Boston, Def Leppard, bad hair & the golden age of rock radio

Paul Rees fell in love with AOR when it began with Boston in 1976, the polished, ramped-up hits that were briefly the music of the American heartland. His book ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ remembers the age when records were launched via car stereos, their eternally appealing sound and the preposterous lives of the people who wrote and played them – Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Asia, REO Speedwagon, Don Henley and Toto among them. “It’s happy music,” he points out. “Music that makes you raise a quizzical eyebrow.” In the mix …

… the original AOR sound: “Led Zeppelin hard rock with Eagles harmonies and a stratospheric high-tenor voca|”

… the absolute power of producers like Mutt Lange (a man raised on radio jingles)

… Pat Benatar, the former married bank clerk who wanted to be Robert Plant in a leotard

… “AOR stars were all salesmen who talked in quotes”

... the many reasons Don Henley fired people on a whim 

… Def Leppard’s vision of America built on AOR and cowboy movies

… “Chicago and the Tubes never played on their records”

… “he ended up butterball-naked in a cocaine threesome sting with two disguised police women”

… the producer who had his trout pond realigned as he couldn’t work looking at a garden that wasn’t symmetrical

… the story of Toto’s Africa: “tape loops strung round chair-backs and a quick flick through a geography book”

… “if this record’s a hit I’ll run naked down Sunset Boulevard”.

Order a copy of ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Raised-Radio-Paul-Rees/dp/1408721112

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