As you might remember if you’re male, if you clung to rock music as a life raft in the choppy waters of teenage life, more than anything, you would have wanted to share this passion with a girl. But as culture would have it, they were traditionally not enamoured with sitting for an hour listening to ELP. They might have enjoyed it but, in my experience anyway, you would appear more attractive if you played some Motown.
There must be legions of girls whose teenage years were passed being forced to listen to Uriah Heep or Black Sabbath by long-haired boyfriends. We meant well, honestly, we were just gauche and full of the one-eyed focus that comes naturally to teenage boys.
So it was that girls who were into rock music were in short supply and those that were, were much desired. ‘She likes Genesis’ we’d whisper in awe, as though she was a rare orchid. I often wonder if there were girls who didn’t like rock music but pretended they did to attract boys. I never met anyone who did. Same as I don’t remember any girl having a painting of an album on the flap of a haversack, but just about every boy did.
Anyway, let me take you back to 1977 and a 16 year-old me, virtually bursting with hormones and teenage lust. A boy who could bore for Britain about Deep Purple and frequently did, when a girl who I had not previously noted emerged into my social circle. In hindsight, I think she had just decided to adopt a hippy look and had bloomed into this vision of scarcely believable beauty. I wasn’t just smitten, I was a drooling mess, completely unable to even speak in her presence. And one day she came to school with an album by Rough Diamond, who you may remember were Dave Byron’s band post Uriah Heep. This scored 11 out of 10 on my credibility scale and this was love. How could you not fall in love with a girl who had a Rough Diamond album?
In hindsight I think I didn’t want reality to defile my vision and being unable to talk to her meant I could keep her on a pedestal. Obviously this was a teenage crush but you remember how all-consuming they were. The strange thing about this is I think it was as much the album as her that I was in awe of, which just goes to show what a rock nerd I was. Of course, by the time I was 17, the crush had been somewhat abated. The intensity of my emotions fell away as quickly as they came and I no longer judged girls by what albums they had. I bet you had a similar experience, I hope so, it can’t be just me.
Or so I thought. Because when I met Dawn aged 18, I was impressed she had Cricklewood Green by Ten Years After and Hermit Of Mink Hollow and I can’t say it didn’t influence my feelings but as a sign how sophisticated I had become, I didn’t object to the soul and disco records. And at the time in 1980, I was definitely one of those people who would look through your record collection and make a judgement about you. This got so bad that when a previously rock embracing mate, changed ’sides’ and started listening to The Human League. I argued with him, to my embarrassment, that Bob Seger was both musically and even morally superior, so vehemently that he threw me out the house and had to sleep on Kings Cross Station.
Thankfully, I’m no longer so stupid. And understand that people can have some great albums and be awful people. I learned that the hard way. I wonder what happened to the 16-year-old girl and what her album collection is like and whether it still includes Rough Diamond?
