Billy Squier spotted me a quarter: I’ve always had a thing for eighties hard rock (call it AOR only if you must)—the elusive genre that had more growl in it than pop music but wasn’t as heavy as metal. Somehow Billy Squier always found that hard rock sweet spot—lots of guitar crunch, but always wrapped around a catchy hook. Usually produced by Mack, the same guy who recorded all of Queen’s biggest non-Roy Thomas Baker albums, Squier’s records were taut and sinewy, but not threatening; to a young, impressionable me, they were the sound of a guy who knew the score. Perhaps that was the case—you don’t see him on the oldies tour trail much, as rumor has it he invested well with the ample proceeds he got from getting sampled on hip-hop singles (The drums on an obscure album track, “The Big Beat,” have been sampled by everyone, most noticeably Jay-Z on “99 Problems”). Anyway, so a year ago today, I mailed off this gorgeous-looking Japanese live EP to the office address listed on his website, as I had read online that mailing an item there with return postage had worked for a lot of folks. I’m only a dabbler at best when it comes to autographs, but I thought “I should do that someday.” Of course, the idea stuck, as dumb ideas do, and anytime I played one of his records, I wound up mulling over that for a day or two. The only way to make the dumb idea go away, of course, was to do it, so after a few years, I finally took a chance and sent this record out, not knowing if I’d ever see it again. Yesterday, just a day short of a year, the EP arrived on my doorstep, now kindly signed on the back. What a nice guy—but it gets better. It’s a good thing he invested that Jay-Z money, because postage rates went up in the intervening year; my return postage on the package was no longer adequate, so Billy Squier spotted me 25 cents to cover the difference—proof that he indeed still rocks. 👍🤘
