AC/DC - Highway to Hell
This is the album that kicked off my adolescence. I was twelve years old when I ordered my twelve cassettes for a penny from Columbia House. Three other AC/DC albums came with this one, along with a couple from Bryan Adams, a compilation of John Williams movie soundtracks, and a greatest-hits collection from Disney - in hindsight, it’s obvious I was at a crossroads. My order came around Easter time, and I listened to my tapes over the weekend in the little guest bedroom I shared with my sister at my grandparents’ colonial house in rural Connecticut. I remember just the slightest shiver of excitement in the first few bars of the Side 2 opener ‘Shot Down in Flames’ (Dat! Da-da! “Whoa!” Dat! Da-da! “WHOA!” etc.), but honestly, the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark probably got more listens that weekend.
It wasn’t until a party in a friend’s basement just after my thirteenth birthday, when my buddy Dennis put the title track on the stereo, that something clicked. Maybe it was the higher volume, but the music vibrated through me in a whole new way. There’s a particular spot, one verse in, when that A-D-G guitar riff gives way to a chugging E chord (“My friends are gonna BE THERE TOO!”). If you look at the teenage years as a bumpy but straight road from childhood to adulthood, this was the precise moment when my turn signal started blinking.
"The world of possibility
that opened up to me"
Chuck Berry - The Great Twenty-Eight
Every lick I ever played as a guitarist can be found on this compilation of songs recorded three decades before I picked up an instrument. What’s more, Chuck Berry’s lyrics were poetic evocations of the exact, momentous time I was going through when I got this cassette: enduring school days, feeling the highs and lows of teenage love, dreaming of making my name playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
Perhaps it’s a bit predictable to single out ‘Johnny B. Goode’ as another nudge off the beaten path to respectable adulthood, but there’s a reason these things become cliches. The guitar solos were accessible to a beginner and yet had an air of sophistication to them. The vocal had an earnest exuberance to it, and goodness gracious, what he was saying to this high-school prisoner: “...One day you will be a man, and you will be the leader of a big ol’ band...Maybe someday your name will be in lights…!” The world of possibility that opened up to me, every time I listened to that song, was too much to resist.
George Thorogood & The Destroyers - Haircut
This one's an oddball. It's not the best George Thorogood (I'd give that distinction to Move It On Over), and the cover art has always made me mildly nauseated. But George's slide guitar is as sharp and brassy as ever throughout, there are great versions of 'Howlin' for my Baby' and 'Gone Dead Train' on it, and anyway, this isn’t a ‘Best Of’ list, we're talking influence here. The song 'Get a Haircut' came out during a particularly trying school year, during which I was being bullied for, amongst other things, the length of my hair. I was also butting heads with my parents about my rock 'n' roll dreams. Maybe if I'd never heard that last verse, I wouldn't have dropped out of college a few years later. Maybe I wouldn't have moved to New York, or found my wife. And maybe, and maybe, and on, and on. You don't get much more influential than that.
The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
So much has been said about this record, it’s nigh on impossible to offer anything new. But its impact on me was so deep, I can’t ignore it. My friend Roy gave me a tape of Side 2 (the ‘acoustic’ side), and as with Highway to Hell, on first listen I didn’t get it. It took hearing the double-whammy opener of ‘Rocks Off’ and ‘Rip This Joint’, months later, to properly prime my brain for the rest of the record.
I had viewed all the great music I’d heard up to this point as entertainment - great entertainment, and able to pick me up when I was down, but nothing more. This was the first piece of rock ‘n’ roll that I could see as art. But it was unlike any artwork I’d experienced before. It was messy, and dense - almost impenetrable, with Mick Jagger’s voice mostly fighting for breath under Keith Richards’ smothering rhythm guitar. But what I could pick out was rich in texture - gritty, debauched, and all that, but also disarmingly tender at times. If I wanted to, I could listen to it closely for new lyrics to pop out at me, or for a stray lick I’d always missed to come suddenly, inexplicably to the fore. Mostly, though, I would just let the record spin and lose myself in the grooves.
