No Apologies for 70’s Music
By: Terry Barr
Tags: Music, Rock Nheavy, Memories, Daughters, Rock

No Apologies for 70’s Music

Max and my stereo (Author’s photo0

A few days ago I read Karla Clifton’s thoughtful piece about Steely Dan’s classic album, Aja:

I had recently bought a new copy of that record and felt another piece of completion in my vinyl collection. I first bought Aja not long after it was initially released, but as these things go, I gave my copy, as well as my copy of the Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill, to my lovely younger daughter who was starting her own vinyl collection and who LOVES THE 70’S. And no, I’m not asking for that latter disc back, sweetheart, even though what I gave up would cost me over $100 to duplicate (in very good condition, that is). After all, I have Apple Music and listen to what I want.

Even better, I have two daughters who appreciate both old and contemporary rock/pop music. A couple of years ago they instigated our attending a Fleetwood Mac show, and while the band has aged — and played without banished Lindsey Buckingham — still, when your kids initiate their parents’ price of admission at a rock show, all I can say is,

“We raised them right.”

I want to know why, though, my younger daughter loves and seems to crave 70’s music. At the beach a few weeks ago, she asked that I play Steely Dan, and also The Steeldrivers (not 70’s for sure), while she and her new boyfriend fried shrimp for us all. So I put on Aja and sat back, thrilled at it all, especially when her favorite song, “Peg,” came on, and then mine:

“Home at Last.”

I’ll let you go ahead and infer whatever you will.

I’m waiting on my copy of Countdown to Ecstasy to arrive in the mail. Likely I paid too much money for it, but finding and having to own classic vinyl is an expensive obsession, and the choices I make cannot be measured easily (or out loud, because my wife and I have agreed to a certain monthly budget which I am in grave danger of violating with 19 days left to go in September). “Countdown” is my favorite Dan album, and if I could explain why, I would.

It seems to me that I remember them lip-synching “My Old School” on American Bandstand once. I suppose it could have been The Midnight Special, but I’m fairly sure it was AB, and I LOVED it. I know that they didn’t tour, that they were a studio band, that David Palmer sang on the first record and then got sent packing or something. I know that the Dan is Donald and Walter, and now just Donald.

But I don’t care about what they are or aren’t, do or don’t do. I love their sound, and just got Gaucho, too. I haven’t attempted yet to find Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, or The Royal Scam, but whenever I think of these records, I remember an old friend, Don B. (not to be confused with Don G., no, never), who I think loved Katy Lied the best and both loaned me “Countdown” and argued that Steely Dan was the best thing going, way back when we were in high school and were burdened and beset by things like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Sabbath. I don’t want to trash anyone’s music today, so i’ll leave that hanging there.

Speaking of hanging, another 70’s band that I wonder whether my daughter likes is The Doobie Brothers. I don’t love everything by this group, and when I think of them most fondly, I first think of that ambiguously-liked hit, “Black Water.” I don’t love or hate it, but I do remember Don singing with it as we drove around Bessemer one winter night in the days when driving meant driving and not some strictly utilitarian move. I had returned from college, and Don was heading there soon. “Black Water’s” not a great song, just singable.

The Doobies I loved were those pre-Michael McDonald Doobies — the ones who had some rocking hits like “Listen to the Music,” “Long Train Running,” and “China Grove.” In fact, The Captain and Me (1973) is a must own, I think, and I’ll be heading down to my basement to see if my old copy is still intact once I finish this story. So many good tunes there: “South City Midnight Lady,” “Without You,” and “Ukiah” are my favorites.

The last album they did before MM came on to dominate their sound was Stampede! (1975). It includes the hit “Take Me in Your Arms,” and while I’m not a big fan of that one, when you filter on down the Doobies’ aisle, you’ll find a strange one, in that old Western-I’m-a-Cowboy mode:

“I Cheat the Hangman.”

I’m wondering when and where I first heard this song, written by Patrick Simmons. It must have been on an FM station in Birmingham — something in the transition from Free Form to Album Rock. Likely, I was sitting in my office chair boxing jewelry when it came on. I know that I bought a copy of the album just for that song (something I did more regularly when records cost $4.99). And so I sat in my bedroom, night after night, wondering how a song could be so disturbingly beautiful. I was only 19 when it came out, but over the decades, I forgot about the song and how it felt to find it.

When I found the record again in my old stacks last week, I stood there, before I even looked at its back to see the song list, and I thought, and I startled myself, and I wondered how it is we forget songs that kept us up for many nights, feeling that romance that certain rock songs instill — those rocky ballads coming from groups like the Doobies who aren’t pretending to be geniuses, or latching on to the smoother sounds of whatever a singer like Michale McDonald will do to them.

Ok: full disclosure. Songs like “Minute to Minute” and whatever else came later could find their way onto my list of songs I know I can live without hearing again.

For now, I keep hearing:

“Only lighted windows stare, at the lonely stranger there

Returning home.”

Some things can’t be explained, which is maybe why my daughter can’t tell me why she loves Steely Dan or Fleetwood Mac (I’ve asked, but it’s too early in the morning for that kind of coherence).

Is it strange or funny that I wish she could have been riding with me back then, hearing the tunes as they first emerged into our minds, helping us negotiate and navigate our final steps into responsibility?

But really, I’m just as happy that she’s found these sounds now; that she appreciates and loves them, and when it comes down to it, I’m sure she loves them because they’re great, because they take her to places in her own mind that excite or calm her.

Because she loves rock music for the same reasons I do, and more: a steady beat, singing one’s heart out, with lyrics that transport, and guitars that make us feel like cheating whatever hangman is approaching.

Now, to get her listening to Springsteen.