Those who know me know that I am approaching a certain milestone birthday; the one that used to represent old age. Yet compared to other veteran Columbus musicians (Willie Phoenix or Billy Zenn), I am still a kid. Even so, I have been a certified Rock fan for over fifty years. That’s right, fifty years. If you do the math, you will realize that I have been boppin’ to the jive since I was in grade school. Here are my confessions of being a precocious Rock ‘n’ Roll schoolboy.
As long as I can remember, there was Rock music around me. My brother John, who is ten years my senior, is a lifelong Beatles fan. Among my earliest memories are of his conflicts with our Archie Bunker-like father. Dad raised hell about John’s pseudo-mod clothing and his attempts at growing longer hair, all in emulation of shaggy-haired musicians from England. I can still hear my dad complaining, “All you have on the brain is that damned DERN! DERN! DERN!” That was my dad’s crude way of imitating a loud electric guitar. In that household, it was inevitable that I too would become musically obsessed.
The signs were there. I watched The Monkees’ TV show from the time I was two years old. I was delighted to receive a copy of their first album when I was six. In first grade, I saw television ads for a mail-order album called Leaders of the Pack. It was a Laurie Records collection of 1950’s Doo-Wop and 1960’s Girl Group and Garage Rock. I begged my family to buy me a copy. My parents refused because they thought Rock ‘n’ Roll was garbage. My brother refused because he thought anything before The Beatles was uncool. As I quickly forgot this record, something on the radio caught my ear. It was Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock,” which sounded more than a bit like those tracks on Leaders of the Pack.
I think I picked up a fondness for 1950’s Rock ‘n’ Roll from my parents’ radio station, 610 WTVN. They often played “Flashbacks,” which were pre-Beatles oldies. For inexplicable reasons, songs by the likes of Buddy Holly, Rick Nelson, and Dion DiMucci spoke to me. They still do.
During the winter of 1973, I was an eight-year-old second grader. My brother had just graduated from high school. He found a telemarketing job that paid $1.60 per hour for 30 hours each week. With this extra cash, he decided to replace his damaged Beatles albums. He didn’t have the heart to throw out the old ones, so he gave them to me. I also inherited his old monophonic Zenith record player. Naturally, I took to playing those old records. I very quickly fell in love with them.
Being generous, John also gave me his complete collection of 45 R.P.M. singles. Among them were a half-dozen titles by The Who. As I spun those seven-inch discs, I realized I liked those Londoners as much as The Beatles. I started to think of my brother as cool and truly looked up to him. By spring, he took me to the Ohio State campus to visit the various record stores. I can still name a handful: Pearl Alley Discs, Music Grotto, Discount Records, and Magnolia Thunderpussy. Visiting these shops made me feel a little more grown-up than my classmates, who were mostly into Donny Osmond, The Partridge Family, or The Jackson Five. I was becoming a precocious little snot.
Soon after discovering The Beatles and The Who, I tried to persuade my parents to buy me more colorful clothing and to allow me longer hair. My dad started abusively questioning my masculinity and took me to the barbershop more often for “spite” haircuts. He couldn’t control my 19-year-old brother, but he could control me. He only relented when I refused to take off my stocking cap after a particularly botched haircut. As for garish clothing, my parents had little choice. That was all the cheap discount stores sold in the 1970’s.
During the late spring of 1973, my family listened to the car radio during a Sunday outing. WTVN-AM hosted a Sunday evening call-in show called “Speak Out.” The topic was pop songs with curse words in the lyrics. Should the station continue playing them or not? As I listened, opinionated “fuddy-duddies” complained about the word “damn” in “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” Since I liked the Jim Croce song, I was concerned that I would not be able to hear it anymore. I asked for a transistor radio of my own.
That week, my brother came through again by giving me one of his old radios. He recommended that I tune it to WNCI “FM 98” because their playlist was very Pop, but more hip than WCOL. Initially, I liked WNCI. In addition to Jim Croce, they played The Beatles, The Who, and other artists I ended up liking. I also appreciated that WNCI published a weekly pamphlet called “Record Rap.” Free copies were distributed at the Lazarus record department. It listed the station’s 50-song playlist plus five records bubbling under. It also had press release blurbs about current groups that always piqued my curiosity and often led to joyful discoveries.
Repeated trips to the OSU campus created very fond memories. On the Fourth of July, my parents visited out-of-town friends, so John and I had the house to ourselves. We hopped a bus to the campus area and visited Discount Records. We bought two albums: The Beatles 1962-1966” and John Entwistle’s Smash Your Head Against the Wall.” Back home, we had a listening party on our parents’ living room stereo. We felt rebellious because Mom & Dad forbade us from playing scratched Rock records on it. The party was complete with a bag of Borden Burgers, fries, and Cokes. Both albums are still personal favorites. It was possibly the happiest day of my childhood.
