{"id":20767,"date":"2013-12-28T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T05:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=20767"},"modified":"2013-12-28T08:46:58","modified_gmt":"2013-12-28T13:46:58","slug":"the-ballad-of-easy-rider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-ballad-of-easy-rider\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ballad of Easy Rider"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last few years I’ve been picking away at a memoir, of sorts, on my formative life and musical experiences. For my own edification above all else, as well as a possible guidebook to help my sons understand why their dad is weird, I am examining how these experiences and the sounds swirling around me worked together to “save me” from the hazards of childhood, to set me on the path of becoming the man and rock nerd I am today. Suburban kid<\/strong>‘s excellent Dad Rock<\/a> thread inspired me to share a current draft of an opening chapter, some of which you may have seen or heard in earlier stages of development.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"easyrider\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My first music-playing device was a plastic, olive-green record player that was pleasingly textured on the outside, like stucco, nubby upholstery, or Naugahyde. Flip up the top and the plastic was beige\u2014also textured, to better pick up smudges from my dirty hands. The turntable itself was brown, with a brown rubber mat to soften the blow of singles released from the multi-45 stem. I can’t remember for sure if the arm was brown or beige, but I remember my shaky hands were always challenged by lifting the arm and dropping the needle onto a specific album track. My beat-to-hell childhood 45s, these days crammed into my original orange vinyl box along with other singles picked up through the years, can attest to this challenge. The cord was a brown 2-pronged affair. I experienced my first electric shock on that cord when I left one of my shaky fingers slipped between the prongs as I plugged it in. Ouch<\/em>!<\/p>\n

I used that record player from the age of 4 or 5, playing “She Loves You” over and over, singing along with my speech-impeded \u201cl\u201d sounds (ie, She wuvs you…), through about age 15, when I\u2019d long mastered consonant sounds. My uncle gave me my first stack of LPs as well as a box of 45s. The LPs included Steppenwolf Live<\/em>, with that snarling wolf on the cover and Santana\u2019s first album, with its sketch of a roaring lion that contained hidden figures and each Carlos Santana guitar solo deliberately articulated with a long, bended note, played high on the neck. He gave me The Band\u2019s second album, which to this day is one of my Top 5 favorite albums ever, and about a half dozen Beatles records, including early ones through their then-recent psychedelic period, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em> and Magical Mystery Tour<\/em>. A year or two later I got Let It Be<\/em> and the Beatles Again<\/em> singles collection, the one with them dourly dressed in black and standing in front of a big door. I didn\u2019t know \u201csingles collection\u201d from \u201cproper\u201d release, and thought nothing of the stylistic and sonic differences between \u201cI Should Have Known Better\u201d and the scorching single version of \u201cRevolution.\u201d The band members looked their coolest in the mustachioed, sideburned photos of their psychedelic years, so I \u201cupdated\u201d my early Beatles\u2019 albums, drawing the appropriate whiskers on the lads and the distinctive granny glasses on John.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

These albums, the Beatles and the Band ones in particular, first spurred my notions of rock superpowers. Comic books made no impression on me. Superman and his ilk were a bunch of squares in their tights and short, slicked hair. The members of my favorite bands, as pictured on albums sleeves, held remarkable powers. They were hairy and wore suede, denim, and sometimes even silk. Members of the Beatles and the Band, as pictured on their record sleeves, fit together perfectly. On record, their voices complimented each other while retaining distinct qualities. On record sleeves, their hairstyles complimented each other; their clothes were coordinated in a near-military fashion. They ran the range from handsome to homely, earthy to ethereal. Each band contained a dominant, bespectacled member, Lennon and Robbie Robertson, in the case of my favorite bands, who clearly possessed dominant intellectual powers.<\/p>\n

At the same time these adult rock \u2018n roll super heroes were being boiled down for kids my age in the guise of the Monkees and the Banana Splits, the latter being the first and only band whose official fan club I would ever join. My Dad built a wooden storage shed in our backyard, from scratch. His work was top notch and as deliberate and distinctive as Santana\u2019s guitar solos. The white-with-black trim shed could have passed for a New England seaside cottage. The shed became my personal Banana Splits clubhouse, with my Banana Splits Club member certificate stapled inside the door. Sometimes I\u2019d go out there, close myself inside the shed among the garden tools and paint cans, and do nothing but stare at that certificate, feeling the power of membership in a rock \u2018n roll super group.<\/p>\n

