Billy Squier - Emotions in Motion

I love Billy Squier. I'm not a fanatical fan by any means and can't tell you what kind of sheets he was rolling around on in the video for "Rock Me Tonite" I only saw the video a couple of times. It was a goofy video but honestly no worse than the video for Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie" or any of the other early videos by musicians who didn't know where to look when on camera. It should not have been a career killer. I kept the faith and I dutifully bought each album when they came out, and while some were better than others, they always had at least one killer track, and the rest were never just filler. Heck, his final album in 1998 was the stripped down, intimate and acoustic Happy Blue, It was really good and apparently sold only 10,000 copies and I bought it twice.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

My journey didn't start with The Tale of the Tape, I hopped on the bandwagon along with a lot of other people when he released Don't Say No in 1981. "The Stroke" was a masterclass in the double entendre and a relentlessly infectious riff. One of my shameful recollections involves my buddy Gord (I always blame Gord for shit like this) who was in town visiting. We decided to go and hang out at the Dairy Queen. We were goofing around and generally acting like teenage idiots and in walks David Mainse, the guy who use to be on 100 Huntley Street here in Canada. Of course there was a jukebox in the Dairy Queen and while poor David sat there eating his lunch, we played "The Stroke" over, and over, and over. Please note the restraint I have had in avoiding trying to make a needless masturbation joke ... it was hard.

Yeah, not a proud moment, but at the time we thought we were hilarious.

Fast forward to 1982 and Billy drops Emotions in Motion, and I start hearing songs like "Emotions in Motion" and "Everybody Wants You" and those songs were great, but I didn't pick up the album until almost a year later. I remember the moment that sealed it for me. I was riding with my buddy Ron who had a big blue Super Beetle that had a big stinger for a muffler and we were cruising around and he's playing Emotions in Motion on his cassette player. The windows were rolled down - the music was blaring - it was a perfect summer day. Over the roar of the engine "Keep Me Satisfied" comes on and something about the song just grabbed me, and that was it. I went out and bought the album.

Now you'd think with all this gushing you'd think this was the greatest album since sliced bread (no not David Gates). Nah, don't get me wrong, I loved a few of the songs, and my mix tapes were full of Billy Squier songs, but entire albums? I'd play them and often play them all the way through but my attention span was often pretty sketchy and there was so much good music coming out that I was never at a loss for something good to put on. So this album was essentially relegated to the shelf after mining the good stuff for my mix tapes.

That's part of the fun in going back now after all this time and trying to absorb what I may have missed the first time around. Back then one good song was enough to make me a fan. I remember at the time People Magazine, don't judge me it was in the office I worked at and they still had reviews back then, and the review didn't quite shit on the album, but it certainly went after Billy for being a whiner about his success and the burdens of being the public eye. This was all above my pay grade at the time. I either liked it, or I didn't and I didn't get too caught up in the lyrics. Sure I listened to the words, but I was drawn to the music first and foremost.

Listening to this now I'm stuck by how cohesive everything thing is. The killer songs are still the killer songs, but this is a solid album from start to finish.

The album was produced by Mack who had also worked with Queen, and Freddie and Roger provided backing vocals on "Emotions in Motion" and this wouldn't be the first time the guys in Queen would pop up on an album. Billy's band included guitarist Jeff Golub and drummer Bobby Chouinard and they'd show up on many of his recording, as well as keyboard player Alan St. Jon who added some great textures to the songs.

The cover art was provided by Andy Warhol, a little tidbit I always thought was really cool, and kind of a stroke of genius if you ask me.

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