We all started somewhere to get to where we are today, hopeless addicts looking for the next hit from an album or an an artist, that fulfills out needs, that hits the spot. This journey may have started with The Rubettes 1974 album “Where it’s At” ( the mother of the guitarist ran a paper shop up the road from where I lived in 1975 opposite Olympia in London,where I moved with my Dad and girlfriend after he left my Mum)
My actual gateway musical drug started in 1969 when I was 7 and ” helped” my Dad on his milkround on the weekends and he paid me extra pocket money to pick up the empties.
I was saving for a bike but blew it on the Help album by The Fabs. It felt reckless but it also felt like I had decided something for myself for the very first time. Nobody in my family seemed to ” love ” music,although we had a Dansette in the lounge where my Dad played The Sandpipers and Peter,Paul and Mary on occasion.
The next album I bought was Tubular Bells that my English Teacher played to our class at the end of term 1974…it blew my mind and quickly after that it was Captain Fantastic by Reg.
I have just played it an have returned to my 13year old self. It’s good and I could sing all the words.
Anyway, this long missive for The Massive would like to ask… What was your gateway album into your musical journey that started your meandering to this point?
Probably Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys’ (1973), which came with an 8-track machine an uncle offloaded to me when I was 11 or 12. It remains magnificent, by far his best album in my view, conjuring a whole world of the imagination – a whole world of nostalgic feelings – in its songs and sounds. Professionally, I’m immersed in the musical past, and it surely started with this Arlo album – itself 7 or 8 years in the past when I first heard it, on an obsolete medium, and imbued with homages to the (even further back) past in its music.
Nice Colin. Was olaying Hobo’s lullaby only yesterday.
Nobody in my family seemed to ” love ” music – I’m with you there. Whilst the Music Centre had it’s own space next to the telly, it rarely pumped out anything but Radio 2, with the occasional appearance of The Carpenters, Abba or Cliff Richard.
My gateway was a portable tape player and a Showaddywaddy cassette.
The next damascene moment was Dave Edmunds singing Girls Talk on Top Of The Pops resulting in a lot of blank tapes being used to record the Top 40, before starting to buy singles (slowly – 25p a week pocket money meant about a month before I could afford one)
Late 1981, I got given my first albums – Barron Knights and Shakin Stevens & The Sunsets.
My proper first album purchase was the following March (with my own money, or some of it plus IOUs for washing up and other domestic duties) – I was now the proud owner of Iron Maiden’s Number Of The Beast.
At much the same time I also found, in the small collection of LPs under the Music Centre, a copy of The Beatles 1962-66 Red Album
We’re the same age – I got a record token for Christmas 1981 and spent it in the Virgin Megastore, in That London. I took so long choosing, between A Broken Frame and that Shakin’ Stevens album, that my mum took herself off to the in-store cafe while I pondered. In the end, Dare and A Broken Frame came home with me. I sometimes wondered how much richer I’d be now if I’d bought crap records, been put off music, and decided to take up a different hobby.
The only music lover in the family was my father – a big C&W fan, but not the good stuff, more the syrupy George Jones type stuff. I used to have to record the Radio London Country show for him every Sunday morning, so that became the soundtrack to my homework.
While few are going to plant their flag alongside ‘Shaky’, hold yer horses on ‘if I’d bought crap records’ etc. etc… you did buy crap records!
A logical route from Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets to Rock ‘n’ Roll, to THE Rock ‘n’ Roll, beats any new romantics dirge, and its’ aftermath, hands-down.
Of course, RD has to elaborate on what he actually purchased. If we need a Ready Reckoner or penalties get Dai on the blower!
Oh, how I do enjoy being trolled.
This is probably where I should say my third album purchase was London Calling. They had no hits, you know.
You’re not being trolled, don’t kid yourself.
I’d prefer a route into Rock ‘n’ Roll – via a Sunsets album (where is RD?) – rather than anything unearthed via new romantics.
