Music means probably the most to me, other than my family, of course. I've got hobbies and interests, but music has been my foundation forever. It began extremely early for me, pushed me into a radio career right out of high school, and is enjoyed by me today through the 20-30 concerts per year that I attend, as well as my personal time just listening and sharing all kinds of my favorite stuff.
Ironically, as important as it is to me, I never learned an instrument beyond some very minor piano and guitar capabilities. 5 or 6 chords, maybe. I never had the dexterity or the ear to play, even though I had a keen ear when it came to artists, producers, sounds, etc. I could name an artist or producer of a piece of music for decades. I wish I had been able to translate that into actual playing, but after watching Prince at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," I pretty much came to the conclusion that, if I couldn't play like that, I didn't even want to try.
I was born in 1972, but my earliest memory of liking a piece of music on the radio was "Magic" by Pilot. I LOVED it! I was living in Wautauga or Hurst, TX. The song came out in 1975, but this memory was on a strong rainy day and I sat in the car while my mom ran into a U-Tote-Em or a Stop-and-Go (like 7-11). I want to say it was 1978 or 1979. I was 6 or 7 years old. From there, I have memories of liking "One of These Nights" by the Eagles around this same time period. Also a song from 1975, but I'm almost certain that I wasn't into this music THAT early. I would have been 3, for God's sake. But those memories stuck with me. I had a friend in Hurst, Tony Lopez, who had a record player at his house that we would listen to after school, but he exclusively played KISS. Specifically, the "Destroyer" album from 1976. I didn't move to Hurst until 1978, though, so this is why I believe that is the year.
This made me want a record player BADLY.
We moved to Newellton, LA in the fall of 1979. While my memory isn't great, I believe I had begun second grade for a very short period of time in Hurst, then continued most of it in Miss Vosburg's class at Newellton Elementary. During that fall, my budding interest in music had really blossomed as Saturday Night Fever had exploded, as had the Bee Gees, and while borrowing my uncle's car, I was exposed to "new" music, in the form of Neil Sedaka, Billy Joel, The Beatles, The Spinners, Queen, Linda Rondstadt and Jackson Browne. My desire for a record player had reached peak fever. And for Christmas, 1979, "Santa" gave me what I'd craved: a record player and my first record, Bee Gees Gold Vol 1.
Interestingly, I never asked my parents why "Santa" brought me Bee Gees Gold Vol 1, which was a best of compilation that covered their 1967-1972 era, prior to their disco explosion. This was 1979, prime disco era! Very strange. Yet, I listened to that album over, and over, and over. "New York Mining Disaster 1941" and "Run to Me" were my favorites. Little did I know it, but my "ear" for how these things were produced and the construct, melodies and harmonies of sadder songs, in specific, really started to take shape.
I consumed all that I could. This is when I first listed to my dad's Sgt Pepper's album and fell in love with "A Day in the Life," my all-time favorite song. One could tell that I leaned toward moody songs that had complex themes and were "weird." The internet was just a private government network, so all I had were my own thoughts as to what in the hell "4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire" meant. My mom introduced me to The Doors, which had me mentally messed up as a 7 year old trying to figure out what in the hell a "Crystal Ship" was. "The End" had me feeling loopy too. But studying these themes was something to do in the nothingness that was Newellton. In fact, I wonder if I had the friends and social life of Hurst while living in Newellton, would I have spent so much time alone in my room playing these records and become so obsessed with diving so deeply into how music and albums were constructed.
It was over the next year that I expanded my listening to The Beatles "White Album," "Revolver" and, my mom's favorite, "Rubber Soul." In addition, catching up on the Beatles-adjacent greatness of Ringo Starr's "Photograph," George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord," Paul McCartney & Wings' "Band on the Run" album and the recent release in Nov 1980 of John Lennon's "Double Fantasy." Then, a month later in December 1980, John Lennon was assassinated. Someone with whom I'd only recently become familiar, now dead. It strongly impacted a young me. I'd feel this way again when Andy Gibb would die of a drug overdose in 1988.
I doubled down on my fascination with every type of music I could consume. I'd go to garage sales, where I bought albums like Captain and Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" and my first 45s, like "Love is Thicker Than Water" with "Words and Music" as the B Side, by Andy Gibb. I never had money for new stuff, so albums I wanted badly, like the soundtrack to "Grease" and "Urban Cowboy," the hot properties at the time, were always out of reach.
My time in Newellton was wrapping up with my dad graduating from NLU, and our first of several annual moves began. Not sticking around a city for any meaningful length of time kept me as a close friend to my love for music above everything else.
During the 1970s, the most meaningful albums to me were:
- Bee Gees - Gold, Vol 1
- The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Paul McCartney & Wings - Band on the Run
- Bee Gees - Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
- Bee Gees - Here at Last...Live
- Billy Joel - The Stranger
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