“I was lucky to have had an older brother who left his Bob Dylan and Ramones albums lying around.”
“But the first time I heard his Queen albums, I was floored by the sound of their harmonies. I used to lock myself into my bedroom in 9th and 10th grade and learn each of the harmony parts and piece together my own arrangements. I knew their songs inside and out.
One day I went to a local record shop with my friends and we were looking at all the albums we couldn’t afford. That’s when I spotted the import section. They had a Japanese import of Queen’s A Day At The Races. I went straight from hand-me-down LPs to buying the most expensive.
I had no money, and that import was priced at nearly twice as much as the U.S. version, but the Japanese script was so pretty, and the album was wrapped in a thick plastic sleeve with a colorful printed cuff around it. The vinyl was so THICK, that I knew it would last longer than my other Queen records, which I had practically worn through.
I started saving up that day. I had a paper route and I figured that in three weeks I’d have enough money to buy the album. I went to the store twice a week to make sure nobody else had bought it, and on the day that I had enough money, I walked into that store like it was a shrine, and I picked the album out of the rack and brought it to the front counter.
The guys working at the store were all older (20-something) local musicians — they were all gods to me. When the guy behind the counter looked at my selection, than at me, he went to the register and typed in $5.00! He had made a mistake! The sticker price was $17.99 as I recall. He just winked and took my $5.00 bill and it felt like I won the lottery!
The store closed down long ago…bankruptcy! As it turned out, that cashier was a top drummer, who has backed a number of artists over the years, including me as my own career evolved, and even today when we do a gig together, I look back fondly on those days of magic and discovery.
—Maura Kennedy
“The first record I bought was The Beatles, “She Loves You” on Swan records, a 7 inch with a black label that featured a slogan, “Don’t drop out.”
“Aside from the obvious significance of this seventy nine cent purchase at Woolworth’s; that Beatlemania was the catalyst for sweeping social change as the baby boomers came into their own, there was also a personal sort of revolution, as I, like thousands of others of my generation, basically dedicated our lives to rock’n’roll.
Their irreverent camaraderie redefined success for us, and the irresistible hook line, “yeah, yeah, yeah” was a clarion call to a new Technicolor future that would supplant the black-and-white world of the Fifties.
Another interesting note: The Beatles were Capitol Records flagship artists of the decade, but their early US singles were on small independent labels, like Swan, Tollie, and Vee-Jay. That was because Capitol assured EMI, the British parent label, that the group had no chance of success in the US, and they gave George Martin the go ahead to shop them to whoever would take them.
The moral of that story should be clear. If you believe in yourself, keep calm and carry on, and don’t let any self-appointed gatekeepers try to keep you from your dream. Even The Beatles had a long struggle to get their art to the audience that they deserved, so we can all take heart and say “yeah, yeah, yeah”, when someone tries to tell us, “no, no, no.”
—Pete Kennedy
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The Kennedy’s brand new release, Closer Than You Know is in stores on August 21.