And no… no… no… I defend the right for the no-hits clash to take their place in between the Tweets and a losing F.A. Cup Finalist to the coveted no. 38 spot until my dying day.
I always get bit emotional when I say that.
You are always trolling. You come here to express the same view over and over again and ridicule those who don’t share your extremely narrow views. You are clearly a narcissist with no interest in any social intercourse or exchange of views at all. Pathetic.
I bought Please Please Me and A Hard Day’s Night on cassette, one may have been a birthday present actually (15th). I taped Oldies but Goldies from a friend. First vinyl record Abbey Road from a junk shop for a pound. Followed by Rolled Gold and The Times They Are a Changin’. The first contemporary record I bought was Outlandos D’Amour by The Police
Still got my first purchase, opens with Misery which was a dumb choice
I ‘answer’, Dai, and I’ve just answered someone.
Not toooooooo bad on social intercourse… ask the village and local towns.
Sexual intercourse? You might have a point.
Why are you here? Just to show off and ramble on about “dodgers”. Do you have any interest in anybody else’s views apart from just wanting to pour scorn on them?
I’ll be honest – I have greater recall of the content of the Barron Knights album.
I caned Dare, but I’ve almost certainly played the Black Lace Party Party album more than ver Mode.
If only Dave and the fellas had done some dance moves to go with I Just Can’t Get Enough, like BL did for Superman.
I looked it up just to be sure…but A Broken Frame came out in September 1982. Are you thinking of Speak & Spell – the one with Just Can’t Get Enough on it…?
Dave’s gimpy dancing to JCGE is iconic, man. He didn’t used to run around in them days, just kind of shuffling on the spot.
Ach, yes, you’re right. The one with the goose on the cover, not the corn thresher.
I quite like it, but not half as much as Violator.
I like Speak & Spell very much – but apart from DG’s voice, it sounds like a different band by the time we get to the majestic Violator 9 years later.
Maybe not trolling, but it is very, very, tedious.
Coming from me, that’s saying something.
I’ve found the easiest thing to do when a AWer demonstrates tedious* monomaniacal repetition is just to scroll on when I see the name. There are plenty enough pleasant people on the blorum to give attention to.
*as opposed to enjoyable monomaniacal repetition, which I am sure we are all guilty of sometimes.
It’s a shame the AW doesn’t operate under JAM rules, although I’d probably get penalised for deviation.
Hesitation! He stopped before the minute was up.
Justified Ancients of Mu rules?
Sorry … deviation … I’ll read that again
I think that the story here (already – and I know it’s been covered before) is how many people born at the perfect time for The Beatles etc. didn’t seem to know it!
I find this endlessly fascinating.
My answer is the same as the other thread – A Collection of Oldies!!! However, the pivotal track for me now from that L.P. is not Eleanor Rigby or Help!, as it was in the early dire, but Bad Boy, ironically the only real reason – for anyone who was paying attention – to purchase it in 1966!
The Beatles. Other artists are available.
Hence ‘etc’.
I’d bought six or so singles before this but the first album I ever purchased (no doubt with birthday money) was With The Beatles.
To be honest, in the privacy of my bedroom I was rather disappointed with it, all a bit tame I thought. Still, I carried it around for weeks on end and was forced to carry a stick with me with which to beat off the hordes of female admirers. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened but I might be Wrong.
Next stop Bob Dylan and the rest is history.
There was of course music in the family home, but Bread, the Bay City Rollers, the Beach Boys Greatest Hits, the Carpenters, ABBA Arrival, even my mother’s extensive collection of Beethoven symphonies and concertos never really hit the spot. I quite liked my nearest friend and neighbour’s sisters’ collection of Led Zep albums, but what really did it for me was another friend’s brother’s bedroom wall which was covered in posters of legs akimbo, heads down, guitars up, double-denim-dressed Francis, Rick, Alan and John – the mighty Quo. My pre-teen self was agog. And when I was given the cassette tape of 12 Gold Bars, my musical journey ignited with a rush of joy.
