The "Influential Records" Game Addenda, Part 2

Here are a few more “honorable mentions” from high school, before I start playing the game in earnest on the FakeBook.

I had taken piano lessons for a couple of years when I was nine, but I got bored with the endless repetition and same songs over and over, so I quit. Then my parents gave me an acoustic guitar one Christmas that had belonged to an older cousin, and that was that! But all I wanted to play on it were guitar solos I heard on records (no “Kumbaya” for me, thank you very much). In order to hear what I was playing as I played along to the record, I had to play the record at low volume. Inevitably, as I was attempting this, my sisters would go to the piano in the living room and start their scales, which would drown out any hope I had of hearing what I was doing. So I returned to the piano as a way of being able to hear the rock and roll at full volume.

I had Elton John’s 11-17-70 on 8-track tape. The only place I could play 8-tracks was in my family’s Buick station wagon, so I opted to drive it whenever I could. And I played the songs on this record on piano. A lot. I actually got good at it, working from sheet music and then tweaking the performance by ear. “Burn Down The Mission” was a favorite; I was starting to see myself as not-Christian (which was a big deal in a Baptist preacher’s family), and this song sorta summed up a lot of what was wrong with the church. I remember a few good songs off Goodbye Yellow Brick Road also, but “Crocodile Rock” was the end of my Elton John experience.

The other 8-track I played to death was ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres. I wish I had owned the LP; I missed out on that Mexican food spread inside! I had been aware of ZZ Top right away, listening to “(Somebody Else Been) Shaking Your Tree” off First Album on the late night Dallas FM station. Rio Grande Mud got a lot of play as well. But Tres Hombres was just perfect “driving around town” music for a high school kid, and I got exposed early to a great range of guitar techniques and tones that would come in handy later, when I focused on playing guitar again.

I was in love with a girl who’s family had just moved to Ft Worth from Switzerland so that their father could teach at the Baptist seminary where my dad taught. She and her sisters brought with them a love of Deep Purple, and I bought in once I heard the Made In Japan cuts. And then she promptly dumped me; I stayed friends with the sisters, though!

I had a friend who owned Humble Pie Rockin’ The Fillmore, and I would listen to it whenever I went to his house. By now you may have noticed a particular theme: LIVE records. For some reason, I was really drawn to them early. In addition to the three here and Grand Funk Live, I also had James Gang Live In Concert, CSNY 4 Way Street, and Allman Brothers At Fillmore East, not to mention Leon Live. I think it may have been this fact that pointed me toward a life as a performing musician.