Pre-Occupied With 1985, Part 4 - The Musician

The decision was made. Music it was going to be. No holds barred. I was most likely one of the most focused, if not completely delusional, sixteen-year-old girls wandering around Mena, Arkansas thinking she was going to be the greatest rock musician in the history of the planet.

Well, I did what I could.

I was already an “Outstanding Girl Musician.” 

I won that title at Junior High Band Camp after the 8th grade. I was destined for greatness.

That was playing the saxophone though. I did choose that because that was the closest thing to a “rock and roll” instrument available. I already knew how to play the piano. I could read music and was pretty good at picking things out by ear. In fact, that was why I quit piano. I played it like I heard it, not like it was written on the page. Sandra Curtis, my piano teacher, was having none of that. This would be a tremendous benefit to me later, though I didn’t know it at the time.

I HAD to play bass. Had to. No ifs, ands, or…but all I had was an old Spaulding tennis racket that I “pretended” to play bass with.

Jumping around my room shouting at the devil and running to the hills. It didn’t quite have the same effect. 

But I did have a PLAN.

Robbie had an old guitar in his closet he never learned to play. No brand name on the headstock. It had three strings on it. I went over to his house one afternoon; door wide open, TV on. Nobody home. Such as it was in Mena, Arkansas in the middle of the summer in the 80s. I took the guitar out of the closet, put it in the car, bought strings at WalMart, and took it home. Figured out by guessing how to string it. I called him that night and said, “I have your guitar.”

His reply: “Oh, great. I’m glad somebody’s gonna learn how to play it.”

I sat down that night with a Mel Bay guitar book that was Liz’s and got to work. The first thing I figured out? The opening bars of Dokken’s “Alone Again.” Well, that was easy! I learned some basic chords, a C scale. Some of other easy exercises in the Mel Bay book, which was Book 2 by the way. Moved on and picked out the opening of Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye” and Dio’s “The Last in Line.”

That’s as far as I got as a lead guitarist. I knew that was never meant to be and I didn’t aspire to that. Everyone wanted to be a stupid guitar god. Or a drummer. Or a lead singer (that would come later). I was going to be different. And be the bass player.

Well, just around the corner from Ye Olde Fabric Shoppe was the only other music store in town, and on display in the window was a bright Red Cort Slammer Bass with MY name on it. If I only got one thing for Christmas, that was going to be it. I didn’t care if I got anything else.

It will be mine. Oh, yes, it will be mine.