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The peers of my time were to excel the social imagination of our forefathers. There had been a civil war where music and drug culture dug a wide chasm between parent and child, brother and sister, etc. This war-time generation was convinced that adults over thirty were not to be trusted and that our national involvement in Vietnam was proof enough that we were mere pawns in the governments devisive hands. Assasination, conspiracy and contempt for authority characterized the citizenry to which I was bred. Despite the outpouring of spiritual revival, (like Azusa street) Judeo Christian values were vehemently challenged by the followers of social designers like Timothy Leary, Kinsey, Ghandi, Buddha, and Karl Marx and Planned Parenthood to name a few. Children borne in 1960 such as I had a world of emotional hurt to negotiate in our coming of age. How to find our nitch in the midst of such social choas and anarchy was overwhelming to those like me. It was Seattle, Washington, 1960. After a stay in a home for unwed mothers I was rushed in my mothers belly across the street to Providence Hospital in due time. Mother Joanie (17) packed our bags six months later. A small, conservative Washington town was no place for a love-child to grow up, so off we flew to the south-western shore of Sunny San Diego, a multicultural Twilight Zone. As a pre-teen I first learned of American life through music. My love for pop music grew song by song, listening to my lime-green Radio Shack A.M. radio nightly, tucked under my pillow. War songs were prevelant on the airwaves. Troubadours like the Beatles, Stones, Creedance Clearwater Revival, Tommy James and The Moody Blues kept me mesmerized and dreaming of a day when I could craft listener-worthy tunes of my own. Wolfman Jack, Casey Kasem, Dick Clark and "The Real Don Steel" were the D.J.'s of the day. At Twelve, I was inspired with songs that depicted a search for inner peace. I heard the pure and simple acoustic songs of John Denver and one day at sunset time I perched myself high in the front-yard tree nestled on a hill of ivy with a notepad and charmed my first lyrical song. As the Sun sunk slowly into the painted horizon in waves of orange, pink and purple, I hummed the now forgotten melody and the words to that first song that I named "Nature Boy". That Christmas in 1972, I got my first guitar. I was twelve then. My first 45 rpm record was Lynn Andersons "Rose Garden". My first album was a Christmas gift from my folks by Jackie De Shannon and it had that tune with the lyrics: "What the World Needs now ...is love sweet love...it's the only thing that theres just too little of"... The soft-pop influence grew....but I loved it when synthesier rock began catching my attention; Genesis, Yes, Gary Wright, etc. |
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