From "pubby" power poppers to a disco diva to a teen popper with a recent admission, few songs have undergone such radical arrangement shuffles within the course of one year!
I had Feel the Need! Leif Garrett was one of my first celebrity “crushes”! So long ago...so many memories. I had the cardboard insert and stared at it lovingly for I don’t know how long...probably until it fell apart. I remember having a Teen Beat (I think) article about a perfect date with Leif, or something like that! Those were the days.
Those WERE the days, Ellen! As I know you can tell, a special little sub-genre focus for my record-collecting (and now, with writing), is the whole teen pop idol scene! And, in the '70s, as it was exploding, led by Cassidy earlier in the decade, I collected all the records! If you've not read the 20 articles written for us by Stephen Michael Schwartz, I highly recommend!
Somewhere (because I asked him!), we've got his teen "circuit" responses.....he got calls, at the time, from "16", "Tiger Beat"....he'd go and do the interviews and photo sessions. He's saved precious little, although we DO have some exclusive stuff in our articles that he HAS shared....I've sent him up to his attic to search for stuff a lot!!!😁
The dynamics being what they were: Had he had a hit, and gotten "on a roll," his teen mag presence would've increased exponentially, of course, but as we've documented, that first album sold only 15,000 copies, although he got 4 songs into RCA Album #2 in 1975 (you must see that article...Stephen provided exclusive in-studio pix of a 25-year-old David Foster (before he won his 16 Grammys, and pix of Elton John's newly-dismissed rhythm section Stephen was using on his sessions!) before RCA cut him from the roster (at 21). He's been incredibly generous and brave to recount his raw feelings at that time, too.
Enjoy, Ellen, and I always love your input and comments!
I had Feel the Need! Leif Garrett was one of my first celebrity “crushes”! So long ago...so many memories. I had the cardboard insert and stared at it lovingly for I don’t know how long...probably until it fell apart. I remember having a Teen Beat (I think) article about a perfect date with Leif, or something like that! Those were the days.
Those WERE the days, Ellen! As I know you can tell, a special little sub-genre focus for my record-collecting (and now, with writing), is the whole teen pop idol scene! And, in the '70s, as it was exploding, led by Cassidy earlier in the decade, I collected all the records! If you've not read the 20 articles written for us by Stephen Michael Schwartz, I highly recommend!
Start with this one, an Audio Autopsy of his 1974 RCA Records album (he was 20!): https://bradkyle.substack.com/p/audio-autopsy-1974-stephen-michael
Somewhere (because I asked him!), we've got his teen "circuit" responses.....he got calls, at the time, from "16", "Tiger Beat"....he'd go and do the interviews and photo sessions. He's saved precious little, although we DO have some exclusive stuff in our articles that he HAS shared....I've sent him up to his attic to search for stuff a lot!!!😁
The dynamics being what they were: Had he had a hit, and gotten "on a roll," his teen mag presence would've increased exponentially, of course, but as we've documented, that first album sold only 15,000 copies, although he got 4 songs into RCA Album #2 in 1975 (you must see that article...Stephen provided exclusive in-studio pix of a 25-year-old David Foster (before he won his 16 Grammys, and pix of Elton John's newly-dismissed rhythm section Stephen was using on his sessions!) before RCA cut him from the roster (at 21). He's been incredibly generous and brave to recount his raw feelings at that time, too.
Enjoy, Ellen, and I always love your input and comments!