Okay, for tonight’s Saturday Night Special we’re diving a little deeper into Colin’s Billy Squier deep-dive of last week, back before Piper even, this is where things get a little esoteric, and Pencil Storm is a populist blog-site at heart, so bear with us………
The first time I heard of Billy Squier was around 1974, after he joined a Boston band called The Sidewinders that I had loved long-distance since the early 70’s. My high school best friend Dave Blackburn had moved to Boston in late 1971 to play in bands & become an actor after intentionally flunking out of Ohio State University. Upon his arrival there he saw the first incarnation of The Modern Lovers (with Jonathan Richman; Jerry Harrison, later of Talking Heads; and David Robinson, later of The Cars), the fledgling Aerosmith (who OPENED that Modern Lovers show in a HIGH SCHOOL gymnasium), and The Sidewinders.
Prior to Squier joining the band, The Sidewinders released a self-titled album on RCA-Victor Records in 1972, produced by Lenny Kaye (later of The Patti Smith Group). I’ve gotta admit, the record’s not great: the production is WAY too thin, it seems rushed, and the band sounds nervous, but that’s how bands got recorded back in ’72. (Listen to Aerosmith’s first album sometime in this 21st century. YIKES! Before Jack Douglas was invented, hard-rock production had a long way to go.) The SONGS on The Sidewinders record, though, are killer. Andy Paley – later a producer of note with Brian Wilson, among others – was the lead singer and main songwriter of the band. At that point, Andy & the guys SHOULD have joined The Raspberries, The Sweet and Big Star in the First Wave of 70’s Power-Pop bands, but then prog-rock, KISS & quaaludes happened and The Sidewinders didn’t. (But that’s a whole other blog for a whole ‘nother day, so let’s move on.)
left to right: Billy Squier (guitar), Bryan Chase (drums), Leigh Foxx (bass), Andy Paley (lead vocals) / photo from Rock Scene magazine, 1974
This is the cover of my homemade reconstructing The Sidewinders CD comp. The blurb is by Ben Edmonds from a paperback called Rock Revolution (1973).
Billy Squier joined The Sidewinders sometime in 1973 (along with drummer Bryan Chase), and by all accounts re-energized the band after the departure of three of the original members. The band played a residency at Max’s Kansas City in NYC (the first band to do that since The Velvet Underground in the summer of 1970, by the way), but could never quite break through enough to even get a record deal, let alone an album out. (There’s a pretty good history of the band at The Sidewinders / Waitakere Walks, including a review of the band by genius rock critic Lester Bangs of Creem magazine fame, you should check it out.)
Following the break-up of The Sidewinders, Andy Paley moved on to form The Paley Brothers with his brother Jonathan, and Billy Squier formed Piper, his stepping-stone band to international rock stardom. What we’re presenting tonight at Pencil Storm is five Sidewinders tunes re-done by those later bands. (The Paley Brothers were mentioned in a previous Pencilstorm Seymour Stein story. He called their lack of success one of his greatest regrets of his record industry career)
Enjoy…….
Finishing up: There’s a track called “Streetwalker” by the Paley/Squier era Sidewinders on a 1973 compilation album called The Boston Incest Album (where Squier is misspelled “Squire” in the credits, incidentally.) Also, at one point in the 1980’s I sent away for a cassette compilation from a Boston rock radio station (WCOZ-FM, maybe?) that contained two KILLER Paley/Squier Sidewinders cuts: “Telephone Relations” and “Turn The Tide” that are FAR SUPERIOR to the tracks heard above by Piper and The Paley Brothers. If anybody out there has that cassette or those tunes, please contact Pencil Storm. My tape broke within a year of when I got it - from overuse/overplaying, before I made a dub - and I would dearly LOVE to have those songs in my collection again.
Also, most - if not all - of the songs from the eponymous 1972 The Sidewinders record on RCA are available on YouTube. - Ricki C. / July 29th, 2020