"its impact on me was so deep,
I can’t ignore it"
Ike & Tina Turner - Come Together
On my nineteenth birthday I moved out of my parents’ house and settled into a one-bedroom apartment my uncle used as an office on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Lucking into a job behind the Guitar Accessories counter at the rock ‘n’ roll mecca Manny’s Music, I began a ritual of walking from my uncle’s apartment to Bleecker Street on my days off, and shopping for used vinyl records. I can remember buying this one, taking it home, putting it on my turntable, and feeling the world screech to a halt. Tina Turner’s singing sounded strong and vulnerable at the same time, while Ike’s guitar playing took back the licks that white players like Keith Richards had been nicking from across the tracks for the previous decade.
Covers of the classics ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, ‘Come Together’, and particularly ‘I Want to Take You Higher’ all rivaled the original versions in my mind, but it was the band’s original material that stole the show for me. Opener ‘It Ain’t Right (Lovin’ to be Lovin’)’ worked its way so fast and so deep into my heart that I ended up covering it with my band, on record and in show after show. And oh, man, ‘Young and Dumb’. That one built step by step from a hi-hat that sounded like a garbage can lid to an epic I-IV riff and two-part-harmony chorus. I spent many a Sunday afterward clawing through record bins, searching for a new discovery that would hit me as hard as this one had. Nothing ever came close.
"I could come up with a
powerhouse Eight Albums
just from that era"
Françoise Hardy - Et si je m’en vais avant toi
The music I sought out during my first year and a half in New York was a reflection of my life: single-minded, fueled with adrenaline and testosterone. It stands to reason that when the stellar New York singer-songwriter Roxanne Fontana came into my life, my listening would take on new, more nuanced contours. Roxanne introduced me to Frank Sinatra, Britpop, and Serge Gainsbourg. Each of those was a revelation, and I could come up with a powerhouse Eight Albums list just from that era of my life. But Françoise Hardy was another thing entirely.
The instrumentation on this record is that vaguely country-sounding early seventies arrangement I associated with Exile on Main St., which was how it became the gateway to Françoise’s oeuvre. The lazy shuffle of the opener was seductive, inviting me in. The voice was what got me and held on, though. Françoise had an innate wistfulness to her. It seeped into every lyric she sang, lending a heartfelt authenticity to her sad songs, and adding a sense of depth and mystery to her lighter tunes. I would go on to write a lengthy piece about her, years later when a memoir she’d written was translated into English. I flatter myself to think I came close to capturing in prose the essence that she so easily exudes in song.
To this day, upon hearing the first chord tumble out of a speaker, I see it in my mind’s eye issuing from the stereo in Roxanne’s Times Square apartment, with the Moroccan-blue painted floors and the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. We would have our wedding reception in the Italian restaurant two floors down, and would live together at that address until we picked up and moved to Los Angeles, in search of a record deal, in April 2001. There are times in life when the music we listen to gets caught up in the emotions we’re experiencing at the time we hear it. And so, at the same time that I was falling in love with Roxanne, I fell in love with Françoise.
Dean Martin - Making Spirits Bright
Roxanne bought this record in the runup to our first Christmas together. Tracks by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were part and parcel of her upbringing in a Brooklyn-Italian household, but with the exception of ‘Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!’, his easy-going take on holiday standards was new to me. The track selection was mostly what you’d expect (‘Jingle Bells’, ‘Rudolph’, etc.), with a few sentimental, adult-contemporary titles (‘Winter Romance’, ‘The Christmas Blues’) scattered throughout. The whole record went immediately into heavy rotation - it was, after all, the only holiday album in our collection - and left an indelible mark on me. From that year forward, it wouldn’t be Christmas until Dino showed up.
