Being 8 years younger than Steve, I do not recall seeing him much as a very small child. My mother liked to recall his disappointment when I joined the family. His 8 year old self was not too happy that she was going away to the hospital for some time. She apparently mollified him by saying, "Don't worry, I'll bring you back a new brother." A proposition met with a great deal of excitement. However, when she did finally come back home bearing me in her arms, she was surprised to find him looking resentful: "You said you were bringing me a brother. That's just a baby."
Steve had little interest in a baby brother, so off he went to his adventures to find some real brothers, while I was smothered and coddled in the gushing feminine waves of my loving sisters, cousins, and all of their friends. Steve was an ephemeral figure during this time, lurking on the fringes of my life. He always seemed to be doing something interesting, but I was too young to understand what.
We lived in a large rambling house on 4 acres of horseland in the West Covina hills. Aside from the air pollution blowing in from L.A., it was a pretty fab place to grow up. For some reason Steve had his own room quite isolated from the rest of the family. My sisters, parents, and I all lived clustered in a few bedrooms along a main hall. Continue down this long hall for a while and you arrived at a large open party room. The farthest end of this room presented a homespun bar with rough wooden counters and high stools. Turn left there, and you entered Steve's "lair."
This room was so different from any other in our house. Thick shaggy carpet, floor to ceiling Budweiser beer wallpaper, and a ripping 70s silver strobe globe hanging in the centre in lieu of a light. It was a small room, 75% of which was taken up with a huge waterbed with, you guessed it, Budweiser sheets. Considering Steve designed this room and the bar outside when he was 13, well that is a guy who comes into life knowing what he likes. And what he liked was drinking. Or perhaps doing the opposite of what he was told, since drinking beer was forbidden until 21 years I think? Yes, Steve was quite the rebel through his teens, but more on that in other posts.
As a little 5 to 7 year old, I was fascinated with the alternate universe of "Steve's room" tucked far away from the comfortable normalcy of the rest of the house and lands. Steve was rarely home it seemed, so I often would creep in there and rummage through his stuff.
My first strong memory of contact with him came when I was around 7 years old. Fascinating sounds started flowing, day by day, from his end of the house. Eventually he welcomed me into his listening sessions. In the closet of his small room he had installed an 8 track tape and LP record player, and he had amassed a huge collection of LPs and 8 track tapes.
One day he was playing some hard rock and I started dancing wildly to "Burn" by Deep Purple. A rather wicked song, I vividly recall Steve making a grinning skull face and shaking his head back and forth, his long hippy hair flopping about. I went crazy with play and adulation and soon was tormenting everyone I knew with the "Burn dance."
Steve quickly introduced me to his massive music collection. In 1975 LP jackets were a major art form, and I spent hours studying the intricate designs of the record covers while listening to the music in the background. Rush, 2112 displayed a red blazing pentagram against a background of stars. Yes, Close to the Edge, full of arboreal psychedelic soft painting. Rick Wakeman Journeys to the Centre of the Earth had a vast underground cavern filled with countless faces, evoking something of Michaelangelo. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon with its mysterious prism. The list went on and on: Sly and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Grateful Dead, CSN, Jethro Tull, Average White Band, Supertramp, Earth Wind and Fire, Alan Parson's Project, Stevie Wonder, Commodores, ELO, Foreigner, Steve Miller, Eagles, Genesis, Beatles, Paul McArtney and Wings, and Steve's favourite band of all: Steely Dan. I recall finding one of his Steely Dan album covers particularly fascinating: some sort of cricket or grasshopper submerged in a blurry tank of water. Weird, fascinating, and slightly scary, which is somewhat how I regarded Steve at the time. He was like a mysterious door into a frightening and exciting world beyond my safe parental and sisterly boundaries--happy familiarity defined by Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music cheerful virtue.
There were countless other records I cannot even recall now. Like everything Steve did, his foray into 70s music was done with extreme passion. I do not know where he got his money, but his little closet was 90% filled with LPs. There must have been thousands. Every minute he was home there was some new music coming out of his room. He seemed happy that I liked nothing better than hanging out with him, asking endless questions about music, art, life and whatever else came to mind while the music played. I recall going crazy on a particular song or riff, for example "Life" from Sly and the Family Stone:
Life, Life,
Tell it like it is
You don't have to die before you live
I would enthusiastically request playing that piece over and over. Steve would never argue, but rather say "Yeah, its a nice song. Maybe you would like this too..." and he would put on something else that I never heard before. He always tried to break anyone out of obsessive loops, suggest they constantly try different things, keep growing, learning, expanding, making sure that life was always "fun".
Of course, discerning readers might notice a glaring omission in his early 70s LP libraries: the complete absence of Creedence Clearwater Revival. They might also alarmingly note that he had every Eagles LP. More on this later....
