It is now June 2025. And what a decade it’s been just since last September. But I'm not here to talk about that, because I think we've had enough of the heavy stuff. So I must reiterate that this year marks an important milestone in the life of your grandmother.
I am 16. (Hence the previous post about the birthday party).
He got it to me a couple of weeks later and I thought it was great. I had grown tired of Top 40 stuff, and needed a "boost." I wasn't fond of Tina Turner's new album (Break Every Rule) and Bryan Adams' Reckless was okay but not heavy enough. The "heaviest" album I owned was a cassette of Van Halen's 1984, because EVERYBODY had a copy of 1984, but I wasn't a huge Van Halen fan at the time. That would come later. (There were complaints about this album, what with the keyboards and all, but I really don't think Van Halen gave a crap).
Rockin' with Dokken, though? Brilliant! Something about George Lynch's guitar tones...It called to me. "Alone Again?" The penultimate power ballad. On the end of this cassette, I had enough room to bootleg a few songs from somebody's copy of Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil." That might have been from Eric Dodson. He lived across the street from my best friend Christine and I vaguely remember being in his room looking at Circus Magazine while we were copying songs...I could be wrong though but that sounds legit. Those songs included "Shout at the Devil," "Looks That Kill," "Too Young to Fall in Love", and "God Bless the Children of the Beast."
I also took that Crue magazine and Christine and I taped the picture of Nikki wearing nothing but a towel to the back of the hotel room door. I doubt housekeeping ever saw it, but we thought we were being so rebellious. The day we went to the Smithsonian, I wore my unconstructed white jacket with the black random stripes and listening to “Helter Skelter” the whole time.
I have been an official rocker chick for forty years. Let me explain, and see if I can get the timeline right. It’s been a minute or two.
The year is 1985. Uncle Danny is only 5 years old. Aunt Tiffany is only 3. Aunt Storm, Aunt Kattie, and Aunt Cassie are barely even idle thoughts. Poppa Don is 24 years old and still in the Marine Corps.
I am 16. (Hence the previous post about the birthday party).
(Contemplate the age differences later, please, before you really start to think about it.) Moving on.
Ronald Reagan is president and the top TV shows are The Cosby Show and Miami Vice. There is no Internet. Mobile phones are the size of canned hams and ridiculously expensive. MTV is playing music videos. ALL DAY LONG. Shocking, yes. Those were the days.
Now, in the ultra right-wing, conservative burg of Mena, Arkansas, MTV was The Devil. Even though it was part of local cable programming, it wasn't included in the channel lineup available at the McChristian residence on Gary Drive. But...thanks to some insider information provided by one of the high school secretaries, I was able to bootleg it through Dad's early-acquired birthday/Father's Day gift: A VCR purchased at a local video rental store for the whopping amount of approximately $400.
I'm not kidding. It cost that much. It was the size of a small lawn mower and had a remote control with a WIRE. The remote had three buttons: play, fast forward, and stop. It MIGHT have had a rewind button but I don't think so. Or record? I can't remember. You had to change channels by pushing buttons on the front panel of the VCR, numbered 1-20. On the top of VCR, next to the pop-up tape loader, was a panel you could lift up and assigned to each of the 20 channels were these little levers you could switch into 3 positions. On Channel 4, you could move the lever into position 2, then turn this little knob for more accurate tuning, and VOILA!!! MTV!!! For FREE!!!
It stayed on ALL DAY that summer, at least until Mom and Dad got home from work. I saw "Bad is Bad" by Huey Lewis and "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen A LOT. But there was this show that came on? Called "Heavy Metal Mania? Hosted by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. Or at least the first episode was. The second one, which didn't air until September, was hosted by Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson.
I'm getting ahead of myself though. I bought blank VHS tapes, 3 to a package, and spent the summer days recording videos. Eight hours worth by the end of the summer, and eight more on a new tape in the fall. Again, I'm jumping the gun. I will get back to this particular playlist later.
Here's what was going on prior to June:
We FINALLY had FBLA March of Dimes Variety Show in April, after it had been postponed twice. I had bullied my cronies into putting on our "Herky & the Zerkx" lip-sync act and we were (sort of) a hit.
During that time I developed a crush on the guy who was our "guitar player", who was a huge Iron Maiden fan and somewhat of a Motley Crue fan. Well, naturally, I needed to become one, too, of course.
