I was a soft kid, prone to be emotional, brought to tears by guitar solos. It’s gotten more extreme since I had my stroke, even witnessing strong emotions sets me off. I don’t know why, part of my brain reset post-stroke, I think.
But when you’re a kid growing up in the northeast of England, being a sensitive boy is really not allowed, or at least not without getting you beaten up. Musically, this meant heavy riffs were embraced, but soft rock ballads weren’t. They were for girls. Thems the rules.
As I’ve mentioned before, and this might chime with your life, I was part of a gang that became known as ‘the rock lads’. I was adrift, and I needed the self-identity it gave me. So I had to keep that side of my tastes that wasn’t rock hidden until I was older and more confident. Ballads were OK for the last song of the night, for smooching to, not slow prog songs, of course, like ELP’s Lucky Man for example. Smooching to a Moog wasn’t allowed.
My favourite mellow smooch song at the time was Goodbye To Love by The Carpenters with that Tony Peluso distorted and sustained solo. (I think that justified it for me) and Guitar Man, a hit for Bread. I liked Bread, they were on Elektra, which to me was a sign of credibility (such things mattered to me) but definitely not rock and not allowed.
I also liked Stoned Soul Picnic by Laura Nyro on CBS from Eli And The 13th Confession though I had no idea what a stoned soul picnic was, though the chance of hearing that at a disco or club were absolutely zero.
The lengths you had to go to in order to mask any departure from the heavy and the prog was extraordinary to the extent of hiding records that didn’t fit if a rock lad came around the house to read Sounds. For example I loved the sound of Philadelphia, Gamble & Huff etc. But that didn’t fit with my Pink Floyd, Camel and Hillage leanings, so had to be kept quiet. Mad, isn’t it? Maybe it wasn’t like this at your school, but it definitely was at mine. You didn’t paint an Isley Brothers album on your haversack flap, but you certainly did of Topographic Oceans.
I even went through a short but intense David Cassidy phase at 13. If that had got out, I’d have been mercilessly mocked. Liking T.Rex even was seen as unacceptably ‘pop’ by some and pop was out of bounds. I even had Touch Me by Gary Glitter, which was a dodgy title on reflection. As one of the self-appointed ‘rock lads’, a tribe I was happy to count myself in, you were not allowed to like anything else under pain of ostracisation. Some bands straddled two genres and somehow were ‘allowed’. Mott the Hoople were one. The Sweet too if your mates knew that they were secretly heavy.
You wouldn’t suffer abuse for carrying one of Slade’s records, the way you would with Leo Sayer’s albums, though the early ones are really good singer-songwriter material.
I did know lads who didn’t like rock or certainly weren't as obsessed with the whole rock n roll world as I was, but weirdly they had to pretend they did, even though the truth was patently obvious.
To a degree, this habit of not being open about liking certain records, lasted even until I was at college. Image was important and Quincy Jones didn’t go with long hair and patched jeans. I even took this to another extreme, initially when I met Dawn, when she said she liked Genesis, I thought that would have sounded too mainstream, so even though I loved Genesis too, I said I was into the Groundhogs knowing it was likely she hadn’t heard of them. It’s insane and it was rooted in those ‘rock lad’ days of trying to curate your tastes to best effect.
But now, I just don’t care. With age came liberation. Though a little bit of me is still a ‘rock lad’ and always will be. It gave me an identity when I was searching for one, a place to be. And I really needed that and I look back with affection, just don’t mention the Bee Gees albums.
The Rock Lads...
