- I Want to Be a Part of It: Popular Music and Me An Honors Thesis (HONRS 499) by William L. Allen Thesis Advisors Dr. Tony Edmonds Mr. Stan Sollars Ball State University Muncie, Indiana April 1996 May 1996 (expected graduation date) " , " - I .~.!~, Author's Note: IA6~ What you are about to read is basically my autobiography. It concerns my relationship with popular music, which, outside of family and friends, is the most important part of my life. It's a relationship that has been going on for more than two decades, and I feel it is worth close examination on my part. For my senior thesis, I decided to perform my own concert. I would like more than anything in life to be an entertainer. Since show business is so hard to get into (and be successful), I thought I should perform while I still had the chance--before I had to settle down and get a real job. The written part, which you are now reading, is very informal. Throughout high school, I was always told not to use contractions and not to write in the informal second person. I've always questioned this. After all, it's my work. Who has the right to tell me what I can and can not put in it? I write in a very conversational style. When I tell a story, it helps if I feel as though I'm conversing with or writing a letter to you, the reader. Consequently, I use the pronoun "you" from time to time. I use contractions because that's how we as human beings speak. I refuse to apologize for being human. --William L. Allen, 1996 - 2 - Chapter 1: Popular Music and Its Influence on My Life -- 3 "Music is the key that unlocks stored memories." --Nic Allen, Interview, December 1995. It's safe to say that popular music has had a greater impact on my life than perhaps any other form of popular culture. When I look back on my life, I remember the music that was playing in the background. But I never gave it much thought until I was about twelve. I get my taste in music and appreciation of it from my parents, particularly my father. Dad used to put me to sleep with Santana and Iron Butterfly when I was a baby. Most people think that using rock music to lull a child to sleep is odd--it would seem inore logical to put a child to sleep with classical pieces of music like Brahms' Lullaby. Dad used classical music as well, but he has been a fan of Santana since they first became popular in the late 1960s. From what I understand, their music worked well when it was time to put me down for the night. I still can sleep like a baby to Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen and Samba Pa Ti. My musical recollections of my early childhood during the late 1970s stem primarily from my mother's record collection and the radio. I spent a great deal of time with Mom during the day when I was little since I wasn't in school yet and Dad worked. She played records of mainly four artists: Joan Baez; Judy Collins; Peter, Paul and Mary; and (her favorite) John - Denver. I've since lost my taste for all of them except Peter, Paul and 4 - Mary. I'm not really sure why. I guess maybe I just outgrew them. But I still like to listen to the harmonies of Peter, Paul and Mary. I often kid Mom about her music saying that she traumatized me as a child by making me listen to John Denver since I really can't stand to listen to him now. I find his voice really annoying for some reason. I have absolutely no idea why this is. I don't think he's that bad, I just don't like to hear him. I have the same problem with Neil Diamond. Trying to explain why I don't like to hear these men sing is like trying to scientifically explain religion. Sometimes, there are certain things in life that just go way beyond scientific reasoning. This is one of those things. Through the radio, I heard songs that were hits at the time. I consciously remember hearing songs like Miss You (1978) by the Rolling Stones, Slip Sliding Away (1977) by Paul Simon, My Life (1978) by Billy Joel, You're In My Heart (The Final Acclaim) (1977) by Rod Stewart, and Heartache Tonight (1979) by the Eagles, but at the time I didn't know the names of the songs or even who sang them. I don't even think I really liked them. I still don't like Heartache Tonight--I think I'm the only guy in the world who really doesn't like the Eagles. They sound like an unholy mixture of country and (sometimes) disco which really does not appeal to me at all. Through elementary school, durIng the early to mid-1980s, I was fairly unimpressed with the music of the time. I felt that there were too .- 5 - many synthesizers, which were popular at the time, and it made the music almost too synthetic. It didn't sound like rock 'n' roll to me. It didn't even really sound like good music. It sounded like musical sound effects. I'm not knocking synthesizers. I think they have their place in popular music, I just don't think they should be overused. Synthesizers make good background instruments. I don't think they should be brought into the forefront of the music because it tends to overshadow the real instruments. Having just come out of disco, a popular style of dance music of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which also underwhelmed me, I started to avoid popular music. At that time, I didn't make a distinction between what I liked and what I thought was good. I'm still not overly fond of disco, but when I listen to it now, particularly the soundtrack from the film Saturday Night Fever, I get nostalgic, remembering my childhood. I remember listening to (and liking) early rock 'n' roll from the 1950s, such as Bill Haley and the Comets, as well as the works of Henry Mancini (hardly what you would call a rock 'n' roller) and the Mamas and the Papas (my father had this weird thing for Mama Cass Elliot, so he played a lot of their music). Then, in the summer of 1986, something happened that changed my life forever. During that summer, my uncle became the first in the family to own a compact disc player just when they were beginning to become popular. For my father, he dubbed onto cassette Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits - 6 - as well as the second disc of the Rolling Stones' Hot Rocks collection. I became an instant fan of both groups, particularly the Stones. I was twelve at the time. I had never heard anything quite like the Stones before in my life. I was totally fascinated by the music and have been ever since. For the first time in my life, rock 'n' roll actually sounded like real music to me. I listened to that tape so much, I'm surprised I didn't wear it out. To this day, whenever I think back to that summer, I can't help but think of Bridge Over Troubled Water and You Can't Always Get What You Want. From that point forward, music, particularly rock 'n' roll, has been an integral part of my life. I often think back to a particular time of my life and can remember what music was playing in the backgound at that moment. For example, I'll always remember driving back from my senior prom at three in the morning listening to Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volume I and Volume II in the tape deck of my date's car and singing at the top of our lungs (we listened to Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits on the way there). I look at rock 'n' roll the way I see other people look at sports. Throughout elementary school, I knew people who followed the game of baseball. They knew all the stats, all the players, all the teams. By the time I left high school, I became that way with rock music. I would listen to oldies or classic rock on the radio and within the first few notes of a song, I could name the song, the artist, the year it was done, and if I was really - 7 - good, I could even tell you what album it came from. I began to read album credits religiously. I like to know that the Rolling Stones recorded Paint It, Black in 1966 for the album Aftermath and the song went to number one on the charts in June of that year. Nobody else would ever care (except maybe rock 'n' roll historians). As I write this, I'm listening to the radio and I'm quite pleased that I can identify the song as Sympathy For the Devil by the Rolling Stones who recorded the song in 1968 for the album Beggars Banquet. Once I got to college in 1992, my taste in music became more eclectic. I started listening to more jazz and blues music and actually started to develop a taste for artists that I didn't care for in high school, like Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart.