most of us still have to do here.
After the concert at the Theatricum with Willow, … Pete Seeger suggested that I might want to make this song a ‘sing-along’ by having the audience sing on the chorus, “Gotta lotta livin’, gotta lotta livin’, gotta lotta livin’ to dooooo!” And that’s exactly what I did!
This year, 2025, … thirty-five years after that 1990 concert we did with Pete, I sang “Gotta Lotta Livin’ To Do” again on the Theatricum stage with Willow’s 10 year old son, my grandson Julius Geer-Polin! We performed in my theatrical musical play “Ebenezer’s Make Over”.
The story is based on the Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, but it’s not about Christmas; it’s about how three ‘Spirits’ visit Ebenezer Scrooge one night and with songs and wisdom and laughter, they help him see how his patriarchal attitudes were formed and what will happen to our world if men don’t change our competitive, gender-linked behaviors.
Here’s the song from the play, led off by actors Lynn Robert Berg playing ‘Scrooge’, and Gerald C. Rivers playing ‘Carroll, the Spirit of Present Time’.
I finally recorded this song on my “Pluggin’ Away” album, and I asked Ry Cooder if he might be able to come by and play some slide guitar with me. He said “Sure!”, and my daughter Willow sang it with us. (Here’s a YouTube link to our studio version with Ry Cooder playing great slide guitar!)
Thanks for stopping by, … I’m Peter Alsop. Please share any of my posts that might be helpful to someone you know.
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