Around this time, my brother brought home albums by a young Englishman named David Bowie. Seeing the artist in Ziggy Stardust makeup and sequins frightened me. Out of childish naivete, I thought he was a perverted creep who did unspeakable things to young boys. I hated him. It was only after I hit adolescence and understood “the birds and the bees” that I gave Bowie a second chance. I ended up becoming a huge fan.
Since The Beatles were recently defunct, I started following The Who more closely. I fondly recall finding their old Decca label albums at Music Grotto for $1.97 each. When news came out that Pete Townshend was working on a new Rock Opera, I was excited. Expecting another Tommy, I eagerly anticipated Quadrophenia. I was disappointed. I hoped for quirky and bouncy songs like “Pinball Wizard.” What I got was more serious, introspective, and sad. Fortunately, the follow-up, Odds & Sods, struck the right chords. Then again, it was a collection of previously unreleased songs recorded mostly between 1968 and ’72. I enjoyed the quirky humor of “Little Billy” and “Now I’m a Farmer.” I loved the sublime beauty of “Pure and Easy” and “Faith in Something Bigger.” My favorite track ended up being “Glow Girl,” the rocking tale of a plane crash and reincarnation. The ending refrain of “It’s a girl, Mrs. Walker, it’s a girl” made that quite clear.
Midway through fourth grade, I learned that John Entwistle’s solo band was coming to town. Disappointed that he played at a “21 and over” venue, I was elated to discover that he would sign autographs at Magnolia Thunderpussy the next day. I tried to persuade my brother to take me to meet “The Ox,” but he refused to let me miss school. I was tempted to cut class and go on my own, but I knew I would probably get in trouble. Besides, I was too poor to afford bus fare. I wonder what Mr. Entwistle would have thought of a precocious little punk idolizing him? Unfortunately, we will never know.
I started fifth grade that fall with the Jekyll and Hyde teacher who inspired my book “Just the Normal Abuse.” Shortly after Christmas, John brought home a new album by The Kinks, Schoolboys in Disgrace. I chuckled at the cover, a cartoon of a British schoolboy about to be “caned.” Although I cared little for The Kinks before, this set of songs hit home. “Jack, the Idiot Dunce” evoked classmates who were lousy students but highly athletic. “The Hard Way” sounded uncannily like my deranged teacher: “Boys like you were born to waste / You’re much too dumb to educate.” Schoolboys opened my heart to The Kinks, and I eventually became a member of their “Kinkdom.”
This was also around the time I first heard Bruce Springsteen. “Born to Run” played on a radio in a neighborhood store and it made my brother ecstatic. He asked me what I thought. I was not initially impressed. I thought Springsteen sang like he had a mouth full of food. By mid-adolescence, I had changed my mind and came to love “The Boss.”
My love of Rock trickled into day-to-day school life. One day in sixth grade, I got into a dispute with my “frenemy” Dennis. He had circulated rumors that I was in love with the three most unpopular girls in class. One was an overweight young woman with chronic body odor. The others were sisters with fang-like buck teeth. When Dennis and I had our schoolyard scuffle, we were sent inside for punishment. As we stood in the hallway awaiting our fate, I started singing an insulting song to the tune of The Guess Who’s “American Woman.”
“Doofus Dennis, / Get away from me! / Doofus Dennis, / Dummy, let me be!”
Once again, Rock ‘n’ Roll proved a fantastic coping mechanism.
During my last two years of pre-adolescence, Capitol Records released two new Beatles collections. In 1976, they issued a nicely remixed set called Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. The following year, unreleased concert recordings came out as “The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.” Both albums focused upon The Beatles' earlier years when they were a self-contained band that performed live. While I had previously bought into the conventional wisdom that the later and more experimental music was “better,” I realized that the earlier and more rocking material reached me more deeply. This was one of the reasons I was drawn to Powerpop and Punk about three years later.
As I hit adolescence, my classmates caught up with my love of Rock. This was when Q-FM-96 signed on, and they were avid listeners. Rather than The Beatles and The Who, my peers were more likely to be in the KISS Army. I couldn’t get into Kiss. I guess The Beatles and The Who raised my bar too high. (editor’s note; Jesus God, THANK YOU. Finally SOMEBODY besides Ricki C. sees fit to badmouth KISS in the pages of Pencil Storm.) My schoolmates by & large saw me as a nerd who liked “that 60’s shit.” Oh, well. I could have done much worse than that.
I apologize that my confessions of a precocious Rock ‘n’ Roll schoolboy weren’t more sordid. After all, I was still a kid. There is something to be said for genuine innocence.
Jim Hutter is a veteran Columbus musician, journalist, and ASCAP songwriter who has been active in these arts since the 1980's.