\"bananasplits\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The record player was kept in what was originally our family\u2019s spare bedroom, before my little brother, Joey, came along. He continued to want to sleep in the same room with me a few years after his arrival, when he was set up in his “big boy room.\u201d The record player remained in what was supposed to be his bedroom, essentially our spare bedroom, until Joey finally settled in. Then he and his damn KISS cassettes took over the room. My brother\u2019s stint in the KISS Army and failed attempts at reconditioning him are for another chapter.<\/p>\n

When I was a young boy and had that spare bedroom all to myself, I could delve deep into the imagined history of the Band album, making personal connections to bits and pieces of songs that exist to this day. In \u201cWhen You Awake,\u201d when the narrator sits upon his Grandpa\u2019s knee, I\u2019m transported back to the knee of my Grandpop. The sense of death and mourning that runs through \u201cThe Night They Drove Old Dixie Down\u201d is as chilling and resonant in me as an early childhood realization I had while being given a bath by my Mom. It\u2019s one of my earliest memories; I must have been about 3 years old. I looked up at my Mom from the tub and blurted out, \u201cGran\u2019s going to die someday.\u201d Then I wailed.<\/p>\n

The green record player wasn\u2019t just a conduit for deep, heavy thoughts. I\u2019d also spend hours happily rocking along to my \u201cSnoopy vs the Red Baron\u201d single, Vanity Fair\u2019s rollicking \u201cHitchin\u2019 a Ride,\u201d and one album of what had originally been a double live album by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I never figured out what happened to the second album in that set, but at least I kept the album with the marathon boogie \u201cKeep on Chooglin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

My home away from home listening space was my uncle\u2019s bedroom. He lived with my grandparents, and as a young adult his bedroom was his home within their home. My Uncle Joe was the \u201chippie\u201d of the family, relatively speaking. Like Mike Stivik, \u201cMeathead\u201d in television\u2019s Bunker family, my uncle was deep down an old-fashioned family boy.<\/p>\n

I wanted nothing more than to grow up and be a mustachioed child of the rock \u2018n roll age like my uncle, especially after my parents took me to see a drive-in double-feature of Easy Rider<\/em> and Hell\u2019s Angels on Wheels<\/em>. That night, sprawled atop a blanket spread over our station wagon with a neighborhood friend who came along for this unlikely family double bill, I was in hippie heaven. Although adventure-seeking, mellow misfits at heart, the hippies in these movies were nevertheless willing to stick it to The Man. It pained me in each movie whenever one of my new free-loving heroes was savagely taken down by hateful squares. The rednecks at the end of Easy Rider<\/em> cemented my hippie sympathies. Although too chicken to this day to have ever ridden even a mini-bike, I\u2019m on my own chopper, right beside them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was immediate: \u201cA hippie.\u201d As I reached this career revelation my uncle had enough with his parents and split for a trip to Colorado. I vaguely recall a big scene with my grandmother crying uncontrollably and doors slamming as he left the house, it seemed, for good. He was wearing an Army jacket, which I\u2019d never seen on anyone but my G.I. Joe figures until that time. I was a little worried about losing him while at the same time a little excited by the prospect of one day joining him.<\/p>\n

After a couple weeks in the Rockies, my uncle returned home. He gave me his Army-issue sleeping bag to use on my first-ever camping trip. That bag, with real down stuffing and a troublesome zipper, was the coolest. I don\u2019t know what happened to the jacket.<\/p>\n

The influence my uncle had on my interests in music and sports is core to who I am today. The time spent hanging in his bedroom listening to a 8-track tapes while he let me fingerpaint Day-Glo designs on wall space next to his stereo was like a trip to the Old Country. He gave me my first look at the world under black light. He had a collection of velvet and wildly patterned shirts, with massive collars and puffy sleeves. I couldn’t wait to grow up and fit into those shirts.<\/p>\n

He drove a pale yellow Buick Skylark with a black vinyl roof. His car always had a distinctive odor, an odor I could never place. \u201cWhat\u2019s that smell?\u201d I asked him one day.<\/p>\n

\u201cUh, one of my friends ate a cheesesteak,\u201d came his hesitant reply, \u201cwith onions.\u201d<\/p>\n