"Life": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOB5vw7aNGc
Steve had little interest in a baby brother, so off he went to his adventures to find some real brothers, while I was smothered and coddled in the gushing feminine waves of my loving sisters, cousins, and all of their friends. Steve was an ephemeral figure during this time, lurking on the fringes of my life. He always seemed to be doing something interesting, but I was too young to understand what.
We lived in a large rambling house on 4 acres of horseland in the West Covina hills. Aside from the air pollution blowing in from L.A., it was a pretty fab place to grow up. For some reason Steve had his own room quite isolated from the rest of the family. My sisters, parents, and I all lived clustered in a few bedrooms along a main hall. Continue down this long hall for a while and you arrived at a large open party room. The farthest end of this room presented a homespun bar with rough wooden counters and high stools. Turn left there, and you entered Steve's "lair."
This room was so different from any other in our house. Thick shaggy carpet, floor to ceiling Budweiser beer wallpaper, and a ripping 70s silver strobe globe hanging in the centre in lieu of a light. It was a small room, 75% of which was taken up with a huge waterbed with, you guessed it, Budweiser sheets. Considering Steve designed this room and the bar outside when he was 13, well that is a guy who comes into life knowing what he likes. And what he liked was drinking. Or perhaps doing the opposite of what he was told, since drinking beer was forbidden until 21 years I think? Yes, Steve was quite the rebel through his teens, but more on that in other posts.
As a little 5 to 7 year old, I was fascinated with the alternate universe of "Steve's room" tucked far away from the comfortable normalcy of the rest of the house and lands. Steve was rarely home it seemed, so I often would creep in there and rummage through his stuff.
My first strong memory of contact with him came when I was around 7 years old. Fascinating sounds started flowing, day by day, from his end of the house. Eventually he welcomed me into his listening sessions. In the closet of his small room he had installed an 8 track tape and LP record player, and he had amassed a huge collection of LPs and 8 track tapes.
One day he was playing some hard rock and I started dancing wildly to "Burn" by Deep Purple. A rather wicked song, I vividly recall Steve making a grinning skull face and shaking his head back and forth, his long hippy hair flopping about. I went crazy with play and adulation and soon was tormenting everyone I knew with the "Burn dance."
Steve quickly introduced me to his massive music collection. In 1975 LP jackets were a major art form, and I spent hours studying the intricate designs of the record covers while listening to the music in the background. Rush, 2112 displayed a red blazing pentagram against a background of stars. Yes, Close to the Edge, full of arboreal psychedelic soft painting. Rick Wakeman Journeys to the Centre of the Earth had a vast underground cavern filled with countless faces, evoking something of Michaelangelo. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon with its mysterious prism. The list went on and on: Sly and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Grateful Dead, CSN, Jethro Tull, Average White Band, Supertramp, Earth Wind and Fire, Alan Parson's Project, Stevie Wonder, Commodores, ELO, Foreigner, Steve Miller, Eagles, Genesis, Beatles, Paul McArtney and Wings, and Steve's favourite band of all: Steely Dan. I recall finding one of his Steely Dan album covers particularly fascinating: some sort of cricket or grasshopper submerged in a blurry tank of water. Weird, fascinating, and slightly scary, which is somewhat how I regarded Steve at the time. He was like a mysterious door into a frightening and exciting world beyond my safe parental and sisterly boundaries--happy familiarity defined by Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music cheerful virtue.
There were countless other records I cannot even recall now. Like everything Steve did, his foray into 70s music was done with extreme passion. I do not know where he got his money, but his little closet was 90% filled with LPs. There must have been thousands. Every minute he was home there was some new music coming out of his room. He seemed happy that I liked nothing better than hanging out with him, asking endless questions about music, art, life and whatever else came to mind while the music played. I recall going crazy on a particular song or riff, for example "Life" from Sly and the Family Stone:
Life, Life,
Tell it like it is
You don't have to die before you live
I would enthusiastically request playing that piece over and over. Steve would never argue, but rather say "Yeah, its a nice song. Maybe you would like this too..." and he would put on something else that I never heard before. He always tried to break anyone out of obsessive loops, suggest they constantly try different things, keep growing, learning, expanding, making sure that life was always "fun".
Of course, discerning readers might notice a glaring omission in his early 70s LP libraries: the complete absence of Creedence Clearwater Revival. They might also alarmingly note that he had every Eagles LP. More on this later....
"Life": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOB5vw7aNGc
I still have his Steely Dan mix tape that we listened to near continuously on road trips. One of the only cassettes I hung onto.
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ReplyDeleteHey Bob,
ReplyDeleteYes, I think I made that mix. Though Steve was a music fanatic and collector in his teens, it became a secondary thing later in his life when he became so focused on fitness and being outdoors.
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