Where Were You in 1974?

It often amazes me that in early May, it will be 50 years since Bob Roper sent me that album on Moon Records by three guys from Toronto. The band was called Rush, not to be confused with another Canadian band we were playing-- a Montreal-based band called Mahogany Rush (and as a music director, I was concerned that listeners would indeed get the two confused, even though they sounded nothing like each other). 

And because it's the 50 year anniversary of when Rush started getting a lot of airplay in the US (much to their surprise), some webcasts and podcasts have been inviting me on, to look back on that first Rush album and discuss what I recall about hearing it for the first time, and to tell the story of how I got the band airplay on WMMS. And some hosts have also asked me another question: what I remember about my life back in 1974. 

It wasn't a very exciting life, to be honest. I was 27 years old, and I was living in an apartment complex in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, a few miles from downtown. I was driving an old car and it only had an AM radio, but in 1974, that was okay because there were still quite a few stations that played the hits and had personality deejays. And since I grew up with top-40, I could usually find something to listen to. (Eventually, I got a car that had FM, but in 1974, I remember listening to AM stations like WIXY, WGAR, and WHK.)

It was actually a good time to listen to hit radio, whether on AM or on FM. In early-to mid-1974, I remember songs like "Bennie and the Jets" by Elton John, "Jet" and "Band on the Run" by Paul McCartney and Wings, "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band, "Let It Ride" and "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "Keep on Smiling" by Wet Willie, and "Piano Man" by Billy Joel. "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot was moving up the charts, and so was "The Air that I Breathe" by the Hollies. The top-40 charts spanned the gamut from the serious and thought-provoking, like Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City," to a ridiculously catchy song by Blue Swede, the one that began "Ooga-Chucka, Ooga, Ooga" (their version of "Hooked on A Feeling").  

1974 was the year when "Happy Days" made its TV debut, and while I had grown up in the fifties and never thought of them as particularly enjoyable, the show was entertaining-- and to this day, I'm a big fan of Henry Winkler. Looking at my old TV Guide magazines, I note that "All in the Family" was still very popular--#1 in the ratings-- and so were TV detective shows like "Kojak" and "Columbo." But I didn't watch a lot of TV-- I worked crazy hours, and VCR's wouldn't come onto the scene till 1975, so I often missed my favorite shows and had to wait for re-runs. 

The big news event of 1974 was Watergate, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon in August; he was the first American president to have to resign. A lot of us in album rock radio were not surprised. Nixon had long been a polarizing figure in politics, and on college campuses. Ever since the late 1960s, college radio stations, along with a growing number of FM "progressive rock" outlets, had played music protesting the war in Vietnam, and criticizing the policies of President Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon, who had succeeded him. (I certainly played some of those songs when I was on the air at WNEU at Northeastern University-- I recall being among the first to get a copy of "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and if you remember the lyrics, songwriter Neil Young was not fond of Nixon at all. Neither was I-- Nixon had a long history of casual antisemitism, making him one of my least favorite presidents. I wasn't sorry to see him go.)      

I was still adapting to living in Cleveland, to be honest: I had never lived anywhere other than Boston, and I recall having a difficult time making friends. Fortunately, work took up most of my time. In fact, my life back then revolved around WMMS. I was the station's music director-- my boss first called my job "music coordinator," but everyone else in the industry called me the music director, and eventually, my title was changed to reflect that. My duties included calling or writing the various record promoters, seeing them when they came to the station, listening to the new albums, choosing the ones that seemed right for us, and then, sitting with my boss to discuss which of the new songs we liked-- the announcers could choose their own songs back then, but my boss and I were the ones who put the new albums in the studio and included our recommendations. Sometimes, I would meet up-and-coming artists when they came by the station-- that was another fun aspect of the job, as I met a lot of folks who went on to become famous. I was also working on the air (they had me on an overnight weekend shift, but I was also expected to be there Monday morning for meetings). And I still remember answering a lot of letters from listeners-- it was still an era when people wrote letters, and WMMS got plenty of mail. I tried to answer as much of it as I could. 

Of course, everything changed when "Working Man" by Rush began to be one of the audience's favorite songs, leading to the guys coming to Cleveland for an early gig at the Allen Theater in late June 1974. I would be lying if I said I expected we'd all stay in touch-- I never expected that we would. And yet, 50 years later, while so much in my life is different from how it was back then, I am still in touch with the surviving members of Rush, along with their families, and even some of the folks who worked for their record company. 2024 is very different from 1974, but I am so grateful that Alex and Geddy (and the memory of Neil) remain a part of my world... a world that was changed forever (for me, for Rush, and for so many of the fans) 50 years ago, in 1974.