My uncle played piano. He was the first musician I\u2019d ever seen play live. Although he\u2019d taken lessons since he was a young boy, he rarely played with other musicians. He told me he lacked confidence to play in a band. The world\u2019s loss, I thought. He\u2019d play around the house on a regular basis, and I\u2019d sit in amazement as he played Traffic\u2019s \u201cGlad,\u201d Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cWatching the River Flow,\u201d and Leon Russell\u2019s take on \u201cYoungblood.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the urging of my grandmother, he\u2019d also play romantic classical pieces that, although impressive in their technical mastery, showed me a side of my uncle I didn’t care to see. My grandmother would weep with joy as he hammered away at the classical music all his childhood lessons were meant to instill in him. Call me close minded, but that Chopin scene simply wasn\u2019t half as liberating as when Uncle Joe played \u201cGlad.\u201d I loved my Gran like no one else but her requests were my uncle\u2019s kryptonite.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, beginning around the age of 12, I’d bring records down to our living room, where we had one of those gigantic wooden stereo consoles, as wide as a piano, with built-in, cloth-screened speakers. It was a substantial piece of furniture, holding foot-high reproductions of sculptures representing conquistadors, for god knows what reason. For a brief period conquistadors were in vogue, maybe owing to the popularity of The Man of La Mancha<\/em>. My first and only basketball hero, Wilt Chamberlain, would end his career as player-coach of an ABA team called the Conquistadors. Lawsuits would prevent Chamberlain from playing with that team, and apathy would prevent him from continuing as a coach. I believe it was exactly at this moment that conquistadors went out of vogue.<\/p>\n

\"Mack_the_Knife_Bobby_Darin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The midsection of my family\u2019s stereo console top flipped up to reveal a metal turntable, sunken, on springs. The knobs were big and black. They clicked into place just so. As the tubes warmed up the stereo gave off a pleasing hum and mild fire-hazard odor. When I was little and my Dad was still around he used to play me the Tchaikovsky\u2019s “1812 Overture” on that thing. It sounded great, and he’d get lost in the music the way he did over only one other song in the 12 years I knew him: Bobby Darin\u2019s take on “Mack the Knife.”<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever know what made my father tick and how those two songs might have explained it. He left me with such a small sample size compared with the musical tastes of most of the important people in my life. I do remember loving to listen to \u201c1812 Overture\u201d with him. The ending, with all those cymbals bashing and cannons firing off, gave me goose bumps. He would get psyched up in anticipation for this part too. We got a charge out of the composition\u2019s violent finale.<\/p>\n

My father also was a bit of a history buff, and he\u2019d fill me in on the historic significance of the War of 1812 while loading the record and during its quiet parts. I haven\u2019t retained an ounce of his history lessons, but looking back maybe our quarterly listening session with that lone Tchaikovsky record was his \u201cguy\u201d way of using music to help channel a more personal line of communication. It\u2019s one of a handful of sweet memories I have of the man.<\/p>\n

His love for \u201cMack the Knife,\u201d on the other hand, was creepy. As a kid I couldn’t tell what that song was about, who this Mack character was, and why anyone cared that he was back in town. I couldn’t relate to the jazzy music and frequent modulations. My Dad knew every word of that song and sang along, in a trance. I don\u2019t recall ever hearing him sing aloud except for that song. He used to hum and was quite a whistler, but only \u201cMack the Knife\u201d inspired him to sing. Unlike \u201c1812 Overture\u201d he never tried to impart a history lesson or any other words of wisdom during that song. It was \u201chis\u201d song and his song alone. He\u2019d shush me when it came on. When the song was over I was free to find whatever song I liked on the radio dial.<\/p>\n

My Dad never owned a copy of \u201cMack the Knife\u201d or any other Bobby Darin record. He was content to hear it randomly, on the radio, while calmly driving, ideally on his beloved Route 1. That Tchaikovsky album may have been the only record he took with him when he moved out.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Beyond those two songs the man expressed a vague liking for \u201call kinds of music.\u201d One benefit of my father\u2019s lack of passion for music was that he let me listen to whatever songs I wanted to when we were in his car. I could switch to any station, come to rest on any song, and he\u2019d keep his eyes on the road, not seeming affected by the songs I wanted to hear, possibly not even aware that I was seated next to him, gabbing away as I\u2019m sure I did.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you love this song?\u201d I might yell over the radio as Melanie\u2019s \u201cBrand New Key\u201d or Mungo Jerry\u2019s \u201cIn the Summertime\u201d picked up steam.<\/p>\n

\u201cMmm,\u201d he\u2019d reply soothingly, his blue eyes peeled on the road.<\/p>\n

