Are rock and roll fans born or made? What is the combination of influences that causes someone to be touched so deeply by little more than sound and concept? Why is it that some people are able to enjoy music while not caring about it, and others take it as some sort of personal religion?

I can only speak for myself, but I think it has been a combination of both nature and nurture. Perhaps it began with my father's Sunday afternoon tradition of "having a beer with Hank(Williams)". Every Sunday, we'd go down to the cemetery, and he would drink five out of a six-pack, leaving that last one open for "ol' Hank". I'd play, as children do, but I saw, even then, how much it moved him to have this personal sort of communion, and I guess it made an impression. So much so that I asked for my first stereo when I was five years old.

Now, in today's world, that's not such a big thing. The marketers even TARGET the preschool set these days. But in the Seventies, it was usually a rite of passage to go beyond the tinny sound of a clock radio and into the world of vinyl....Forty-fives, the irritating adapters, picture sleeves....Today, the experience isn't as heady as it was then, with all the attendant baggage. But I was five years old and asking for something that my teenaged brothers and sisters weren't even asking for. And, amazingly, I got it.

But I wasn't the type to sit there and listen to "kiddie records." Oh, no... I wasn't allowed to have my own records yet, but I did just fine with Mom's Janis Joplin and Dad's Tanya Tucker, and everyone's Elvis Presley. It was about this time that Elvis died, and, living in Memphis, I saw just how a world could change overnight. There was something uniting about Elvis. As Lester Bangs said, "We will never again agree on anything as we did on Elvis." And it's true. Even by the time of his death, the rock audience had fractured into hundreds of pieces, where today it's in millions. I can, if I choose, never listen to ANYTHING recorded since 1990, if I want to�even over the commercial airwaves. Whatever my particular passion, I can curl up with it. But I won't ever get to share that universality that once meant so much to fans. 

Finally, as I was approaching fourth grade, my parents decided that I had taken well-enough care of my equipment that I could begin to get my own records. Gone were the Frank Zappa LPs that I had cherished....replaced by Olivia Newton-John, Hall and Oates, and other forms of vapid insipidity. The first full-length album (for to me, they are still albums) that was ALL mine was Stevie Nicks' Bella Donna--so I supposed even the worst tastes of a pre-teen sometimes take root in something real. By this time, I was living with my teenaged cousin and began to devour Hit Parader as if it were Biblical truth. Scarily enough, to this day, I recall a five-month series of articles that covered each member of REO Speedwagon in-depth. Or as much depth as Hit Parader ever allowed.

I was lucky, I suppose. Through that cousin, I was exposed to REO Speedwagon, Journey, Styx, and every other forgettable AOR hack. Through my father, I was exposed to "the best of country music, old and new". Through my mother, it was Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, Bette Midler. And through my siblings, welcome in heavy metal with AC/DC, Van Halen, Triumph, and Judas Priest. Interestingly, I think it was the sheer range and variety that made it all matter so much to me. No matter what I felt, there was a song that expressed it. And, amazingly, there were others like me. The music press, floundering along in the first days of celebrity journalism, as opposed to true reportage, still seemed to hold itself out as a glittering prize, and I latched on as if I were drowning in a sea of molten vinyl. 

It's easy to remember the Seventies as "when punk ruled" or the early Eighties as "Dawn of the New Wave", but to this Top 40 chick, it was a world of "housewife rock" and more of that insipid vapidity I referred to earlier. 

Marty Balin's "Hearts", Dave Edmunds' "Slippin' Away"...it was, truly, the death of rock and roll as it had been, but it was still able to move me in a way that nothing else could. There was some truly groundbreaking music being made, but I never discovered it until later. I didn't care that "Hungry Heart" was a shining gem of pop craftsmanship. I just liked that it made bounce up and down. And so that I could carry that obsession with music into the hours when I couldn't listen to music, I asked for a subscription to Rolling Stone.

Now, by the early Eighties, Rolling Stone was a mere shell of what it had been, but I didn't know that at the time. To me, this was vital, important journalism, and I was the ONLY one of my classmates who, first of all, had her own subscription and secondly, read it from cover to cover every two weeks. My mother always operated on the principle that if I couldn't understand what I was reading, it wouldn't affect me. How wrong she was! 

Because from those pages, I learned that it was better to be brassy and sassy than it was to be quiet and classy. I began to emulate the attitudes I saw displayed on those pages, and I took it to heart as if it were the gospel according to Richie Sambora.

Funny, by the time my friends caught up to where I was, I was viewed as somewhat of a trendsetter. Because I had already covered the ground they were covering, I was free to go backwards and pick up all the classics that I had missed in my "youth". As they were devouring the latest Madonna, I was able to point out that Debbie Harry had done it all before. As they gushed over the funk-rock synthetics of Prince, I was able to point them in the direction of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. When the Bangles hit the airwaves, I was able to point out that they were treading the same ground as the Go-Gos before them, and before that, the Runaways, the Shangri-Las. There was nothing new under the sun, and by then, I knew it.

Maybe that's why I was so ripe for the hair band explosion, which was, at heart, a very traditionalist music form, while still carrying what pretended to be a new look. It wasn't because it was good; it wasn't because it was new; it was because it was none of those things. As Rik Emmett put it, "I'm young, I'm wild, and I'm free....got the magic power of the music in me...." And while it has sometimes trickled away, somehow, it's always remained my religion. And here I am, today, doing what I never thought possible. Being, to some extent, a part of it. And it doesn't really matter how it came to be--all that matters is that it is what it is.
 

antiMUSIC columnist Marie Braden is a veteran rock journalist and photographer.   Read Marie's other monthly column for antiMUSIC - Hair Today!