1975

“I don’t need to be forgiven . . .”
~ Pete Townshend

My best friend and I walked into the warm beach night, finally granted a little freedom at the advanced age of 12. Those were simpler, less apprehensive times, for my parents to have allowed us to cross several blocks to the short boardwalk at Bethany Beach.

I wore an Elton John t-shirt with the cover of his ’74 Greatest Hits ironed on to the front. Paul, my friend, wore Jethro Tull, a sort of orange and black silhouette of Ian Anderson in all his glory, one leg up, wailing on his flute. Yep, the flute.

We walked the boards, wondered what drinking a few beers might be like, and gawked at a blonde pizza server, who might have been all of 18, a virtual adult in our young eyes. I bought a chrome cigarette lighter with a Budweiser emblem on the side.

It was sometime during that week at the beach that I had my awakening. Rock and roll, in those post-Beatle years, was in full bloom. Disco was still a year or so away from the mainstream (sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, disco sucks and so does soul), and punk was unheard of.

We had no MTV or computers. My ill-used record player wasn’t spinning much in those days, aside from 45s of such hits as Bad, Bad Leroy Brown and The Monster Mash. More often I had my cheap AM radio on the windowsill playing Please Mr. Postman and Dark Lady.

Not to knock Boris Pickett or Cher, but what I found that week in the pages of a magazine called CREEM nearly made me forget the blonde pizza girl!

Sure, I’d heard of The Rolling Stones, but not given them much thought. Yet here they were in black and white and cheap color. Shockingly, my dad – my dad – sat down on the porch of the beach house to thumb thru CREEM, and there’s Mick Jagger commandeering this giant inflatable phallus. Nice one, Mick (it was a stage prop for their ’75 tour). But we would see more great things from the Stones. As I came of age in the years ahead, the Stones - re-energized with Ron Wood - went on the release Some Girls and Tattoo You (by then I was in my college dorm room, cranking Slave with those delicious Keef licks). But that was light years away. In ’75, I had barely cracked puberty.

Surely the biggest impression left on me that summer was an article in CREEM about a New York band called KISS. KISS was like nothing I’d ever seen or heard before. Taking some cues from Alice Cooper, KISS wasn’t just one character like Alice, but four masked personalities – something for everyone, or something for you alone, depending on your mood. Feeling a bit reserved, but coolly astral? Spaceman Ace. How about a stomping, blood-drooling biker from hell? Demon Gene was your man.

KISS was a hard rockin’ band ready to blow your doors down. This was a couple years before the KISS Army was infiltrated by elementary school children, and the band had traded in the bomb attack of songs like Deuce for gum wrapper discards like Christine Sixteen.

My friend Paul had some of the inside scoop. His older brother had been a KISS fan for at least a year, and already had his room papered with photos. He even owned a pair of platform boots. The platforms were not high by KISS standards, nor did they have spikes or other accoutrements, but they did have some sort of lightning bolt design on the sides.

Before the week was over, we managed to locate a hidden stash of Playboys in the one of the beach house’s closets. Some friends of my parents came to visit one afternoon, with their own teenage daughter, but we were all too shy to interact. I lost a Frisbee in a tangle of thorny shrubs at the property’s edge (no doubt bulldozed decades ago – are there any thorny shrubs left at the beach?). Paul and I remained loyal to Elton and Tull and vowed to make album purchases before summer’s end.

Oddly, despite our t-shirt choices, I was the one who bought Minstrel In The Gallery, while Paul bought Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Paul got the better deal. One of Elton John’s most anticipated releases, Captain Fantastic came with a poster, lyric booklet, and comic book, all in a wildly artistic package. From The End of the World To Your Town . . .

Ian Anderson and crew’s Minstrel in the Gallery seemed a bit lackluster in comparison. Aside from the lengthy title track, nothing resonated like some of Tull’s earlier works.

But our musical quests ended early that fall, when KISS released Alive! One look at the cover photo summed up all KISS had to offer: smoke, guitars and black leather. A color booklet of photos revealed the band in action. The music wasn’t bad, either. In fact, listening to it today, I am struck by how listenable the hook-laden tunes remain.

My Dad still looked at some of my magazines on occasion. Noting the Gene Simmons picture on my bedroom wall, he asked, “Why didn’t you hang this up instead?” holding open a page to Suzi Quatro.

I dunno. Suzi just didn’t breathe fire or spew blood for me like Mr. Simmons did. Lust for rock ‘n’ roll never felt so good.

Copyright 2008. Steve Saulsbury