Had he been part of my life a few more years, while I sought out punk rock songs on the dim signal from a college radio station, he wouldn’t have batted an eye if I\u2019d landed on Pere Ubu\u2019s \u201c30 Seconds Over Tokyo\u201d or X-Ray Specs\u2019 \u201cOh Bondage, Up Yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"creedenceliveineurope\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My Mom, on the other hand, had very defined tastes in music, and as the apple would fall when my sons were born, became easily bugged if I wanted to hear a song she didn’t like. In the early 1970s, for instance, I couldn’t get enough of the hits of Elton John. There was \u201cCrocodile Rock,\u201d with its shades of Del Shannon\u2019s \u201cRunaway.\u201d The song\u2019s remembrances of rock being young made me feel tapped into rock\u2019s rich past. In \u201cBennie and the Jets,\u201d when Elton\u2019s voice went an octave higher and the fake crowd noises entered I felt thrust into some retro-rock future. \u201cDaniel\u201d had a mystifying narrative involving a brother and, so I thought, blindness. It made me sad and feel protective of my baby brother. It still does and I still can\u2019t make out what the song\u2019s about let alone half of the words Elton is ever singing. Whenever I hear \u201cDaniel\u201d I want to call my brother and just shoot the breeze.<\/p>\n

My Mom couldn’t stand Elton John. Before Elton\u2019s music took on a dance feel with \u201cDon\u2019t Go Breaking My Heart\u201d and \u201cPhiladelphia Freedom,\u201d she\u2019d make me change the station if I wanted to listen to an Elton John song. Or she\u2019d complain the whole way through the song about how grating she found his voice.<\/p>\n

Worse yet was hearing my Mom complain whenever the Beatles, my favorite band, came on the radio. \u201cNowhere Man\u201d was sure to spur a song-length rant.<\/p>\n

\u201cUgh,\u201d she\u2019d begin, \u201cI can\u2019t stand their whining!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd those thin English voices,\u201d she\u2019d continue, \u201cGod forbid they could take a stand on something.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pause<\/em>.]<\/p>\n

\u201cThey remind me of your father.\u201d<\/p>\n

By this point I\u2019d wish she\u2019d simply change the channel and spare me her angst, but she\u2019d keep right on tearing the Fab Four a new one\u2014and taking it personally: \u201cThis song makes me want to kill myself!\u201d<\/p>\n

She disliked almost all UK musicians, the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart excluded. Those reedy English voices were like fingernails on a chalkboard to her ears. Or the sound of my Dad\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

Music was a big part of my Mom\u2019s life, as it was a part of my Uncle Joe\u2019s life. While my uncle spun Woodstock rock and gritty soul records by James Brown and Little Richard, my Mom favored the sophisticated soul of Dionne Warwick, Johnny Mathis, the Supremes, the Temptations, and Marvin Gaye. The lyrics of those records bolstered the aspirations of that hard-working, idealistic, Catholic school product. Looking back I imagine a generation of young adults floating on the desires wafting off the radio. How much velvet and heavy wood furnishings were purchased to tunes of Burt Bacharach and Hal David?<\/p>\n

By the early-to-mid 1970s she was hooked on The Sound of Philadelphia (TSOP) soul artists, Barry White, and eventually (disco-era) Bee Gees. In the car we listened to the \u201cblack\u201d stations. She owned a solid 100 or so albums, buying a few new ones each year. She\u2019d sing along enthusiastically with her favorite songs, always a bit sharp. She\u2019d cry along with the sad songs. And she loved to dance!<\/p>\n

When our father was out of the picture and I was old enough to stay home and watch my brother, she\u2019d go out disco dancing with friends, looking to meet the rare guy in a wide-collared silk shirt who \u201chad rhythm,\u201d as she\u2019d characterize her best dance partners the next morning. She still hates my father\u2014really hates him in the way we\u2019re taught not to hate anyone\u2014no matter how much time passes and how long he remains dead. She can, however, muster two compliments about the man: 1) he was a \u201csharp dresser\u201d and 2) he \u201chad rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wanted me to have rhythm too. During my middle school years, as middle school dances and Bar Mitzvahs hit, she’d crank up that console and try to teach me a few of the period’s happening steps. I loved hearing “The Hustle” as much as any budding music savant, but dancing was never my thing. I shudder at the thought of my incompetence and my extreme discomfort with the dance lessons. My Mom would glide across the living room like a true Dancing Queen, trying her best to show me how to lead, to instill me with some manly moves that I could work to my own advantage with the girls at school. No advantage would be gained. I had cement hips, and the act of dancing made no sense to me. To this day the only dance I imagine would be fun is a funky freestyle dance with my partner down the line on Soul Train<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Listening to records, on the other hand, always made sense, always gave me a sense of place. A few years later playing music made sense too. I\u2019d get some rhythm on my guitar. It took me longer than most kids I knew to get an actual solid-state, all-in-one stereo\/cassette player of my own. The hum from that old, green record player kept me chooglin\u2019.<\/p>\n