Though I discarded the denim in my early teen years, I came back to the boogie years later, and it’s still as good as ever – that rich intertwining melange of twin guitars, thudding bass and the malty timbre of Rossi’s vocals – that was a band that really knew how to swing. I’m listening to Rain right now, and it’s a good as it ever was.
Twelve Gold Bars … what a best of that was ! I had a leather jacket at that stage. … not black like I coveted, but light brown like yer Dad might wear with driving gloves. Close but no cigarillo.
By the way, I used the description “Paper Shop “ in my opening post… how long is it since I used that ?! Or indeed Newsagents.
From indiscriminate consumption of pop to Motown (The Four Tops Greatest Hits was the first LP I bought with my own money, IIRC). Then to Stax and Atlantic soul, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers and a sideways leap to The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine etc.
And I was off!!
No music at home, until my parents bought a Dansette player, which came with a stack of singles. This would have been around 1964, so a mix of early Beatles, Del Shannon and Rolf Harris. An elder sister, by 10 years, was very much a 60’s Dolly bird, with mini skirt, ironed hair and long leather boots, and a taste for the charts. My parents didn’t approve but Top of the Pops, and Ready Steady Go, before that, all absorbed and filed in my eager brain. As stated in the other recent thread, add that avid enthusiasm to the competitive music oneupmanship of boarding school, and it little surprise I was singing Beatles songs in the corridor, even if I swiftly became seduced by rougher seeming reprobates, the Stones, Kinks and Pretty Things. First album, a gift from big sis, aged 11, Sgt Pepper. First single, self purchased, the Move’s Fire Brigade, followed by Living In The Past, Tull, and Man Of The World, Fleetwood Mac. First self purchased album was ELP and Pictures At An Exhibition, then L.A. Woman, the Doors.
That takes me up to the 70s, when it all got serious.
I think the point where I went from just enjoying music to really curious and heading for obsessive, my Starman moment, was when I saw King Crimson doing Elephant Talk on Whistle Test (November 1981 I see from Google)I knew nothing about them or the band members yet. It was 2 or 3 years later when a new friend with old music tastes revealed their earlier incarnations.
The appearance above and a subsequent one where they played Frame by Frame and Indiscipline (I think) led me to track down and buy the Discipline album. It totally amazed me track by track. I couldn’t believe the range of weird music and the sounds they got from guitars.
While my tastes broadened and stayed broad, this was my gateway to, among other things, funk music and ambient music neither of which had featured much on Irish radio as I grew up. I never liked anything else they did nearly as much as that album – I’d love to see the Beat tour currently playing this music live again.
My Dad bought a portable record player and some EPs. Beatles early stuff and Simin and Garfunkel which had I Am A Rock on it. You’d think that’d be it. But no – those Beatles EPs ended up as frisbees in my heavy Stones period.
The gateway drug was delivered by a record club. Unless you ordered, they would send you whatever they felt like. It was a remarkably diverse range. White, black, funk , rock , jazz.
Then one day. Bob Dylan Greatest Hits Volume 2 arrived.
Tomorrow Is A Long Time was the one that got me.
Tired of Waiting by The Flock, from a CBS sampler called ‘Fill Your Head With Rock’, the very first album I bought. I had an elder sister so had been exposed to The Beatles and other pop songs of the time. But Tired of Waiting led me through a portal into another musical world entirely – and I was well and truly hooked.
Nice. And the pic of Jerry , hair in motion, violin in action added to the allure.
