Under the influence

I never became the rock and roll drummer that I knew I would be. But I did get really into it. And I had a lot of help.

Some time after I discovered hard rock, my family went on a road trip to my uncle's house in Washington. My two cousins who were living in Alaska were there too. We had great fun down in the basement playing pool. They had the radio blasting their new favorite band, the Scorpions, and one of their old favorites, Rush. They kept playing this one song over and over. It was the live version of Working Man and it had a drum solo in it that blew my mind. I was from that point on the biggest Rush fan and I liked the Scorpions quite a bit too. They were also playing an Australian band with a dead lead singer. Highway to Hell was another stepping stone to my long hair and muscle shirts. As soon as I heard that there was a new AC/DC album I collected all my lawn mowing money and went to the record store. Back in Black wasn't in the store very long and I may have been the first person in my town to buy it, but I sure wouldn't be the last. That thing stayed in people cassette players non-stop for more than a year. The only thing that I would take it out for was The Scorpions Black Out or Rush's Moving Pictures. (Actually a friend on the school bus would talk me into putting his Kiss Destroyer tape in sometimes, but it didn't really hold a candle to the stuff I was listening to. No offence intended to Kiss fans, but they just weren't as good as the boys from down under, Germany and the great white north. Sorry, it's just a fact you have to live with.)

The Christmas after AC/DC made such a big splash with Back in Black my uncle came over to visit (another uncle) and he had a gift for me with a catch. He took out a new copy of the tape. He said that this was the latest thing that kids were nuts for and he said if I could tell him what they were saying in the songs I could have it. I played along, knowing that he had no idea that I had been listening to this thing non-stop for a year. I listened to the first track. It took a while to get to it but it finally got to the lyrics...I stop it and pretend that I heard it for the first time "He says 'I'm rolling thunder, power rain, I'm coming on like a Hurricane" ... The tape was mine and just in time too, because my old copy was just about on it's last legs. I think I was probably in my 30s when I told him how he had been had. But since this this post is titled "Under the influence" it should be noted that this same uncle let me hear Bert Kaempfert for the first time. Talk about your guilty pleasures... If you like him, you gotta hear Esquivel! But again, I am getting way ahead of myself. I'm was a head banger, when head banging wasn't cool.