This was essentially my ongoing playlist in 1981:
These 8 albums shaped me as pre-teen. And as much as I regret that my interests didn’t veer off into any of THESE territories during that particular year,
I’m cutting myself some slack. Because 11-year-olds aren’t that cool.
No matter how cool you think your 11-year-old son/daughter/niece/nephew is, I guarantee that their musical tastes are flavor-of-the-month.
And yeah, you could argue that cooler music is more accessible now, so maybe they ARE listening to cool shit.
And I’m not talking about shit that YOU as an old person introduced to them. Because that just solidifies my point. If it weren’t for THESE nutty, groundbreaking, genre-shaping albums (& subsequent albums released years after) from back in the day,
your son/daughter/niece/nephew wouldn’t have access to cool shit today.
My point is, 11-year-olds aren’t rock tastemakers.
But that’s not the ultimate point to today’s post.
Another staple of my 1981 rock diet was THIS album:
"The Stroke” seemed to be blasting from every direction: boomboxes, car radios, roller rinks, fast food joints, you name it.
The thing is, I never actually owned this whole album. My best friend Tim Crutchfield did.
He’s also the person who gave me a vinyl copy of THIS album at my 11th birthday party,
which got immediately shuffled into my ongoing 1981 playlist. In fact, if it wasn’t for Tim, none of these albums would’ve made much of a dent on me:
He was HUGE fan of Rush, Genesis, Journey, ALL that shit already. So, huge props to Tim Crutchfield for creating this monster.
Anyhoo, he owned EVERYTHING Billy Squier put out. And once “The Stroke” became part of 1981′s consciousness, it only validated Tim’s ability to manipulate the rock zeitgeist.
But these were days before I was really aware of THIS band:
Yet another group I can thank Tim Crutchfield for introducing me to. (In fact, he let me “tape” THIS mammoth, career-spanning fucker after it came out:)
So, what do Billy Squier & Led Zep have in common?
Listen to Squier’s “Lonely Is The Night”:
Now listen to Zeppelin’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”:
And that’s just ONE example throughout his catalog.
Hell, “Don’t Say No” is FILLED with Zeppelin riffs, not to mention the fact that Squier REALLY sounds like he’s doing a Robert Plant impression.
This isn’t some new revelation. People have probably been saying it for years. In regards to “Lonely Is The Night,”
My regret is that I can’t decide if I CARE or actually DON’T care. If I cared about this, would I have to stop listening to Tom Waits because of his nearly spot-on Captain Beefheart impression that he’s been cultivating for years?
I’ve been listening to Squier since 1981 & I suppose it hasn’t caused the universe to fold in on itself yet, so fuck it, right?