I was following the lead of my elder sister’s taste, I even bought a Wings album as a result. Music that was fairly nice and soft. At some point I acquired Caroline by Status Quo. A bit more hard rocking, more guitar. That was a way in to other things, a switch from Top Of The Pops to Old Grey Whistle Test. I was out om my own, a pioneer, heading to a realm beyond the comprehension of the rest of my family. People who did drugs, looked weird. A way to seek a new identity. Except of course it’s a new kind of conformity. But around 1977 eveything kind of opened up into an awareness of and curiosity about culture in general, even a suspicion that popular music wasn’t really art in the proper sense. Supress that thought. As a consequence of this awakening I came upon things like All You Need Is Love, Tony Palmer’s series on pop music. There was a long slog through material that didn’t excite me too much until we got to the Acid Rock episode. The Pink Floyd, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, among other things. Like A Hurricane on OGWT. Led Zep II purchased. It was about guitars, dynamics, noise. A journey into addictive sound.
My gateway into music was through the radio. My parents had an old electric Pye radio set which I listened to from as early as I can remember. It used to crackle and spark, and was probably a death trap. When I was 8 or 9 I was bought my own transistor radio for Christmas and used to listen to it on an earpiece in bed when I was supposed to be asleep. That was upgraded to a better set as a reward for doing well at school, after which I was bought my own Bush cassette recorder with which I used to make my own pretend radio programmes. So music, and radio in particular, was a big part of my life from a very early age, but we didn’t have a record player so I was a late developer when it came to buying albums. The first was probably ABBA’s Arrival. I remember how it gave me actual chills and goosebumps from the sheer ecstasy of the music. From that point on there was no looking back.
I think my gateway into music was the test card soundtrack played during BBC TV downtime in the early 70s I particularly remember I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman by Whistling Jack Smith. It probably led to my lifelong preference for a catchy tune rather than any lyrical depth in the music I love.
I heard Good Vibrations on the radio. I was probably 5 or 6. I went into school the next day and, for some reason, asked my teacher about it. I must have spoken to my parents about it too as a couple of days later, they had borrowed the Beach Boys 20 Golden Greats from a neighbour and it was taped.
“Electric Warrior”. Everything is contained there.
First album I bought for myself. Remains utterly superb.
Same here and still love it
When I was 4 (1965) my 13-year old brother had a party. Music by The Who and The Rolling Stones was played. At this I met teenage girls who smelled nice and were pretty, who then danced with me to “My Boy Lollipop”; some even cuddled and kissed me. I liked that – a lot. A couple of years later, my brother introduced me to the next level of this familiar trajectory: The Nice, Zappa, Cream, Zep, Lou Reed, and Bowie. Then the naughty boys in 6th form introduced me to their funny cigarettes and record listening in attic bedrooms. And here we are.
Good grief! We’re the same age!! I had assumed from the tenor of some of your posts that you must be older than me, @Vincent…
Mind you, I didn’t have an older sibling…
I’m a proud old fart. But I apparently look youthful.
Good grief! I’m older than both of you!
Yoiks!
Cripes, and I’m even older than @Twang.
Nurse, bring me my ear-trumpet. Nurse! Nurse! Are You DEAF? Nurse!!! Where’s me washboard?
Do you need a wee dear?
No need to faun…
I take false comfort from the fact I am comparatively young compared to boomer AWers.
Whassat? A wee dram? Sure and it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
A wee dear sounds dangerously how someone may foist “Jimmy” Krankie on an unsuspecting elderly innocent.
Cream’s Disraeli Gears set me off down one path in the early 70s, which I followed, with some deviations along the way, but nothing major until 1990.
My wife had heard a Mary-Chapin Carpenter song on the radio and so went out and bought her album Shooting Straight In The Dark.
That was a landmark album that directed me to where I am today.
35 years on, I still love that album.
It is indeed a fantastic album and I don’t think she ever bettered it.
We didn’t have a proper record player when I was a nipper. But I’d already been completely addicted to music by the age of 3.
