I have a small part in the 1987 television movie (failed pilot) version of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Lewis Smith played the titular character. Beverly D’Angelo played my mom, his love interest. (Fun Star Trek connection: Bob Picardo is also in it).
My character was a Troubled Youth, which I gotta tell you was not a stretch for me at all. I was deeply, deeply hurting at the time we made it. I was struggling not to suffocate on all the emotional and financial burdens my mom put on my shoulders, and fully aware of just how much my dad hated and resented me. You need a kid who doesn’t want to be an actor, whose eyes can’t hide the pain? I’m your guy.
Anyway, one of the scenes I was in took place in a record store, where Troubled Youth steals some albums, before he is chased by the cops and The Man Who Fell To Earth, uses a glowing crystal to save his life from … some scratches on his face.
We filmed the interior of the record store at Sunset and La Brea, in what I think was a Warehouse Records and Tapes, and at the end of the day, I was allowed to buy some records at a modest discount.
I was deep into my metal years, on my way from my punk years to my New Wave years, so I only bought metal albums. I know I bought more than I needed or could carry (I was making a point that I was allowed to spend my own money, mom), but the only ones I can clearly remember are:
Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind
Judas Priest – Turbo and Defenders of the Faith
W.A.S.P – The Last Command
Of those, Piece of Mind is the only one I never really stopped listening to, even through all the different it’s-not-a-phase phases. I still listen to it, today.
Ever since I became an Adult with a Fancy Adult Record Player And All That Bullshit, I have kept my records in two places: stuff I want right now, and stuff I keep in the library because of Reasons.
Generally, records move in one direction toward the library, even if it takes years to happen. I just don’t accumulate albums like I once did, because I’m Old and set in my ways, and every album in the library was something I loved listening to at some point in my life, even if I’ve mostly forgotten them.
Earlier today, I decided that I wanted to listen to an album while I cleaned up the kitchen, and because I wanted to make my life more interesting, I opened the library cabinet for the first time in at least five years. I reached in, and pulled out the first album I touched.
It was the very same W.A.S.P album from that day in March, 1987. I don’t have any of the others — I looked — but The Last Command was right there. I looked at it, curiously. Why do I still have this?
Before I fully knew what I was doing, I put it on the Fancy Adult Record Player and dropped the needle.
I watched four decades of dust build up with a satisfying crackle, and there was something magical and beautiful about hearing all the skips and the scratches, realizing I remembered them from before.
The first track, Wild Child, was just as great as I remembered. It struck all the same chords in me that it did in the late nineteen hundreds. The rest of the first side was … um. It just didn’t connect with me, and during the few moments I spent trying to find a connection, I realized that I don’t think it ever really did. I would remember.
What I did remember how much I loved making those mix tapes, and what a big part of them that song was. I did remember how empowering it felt to not just spend my own money that I earned doing work I didn’t want to do, but to spend it on music my parents hated, right under their noses. I did remember how impressed Robby Lee was, when I showed him my extensive heavy metal album collection, and he gave me a cassette with Screaming for Vengeance on one side, and Metal Health on the other, on one of those iconic Memorex tapes.
Remembering all of that, in one of those cinematic flashes of rapid cut visuals and sped up sounds, told me why I kept this record, while I gradually sold or replaced the other records I bought that day with CDs, then mp3s, then lossless digital files, before finally coming all the way back to records, where I started. This record lives in the library for reasons that have nothing to do with the music.
I didn’t listen to the second side. I didn’t need to. I took it off the Fancy Adult Record Player, and put it back into the library, next to the George Carlin records.
Music is a powerful tool to bring back memories.
It’s always amazed me how records contain so much more than the music held within their groves.
How DARE you file a “W” next to a “C”!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Just curious…. What is your filing system?
Long after my mom stopped having a turntable, I got to have her records, and once in a while I put on her LP of ‘Peter, Paul, and Mommy’ which immediately takes me back to 1981 in our apartment complex. Such a good record. It’s eerie the sensations one gets when hearing a familiar well loved disk! Thank you for sharing, Wil! I still watch Stand By Me once in a while but it is painful to see now that I know your truth. Love and Peace to you
Robert
Never really got into Metal, except for a 1 cassette diversion to Megadeth, but 100% appreciate you thoughts and memories. I don’t intentionally listen to the 80s music that defined my high school and college years, all KROQ all the time. But, on occasion, a song pops up on someone’s IG post that takes me back and I remember why it moved me so at that time in my life. Thanks, Wil, for validating those moments.
George Carlin. Ah, memories. 🙂
Music does that, though, doesn’t it? Takes us on a trip through time, through our memories, back to when we heard it and it meant something, or it played during a momentous occasion. There’s a reason I’m a musician at heart, despite not having picked up my instruments in decades. I still sing once in a while, for karaoke or something. But music lives in me.
I hear you on the spending YOUR money on things THEY hated. My parents mooched off my ex and I for years, demanding we support them, and my incubator would scrutinize EVERY penny I spent, voicing her displeasure over everything I bought that SHE didn’t approve of. Until I reminded her (LOUDLY) that it was MINE and MY HUSBAND’S money, not hers, and that it was MY income paying the rent. If she didn’t like it, she could find other accommodation.
You’re a good man, Wil.
I was 8 in ’87 but my sisters are 8 and 9 years older than me and were into metal and I wanted to do everything they did so I watched Power Hour – the Canadian heavy metal show on Much Music (our MTV) I used to sing along to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. When I was 6 I knew all the lyrics to Number of the Beast which all their friends thought was the cutest thing but since our parents forced them to bring me everywhere with them they couldn’t stand me.
When I was 10 I found Jane’s Addiction. I came home from school one day after my regular day of being bullied and went to my room to be alone like I did every day and watch music videos. I still distinctly remember the announcer “this is a new video from Jane’s Addiction – it’s just wild – It’s called Been Caught Stealing!” and I watched and my little brain was just blown away by the weirdness I was watching. These people were sort of like Pee-Wee but rock and roll and REALLY cool and super weird, which is what everyone always called me… and I didn’t think that was a good thing. But they doing it on TV for everyone to see and it was cool. And all of a sudden I felt not so alone in the world and there was people out there that were cool and weird. Back then the programming repeated every 4 hours so I knew shortly after 8 pm the video would be on again and I was glued to the TV excited to watch it again and observe it more carefully. I wanted to soak it in but I couldn’t help but stim. I danced.
I would never give away my first CD: Rollins Band – Weight. Still listening to it for Reasons, as you write.
I miss the old Amoeba records.
Thank you for sharing this. It gives me a different perspective, now that I have a sense of what you were going through back then, as I rewatch TNG with my husband and kids. We just started season 3.
Here comes an offhand comment: when I was growing up, the mere sight of me angered my dad to no end. He couldn’t stand me. He has some kind of dementia now, and I have to say it is a relief.
I had a metal phase too. In my “angry/depressed” years. I don’t even know where I got them from… Scorpions and Krokus were my favs. I’d bounce between that on Depeche Mode, which I can not listen to now (50), the sounds throw me right back there. Funny how much power music has on us and our mental/emotional states.
I still own all those albums…on cd. Maybe some on vinyl. I branched out to a lot of different genres of music, but I still love those. Especially Maiden!