I remember getting a ride home from my friend Jay Smith one afternoon and he had a vinyl copy of Dokken's Tooth & Nail in the car. (Why he was carrying around a vinyl LP in the car is anyone's guess but this was long before CDs and streaming so who knows.) Of course, I had to look at it and liked the lyrical content. I asked if he would tape me a copy. (This was old school file-sharing. Someone had an album on whatever medium, vinyl, cassette, or 8-track, and you recorded it onto a blank cassette. We did it ALL THE TIME. And nobody died. Not that I know of, anyway.)
He got it to me a couple of weeks later and I thought it was great. I had grown tired of Top 40 stuff, and needed a "boost." I wasn't fond of Tina Turner's new album (Break Every Rule) and Bryan Adams' Reckless was okay but not heavy enough. The "heaviest" album I owned was a cassette of Van Halen's 1984, because EVERYBODY had a copy of 1984, but I wasn't a huge Van Halen fan at the time. That would come later. (There were complaints about this album, what with the keyboards and all, but I really don't think Van Halen gave a crap).
Rockin' with Dokken, though? Brilliant! Something about George Lynch's guitar tones...It called to me. "Alone Again?" The penultimate power ballad. On the end of this cassette, I had enough room to bootleg a few songs from somebody's copy of Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil." That might have been from Eric Dodson. He lived across the street from my best friend Christine and I vaguely remember being in his room looking at Circus Magazine while we were copying songs...I could be wrong though but that sounds legit. Those songs included "Shout at the Devil," "Looks That Kill," "Too Young to Fall in Love", and "God Bless the Children of the Beast."
Author's Note: At this writing, I could not locate this cassette but I know I still have it somewhere.
Eventually, I ended up with a REAL copy of Shout At the Devil. And well, the rest is history.
I bought a copy of a "Motley Crue Special Edition" magazine, most likely published by Hit Parader, from Madd-Ox Grocery (used to be Piggly Wiggly and is now James' SuperFoods), and well....the rest is history. I thought Nikki Sixx was the coolest person in the world. He had black hair and green eyes (like me) and he played the bass.
So, that was what I was going to play, too.
I had this epiphany. College was still two years away but I was on the fence about what I wanted to study when I got there because there was no doubt I was going. Drama? Journalism? Music? It had to be something artsy-fartsy, of course. Now that I was up to my ears in "heavy metal" and it was taking over my soul...Music won. My mind was made up. Rock stardom was calling.
I would hoard lunch money to buy Circus Magazine. I think I bought my first one at Walmart. The May 1985 issue with "Rock on Tour" on the cover. I ready EVERY WORD in it, from the full-page ads to the classifieds in the back. I did this every months for another three years - and I still have them all. I cut out pictures of my “Top Ten Metal Men,” glued them to poster board, and tacked them to my bedroom wall as well as the inside of my lockers at school. I still have those, too. They’re priceless, y‘know. Not only did I skip lunch for Circus, but also for Hit Parader, Faces, a couple of copies of Kerrang, and Metal Edge, which was one of my favorites. It had great photos.
When the Star Wars posters came down and the Motley posters went up, so did Mom and Dad's blood pressure.
Allow me to back up once again, though. Every minute of that year was ridiculously important so I don’t want to forget. Keep in mind that “We Are the World” had come out earlier that year and was HUGE. I had just spent the night at Christine’s house over on Cole Street the morning they announced the Live Aid Concert on MTV. I think it was Alan Hunter with Bob Geldof? Anyway, that was a big deal. We watched it together at her Mama Jean's house in Fort Worth, on July 13th that year, Harrison Ford's birthday.
On June 17th through the 22nd of that summer, Christine and I went on a group tour to Washington, DC with a bunch of other kids. My first time in an airplane. My “lil bro” Robbie Sanders was along for the ride, too. I took my somewhat hip 80s, Cyndi Lauper-ish wardrobe, my Radio Shack (or maybe it was RCA) Walkman, my bootleg cassettes, and the Crue’s latest release “Theater of Pain.” (Which I did locate).
I also took that Crue magazine and Christine and I taped the picture of Nikki wearing nothing but a towel to the back of the hotel room door. I doubt housekeeping ever saw it, but we thought we were being so rebellious. The day we went to the Smithsonian, I wore my unconstructed white jacket with the black random stripes and listening to “Helter Skelter” the whole time.
(How do I know the exact date of that trip? I found a boarding pass among some of the junk we just cleared out of Mom and Dad’s house. Wow. I'll add that photo later also.)
I wasn’t hooked up to the Walkman the entire time; I did enjoy the trip and appreciated all that I got to see. I took a lot of pictures with Dad’s 35 mm Minolta, and got them developed fairly quickly after it was over. This brings me to the next phase of that summer.
Stay tuned for Part 2!
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