To put it delicately, music was the soundtrack to many teenage fumblings and intimate interactions. What those kids did who had no records, I can’t imagine. But being a gauche teenager, I had almost zero social skills apart from the ability to make people laugh, which isn’t exactly wanted in such situations. This led to many an inappropriate album choice to put on to accompany a bit of fumbling. It was sometime before I twigged what it was all about and what sort of music fitted certain situations and that it didn’t have to be your current favourite album So I’d like to apologise for those romantic encounters performed to music by ELP or Blue Cheer or on one memorably cringeworthy situation The Mothers of Invention.
But I wasn’t the only one. A mate of mine who was as obsessive as me about records decided that his brand new copy of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, a rare first pressing,
which was so polarizing that RCA reportedly withdrew it from the market only three weeks after its release because of the backlash and high number of returns from confused fans, was his choice for making out. If you don’t know what it's like, it is a double album consisting entirely of guitar feedback and electronic noise! Not exactly conducive to a romantic moment!
Now, so many decades later, it occurs to me that girls really had a lot to put up with, not just the sexism, misogyny and nylon underwear, which was often a default in the 70s but with well-meaning but hopeless boys like me with exploding hair and inappropriate music. Looking back I can scarcely believe we even managed to get through it all. I suppose they were equally gauche and bewildered by it all and we were all just trying to get through a difficult time.
