Tried to learn guitar, but quit before I grew calluses!
Same with piano, harmonica, and drums!
(But played tambourine one time with an LA group called the Leaves onstage at the Whiskey a Go Go!)
Music, as listener, as observer, as lyrics writer, is ingrained in my life!
It fills so many spaces & places in my life, soul & heart, I can't explain!
And I know I'm not alone!
At age 72 (born June 24th, 1944, same exact date as Jeff Beck!), I was breast fed on Elvis milk, weaned by Ernie Fields, masturbated with Hendrix, lost it to Janis, married Bob, divorced Tom Petty, got sick over Alanis, took out the Garbage, played Pick Up Sticks with the Dixie Chicks, and now, I don't have a clue!
In reality, it began with Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956!
Was living then in Edgewater NJ, facing Manhatten across the Hudson River!
Listened to Alan Freed on NYC's WOR radio, the first Top 40 station!
Also lived across from Harlem, where I never attended the Apollo.
Never lived in the Village, or saw Blake visions at Columbia University, or shared joints and ass fucks with Ginsberg & Kerouac!
Elvis--and those 'burns!
Mom, I want sideburns too!
When you're older, son!
So I combed my hair into a duck-tail and shook my hips instead!
I'd heard the black music, what was called jitterbug or rhythm & blues, until King James said it's funky!
I was never afraid of Harlem!
Once defied my Mother's instructions & changed trains at 125th!
(Later would walk the streets of the Fillmore District--fearless as a white ass rebel!)
But it was the music that turned my head!
It was that tingle and burn I felt deep within--an inner me I couldn't then define--that would add to my life a passion I'd never lose!
Some do.
They feel it too--but then lose it to the suburban zookeepers & their monotonous daily feedings!
I didn't lose it!
And it made my life what it became!
It was torn down in 1965, but I went numerous times to Palisades Amusement Park, a slow uphill walk from our apartment.
They had bands play there--early rockers, not too adult, not kids!
All later appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand--a show I watched all the time!
But I remember some earlier music too!
My older sister (Born in 1939, still kicking it at age 78 in Arizona!) loved Eddie Fisher!
His version of Oh My Papa was MY favorite Fisher song!
(She was a real FANatic--had whole scrapbooks with everything Eddie Fisher!!)
To this day, I still love that song!
Bob Dylan is turning out CD's of real oldies now--and I don't mean ROCK oldies!
Couldn't figure out why I don't like his doing that--until I reminded myself he and I were born 3 years apart!
He was raised on THOSE oldies--I was raised on ROCK oldies!!
We appreciate what we hear--what first fills our ears & minds & voids!
Why did Rock & Roll begin?
Why did it inflame the energies of America's youth?
The generic reason given by "experts" was that the 50's were too staid, too boring, too conservative!
The sexual passions were hidden behind bedroom windows in houses made of ticky-tacky, those Valium wives without values!
And it was born of fear--of the bomb, of living a life without LIVING it, of the TV image of the Stepford household where "Father" knew best--but knew nothing!
It was those Commies!
It was them John Birchers!
It was the "Nigras"!
Oh my!
But check out the reality!
Black R&B & Be-Bop revved the engines of war-ravaged lads and ladies!
They weren't really racist!
They probably never even heard the word "racism"!
But in their bones, they knew!
We can't be friends with them, but we could dig their MUSIC!!
Oh baby, they SWING!!
And we swung WITH them--in our secret hideaways, our midnight escapes to jazz clubs, our radio tours of THEIR music!
But shhhhhhh, don't tell anyone your dirty little secret!
And that's why Elvis became Elvis!
He was the white innocent (even with his hip shakes!) who twisted James Brown flash and Muddy Waters blues and Robert Johnson porch swing into the seed that became known as Rock & Roll!
Elvis became the butterfly, the tree, the rounded Earth, the eternal Sea, the REASON rock survived past its emergence from the Womb!
His voice was sweet & sensual, his leer a temptation but not a rape, his songs instant hits!
Past the record burnings, past the church sermons (Ironic, really, as Elvis made some really beautiful Gospel albums!!), past all the noise & fuss, Elvis helped Rock take its first steps, speak its first words (You ain't nothing but a Hound Dog! I want you to be my Teddy Bear! I Got Stung!), and become potty trained!
Can you imagine Elvis clone Ricky Nelson sitting on a toilet at his Garden Party?)
Then Pat Boone MURDERED this infant culture!
Or maybe it was Elvis himself who did the deed!
He enlisted in the Army in 1958.
He emerged back into his old world in 1960!
I was by then a Californian--first a year in Sunnyvale, then to North Hollywood!
From East coast to West!
From Alan Freed to Wink Martindale!
From WOR to KRLA!
From the Cafe Wha? to the Hollywood Bowl!
From blizzards & thunderstorms to droughts & sunshine!
From James Brown to the Mothers of Invention!
And I followed the path--which became my own!
My journey--and Music's evolution--continues in Chapter 2.
Coming soon!
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