In 1975, that soul mate was Larry Fanrak. I think it was just a coincidence, but in the fall of 1974, we both ended up on the same bowling team in the Saturday morning league at Maple Lanes. Our team was the Silver Dollars, and though we wouldn’t go on to win much of anything, we did have some good times. Larry and I started palling around quite a bit from then on. We would talk about music a lot and listen to records at each other’s house.
When Kiss’ Rock and Roll All Night came out, it was a head turning moment for just about every pre-teen and, of course a head-shaking moment for every parent. Kiss was hard to ignore, no matter what you thought of them. They were certainly the lightning rod for the 1970s version of the generational wars that have been around since Elvis first shook his pelvis on Ed Sullivan. But Kiss’ fans were legion, in fact they were an Army – The KISS Army, and if you were part of it you had the rub-on tattoos to prove it. I think they had a few albums under their belt, but hadn’t created much mainstream buzz until they released Alive in 1975, when they became the “Hottest Band in the Land!”
1in 1975 Aerosmith released Toys in the Attic. I never had this record, but a lot of my classmates did. Walk this Way and Sweet Emotion were off of this album while Dream On, originally released in 1973, was re-released following the success of the single Walk This Way and made it to # 6. I preferred the raunchier, hard rocking Walk this Way, which would eventually re-ignite Aerosmith’s career when RUN DMC enlisted the band for its cover version in the 1980s.
1975 was also the year of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Killer Queen had been floating around the charts a year or so earlier, but even that couldn’t have prepared us for this quasi-operatic masterpiece. The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations has often been described as a “pocket symphony”, so it would be fair to call Bohemian Rhapsody a “pocket opera”. The song was just great to listen to. Well produced with a musical and lyrical complexity that put it in a class of it’s own. However, to this day, for some reason I always associate this song with the TV movie Bad Ronald – a TV move about a teenage boy who commits an unspeakable crime and ends up living hidden inside a house owned by another family – It’s weird!A Night at the Opera was one of my brother Glenn’s albums, but he left it at home when he went to college, so I um…took care of it for him. There were two other great songs from that album. You’re my Best Friend was a straight forward pop-rock song that featured band’s signature sound, but my other favorite from the album was Brian May’s “’39”. This was an acoustic guitar based number with some trippy lyrics that sounded more like science fiction and time travel, but had a great melody and rhythm. It’s a song I would listen to several times in a row. As an FYI for the younger crowd – in order to listen to a song on a vinyl LP several times in a row, you would have to get up and reposition the needle arm of the turntable over and over again. It was a labor of love! We didn’t have pause or repeat or shuffle buttons back then. In fact, even the Sony Walkman was still a few years away.
That brings us to Born to Run. In 1975, Bruce Springsteen wasn’t all that well known outside of the northeast. Hyped as everything from the “next Dylan” to the “Future of Rock and Roll” Bruce had two albums under his belt when he found himself on the covers of Newsweek and Time in advance of the defining work of his career – Born to Run. The single "Born to Run” had hit the radio waves in advance, and my brother Ted bought me a copy for my birthday that year. I remember that the single was a bit scratchy, but the power of Ernest Carter’s opening drum roll and Bruce’s power E Chord had me from the start. Over the years, as I would go back and discover the history of rock and roll from Chuck Berry and Elvis through The Drifters and Motown and classic bands like Credence Clearwater Revival, I would get a better understanding of Born to Run’s place in time. I don’t think there has ever been a song that in one singular instant captured everything that had gone before it and fulfilled the promise of everything that Rock and Roll could be. Most people that know me know I’m a huge Springsteen fan, but they would be surprised to learn that Born to Run wasn’t the first Springsteen album I owned. In fact I don’t think I bought a copy of it until I was in high school, but in 1975 I was hooked. At 11 years old I may have been too young to appreciate the themes of a generation struggling to find a place for itself, of young love struggling against the odds, of redemption, survival and identity but the song rocked!
1975 ended with another defining moment of my life. I was selected by my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Rinaldi, to play the role of Bob Cratchit in our grade school production of a Christmas Carol. Mrs. Rinaldi must have been a fan of the musical version Scrooge starring Albert Finney, which was released in 1970. I remember her writing the lyrics to several of the songs from the movie on the blackboard and I copied them all down. The musical had made its way to TV that year and I was reveling in all things Dickensian. Every year afterwards, I would look forward to watching the musical at Christmas and last year I finally watched it with my kids. Anyway, being in the play was one of the fondest memories from my youth and some of friends were also in the play. We all had a great time and I did enjoy being on stage and delivering the final line “and so, as Tiny Tim observed, ‘God bless us, everyone!”. I never did any acting again, but I’ve never had a problem with being in the spotlight after that either! I would trade in the long coat and top hat for a Telecaster, but the thrill of being on stage was part of me forever after.
Next Up: 1975 - 1977: The Shine Begins to Fade
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