Brianland

Traversing the Impossible

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Fifty years ago this month my life changed forever and for the better.

I had transferred a couple years earlier from a private boys school into the public school system because, frankly, I wanted to be around girls . . . and out of the almost military-school-like life I’d been living.

I didn’t really fit in in the public Junior High (grades 7–9) because all the kids knew each other since grade 1 or earlier and I was coming in from some foreign school of uniforms, regulated haircuts and calling teachers ‘sir.’

And speaking of haircuts — as soon as I left the military school and discovered rock-n-roll, I didn’t cut my hair again until I was well into my 20s!

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For Christmas in grade 7, age 12, 1973, my parents bought me a stereo.  In those days, at the music store you’d go into a separate sealed room with all the speakers and they’d play some record for you to decide which pair you liked.  When we got to the counter to pay for the receiver, turntable and speakers, whatever it came to, we were still a little less than my dad had planned to spend, so he asked if there were a couple albums I wanted to get.  I’d coveted my older sister’s (who didn’t live with us) brown box version of Jesus Christ Superstar so I asked for that.  Then the 12-yr-old me asked the sales guy, “What was that album you were playing in the speaker room?”  It was Billion Dollar Babies by Alice Cooper. (!)  That was one of the serendipitous moments where my life changed.  The guy could have put on Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones or whatever else was in the pile in 1973, but he played Billion Dollar Babies, and my nearly virginal ears thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard!  So, I came home with that masterpiece, including the trading cards and poster it came with — and I had my first favorite group.

By the summer of ’75, Alice toured with his new Welcome To My Nightmare album, and actually played the lil’ ol’ Winnipeg Arena . . . and I got front row seats!  I was still only friends with the kids on my block and not the wide swath of teenagers who lived within a couple miles of River Heights Junior High.  But with the external factor of rock-n-roll, and the internal changes of hormones, suddenly girls and music became my life.

In another serendipitous occurrence, ‘the cool kids’ hung out outside the school doors closest to my house, so I had to walk past them every day to go into the building.  If the hang-out spot had been at the other end of the school, none of the rest of this would have happened.

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But there they were — before school, at lunch, after school — hanging out on the grass and under the trees, performing the revolutionary act of boys and girls talking to each other! . . . which really didn’t happen elsewhere at the start of grade 9.  In the main, we were all still too scared to talk to the opposite sex.  But girls had suddenly gone from icky to mesmerizing.  And we boys sure wanted to talk to them . . . and sure didn’t know how.

But out front at the cool end of school, there were boys & girls hanging like they were lifelong best friends.  As I’d pass through them I’d discreetly slow down and eavesdrop on conversations about what they’d done together last weekend or were planning to do next weekend.  And they were laughing and extraverted and confident — and when you’d see them in the halls or classrooms they seemed to have a secret language and be in on something the rest of us weren’t.

One of these mornings as I came to school 50 years ago this month, I went in and stopped just inside of the heavy wooden French doors and stood there looking longingly at the pretty girls and confident guys.  They were maybe a hundred feet from the doors — but it was untraversable terrain.  How could I possibly walk up to them?  I didn’t know any of them.  And there was no way you could get into this club if you weren’t already in.

As I stood there dreaming in the immensity of it trying to figure out a way to join them, some guy came up from behind and started talking to me.  I recognized him as one of them — in fact he seemed like one of the leaders of the leaderless pack.  He lived out the other end of the school and had to walk through the whole building to get to the cool kids’ end.  He was super friendly, and he knew his music.  I had long hair and wore a knee-length patched jean jacket so he figured I was probably at least cool enough to talk to for a minute.  I’m sure we riffed on Alice Cooper, and I told him about the concert that summer, and what other bands I was listening to, and somehow I guess I passed the test, because after 5 or 10 minutes of us talking, he said, “Well, let’s go out,” and pushed the door open!  Suddenly I was walking across the untraversable ground with Joey Myles, probably the coolest guy in the whole cool kids crowd.  Suddenly I was in.

After that, I didn’t have to eavesdrop for the few seconds I walked past them — I could just walk right up and start talking.  Girls were no longer speaking a foreign language.  Guys with older brothers were telling me about bands I’d never heard of.  I suddenly had friends who didn’t grow up on the same block I did.  And I could go to their houses and hang in their basements and listen to records really loud.  A couple of them had failed a couple grades and were already 16 and actually had their own car!  And they knew how to get liquor!

Everything changed forever as I was escorted across that hundred feet of impregnable ground.  And I never looked back.  The kids I’d built forts with and played ball hockey with never crossed that terrain . . . but my whole world changed.

A lot of friends from that cool gang are no longer on this earthly plane — but somehow Joey and I both made it this far and still talk and laugh together really loud.

On halloween, one of ‘the gang’ threw the first house ‘shaker’ of a party that became legend and set the standard for what would be years of epic joyous madness . . . that, really, has never stopped for 50 years.  But it all began with one hundred–foot walk.

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Halloween 1975 – age 14 – just before Lum’s party

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A couple minutes of a grade 9 reunion in Joey Myles’ kitchen in 2009.

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Or here was a TV interview I did at that 2009 reunion . . .

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And here’s another one . . .

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Or here’s another real-life coming-of-age story from around the same time — about writing a song with Guess Who founder Chad Allen . . .

The Chad Allan Story

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by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com   —  BrianHassett.com

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