But it wasn’t until its third year of service, the year my daughter was born, that this record earned its place on this list. The birth of a child is an event inherently fraught with emotion; the shock of learning that your child will be disabled magnifies that emotion exponentially. The deluge of new information about my Miss Marie’s prognosis began on Christmas Eve; after weeks of frequent holiday listening, Dino’s voice had wormed its way into my subconscious, and so my brain processed much of what I was learning to an inner soundtrack of ‘Blue Christmas’ and ‘It’s a Marshmallow World’.
As so often happens with such intense experiences, the memory of those events became bound up and fused with a parallel sensory memory, of the sights, smells, and sounds of the time. And so whenever I hear those first woodwind strains of ‘Let It Snow’, my thoughts inevitably drift to the days after Roxanne and I heard those life-changing words, “We think that she has Down syndrome.”
Does this put a damper on the festive glow these tracks give off? Not at all. On the contrary, as Miss Marie has grown into an ebullient and talented young woman, Christmas has become a time to reflect on all the blessings she’s brought us. And it doesn’t hurt that the birthday/Christmas nexus is her favorite time of year. A gifted piano player, my girl has a vast repertoire of holiday standards that she’s happy to bash out, even in June or July. I try to protest in the months between New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving (much to her impish glee), but by the end of each November, I’m often the one to start belting out the carols, and the first artist I get the itch to hear from come December will always be Dino.
Elvis Presley - NBC-TV Special
Elvis Presley’s ‘’68 Comeback Special’ is, first and foremost, a spectacular set of live performances by one of the greatest entertainers of the twentieth century. Elvis is on fire as he tears through classics such as ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘Hound Dog’, and his ability to be vulnerable during ballads like ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’, and self-deprecating during the ramshackle but riveting sit-down ‘Boxing-Ring’ segment, show a world-class artist at the top of his game. But for me, and an army of music fans, it’s much more than that.
I discovered the album embarrassingly late, in my twenties, but its impact was nonetheless profound - and it had to do with more than music. I already had formed a philosophy that saw life as a series of ups and downs, and I had the notion that life’s best moments weren’t simply its happiest times, but rather its ‘comeback’ moments. These were the times when a person came through a period of trial or disaster, and emerged on the other side of it. Whatever positive emotions that person might be feeling, I reasoned, they would be augmented by the relief of returning to a good place they’d known before - one that perhaps they hadn’t been sure they’d see again.
In this album, Elvis positively embodies my philosophy. Seeing himself being written off by music fans as a has-been after years of substandard recordings and uninspired movie roles, he throws himself into this hour-long special as if his life depends on it. The result is an unmitigated triumph, made even more exhilarating because of what it’s come to represent: the former King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, giving his all for the legions who have long ago given up on him, and earning back his crown.
My debut novel The Upsetter Blog started out as a simple story of a rock ‘n’ roll band on the road. At some point though, the book grew into something much deeper. This concept of rises, falls, and renewals found its way into my story, becoming one of its most important themes. When it came time to articulate that theme, rather than dump a chapter’s worth of philosophical theory in, I found it easier - and more exciting - to have a character slot this album into a CD player and gush at its greatness. Elvis’s cameo ended up being one of my favorite passages. And in a delicious twist, the novel ended up having a comeback story of its own, finding a publisher months after I’d given up on it. In my moment of elation when Owl Canyon Press’s offer came through, I could picture Elvis looking down from some cloud and nodding, knowing exactly how I felt.
"Elvis is on fire..."
Bio
The literary alter ego of American rock 'n' roll musician Mat Treiber, Brett Marie is a contributing editor for the online literary journal Bookanista, and a sometime staff writer for the website PopMatters. His short fiction has appeared in various magazines, including New Plains Review, Words + Images Press, and The Impressment Gang. His story 'If It Had Happened to You' was shortlisted for LoveReading UK’s first Very Short Story Award in 2019. His debut novel The Upsetter Blog was published in September 2021. He currently lives in England with his wife and daughter.
Facebook: Brett Marie
Twitter: @brettmarie1979
The Upsetter Blog, available from Owl Canyon Press, Amazon US, Amazon UK, and elsewhere.
