I mentioned a few times in this series the notion of my own very first cassette tape. In fact, there were two of them. Both were recorded for me by my Uncle, who owned a Sharp dual-deck stereo recorder – a rarity in those days. While he was aware of what I would have liked to hear on those tapes, he decided to only partially satisfy my requests and, in addition, to give me a taste of things that I was not truly aware of.
The first tape had Modern Talking on one side (I certainly wanted that) and Bad Boys Blue on the other (under a misplaced notion that it was but a different album by Modern Talking).
The second tape, however, had music that I by no means expected. The Beatles’ Abbey Road took one side and an album by Bee Gees the other. While I became an ardent Beatles fan, I did not like Bee Gees much. I soon recorded over that side, have no recollection of which particular songs of theirs were on that tape, and never really warmed up much to them to care.
There were also a couple of “bonus” tracks tacked at the ends of those albums. Hotel California was one, becoming a favorite song of mine almost as instantly as the Beatles became my favorite band. The other introduced me to The King.
Funny how I keep using the word “introduced” in these memoirs. The year must have been ’84 or ’85 – neither John Lennon nor Elvis were alive any longer.