The radio was always on, and sometimes I could persuade my parents to let me get out the wind-up 78 gramophone that lived in the cupboard in the dining room. My dad had a pretty good collection of 78s – eventually they all ended up being donated to the local hospital radio station – and I would happily blast out whatever took my fancy; mostly orchestral pieces, some opera and light opera, a bit of Caruso, some comedy songs, all sorts. Once my 5 year old arm had managed to over-wind the thing and break the mainspring, it went back into the cupboard on a permanent basis, awaiting the long-promised but never delivered ‘repair’.
The lure of the wonders I heard on the radio at breakfast (Buddy Holly – The Beatles – Helen Shapiro – Cliff – The Shadows – Elvis – Lulu – Dusty – Petula etc.) eventually reached unavoidable levels of demand for a new record player, but I still had to wait. I listened on friends record players when I could. I got my own little transistor radio, which seemed to burn through batteries (PP9s?) at an alarming speed.
My list of records I wanted to acquire just grew and grew. Finally, around the time I was starting my secondary education, mum and dad came home from ‘the shops’ one day with a big box they couldn’t have carried between them which turned out to contain the grail; a ‘stereo’. Hallelujah!
Finally, I could save up to buy my own very first disc, and I could subject it to the little rim-driven turntable, its ceramic cartridge and the heft of 15W per channel.
All of which is a long winded way of describing how the music that first hooked me was not anything I actually bought at the time I heard it – I couldn’t do so – it was simply exposure to lots of music via the radio and my parents’ own choices. I’ve spent the nearly seven decades since then doing my utmost to satisfy the cravings started back then just by listening.
We seemed to have the radio on a lot when growing up too. If I liked a song, I really really yearned to hear it again and you never knew when that was going to be. Tony Blackburn is very much in my early 1970s memory, so much so that my pals and I were 100% sure that our school’s Headmaster – Mrs Blackburn – was clearly Tony Blackburn’s wife. What other explanation could there be?
It was the opposite for me. The radio in Ireland was a wasteland until the pirates kicked in and I was grown ass man of 11 by then. Years before that there were all the records in the house, by which I mean the 7” singles (the LPs: Oklahoma, Slim Whitman, Val Doonican etc interested me not). I don’t remember when I started playing them, so I must have been very young. But even more than playing them I remember holding them and – yes, reader smelling them and staring at things like Marc Bolan’s picture on the T Rex records and memorising writers, producers, labels etc like an absolute fetishist. (Not always wise, allowing for the amount of errors on record labels. For example, right into my forties I was certain the name of the EIOH had the unusual spelling of Ken Booth, because that was what was printed on the single in our house, and we had no other to correct the mistake..)
I don’t recall my parents being big music fans – I remember my mum loved Cliff Richard and my dad listened to some Country & Western, so my gateway was probably via Top Of The Pops.
The first single I bought was “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen when I would have been 11 or 12 and I think the first album I bought was Queen / Jazz. I still have a soft spot for Queen.
With the Beatles for me. The first LP I ever owned, and still my all-time favourite pop album.
Santa brought me that LP in 1963, even though we didn’t have a record player. A dansette used to visit every week, though.
I spent a lot of time looking at it. Then, I coloured the white “Parlophone” yellow.
Born in ‘62 I think it was when I was 10 and all the gorgeous, futuristic glam rockers swept away all before them. The Sweet, Chicory Tip, Bowie – who was probably an alien, Mott the Hoople, T-Rex, Slade, loved it all. Glitter was my drug of choice.
I had had a toy Beatles acoustic guitar a few years earlier – like everyone, but apart from Hard Days Night none of their music seemed to stick with me.
K-Tel. 40 Number one Hits. 1977
False start – Discovery and Out of the Blue. Real start – Parallel Lines, Setting Sons, Argybargy, Eat to the Beat.
I must admit ELO was a “false start” for me too – and my friend who turned into a huge, huuuge Crass-lovin’ anarchist punk type. He completely disowned everything he liked and got all cross if I ever brought it up (he also really liked Grease…).