1978
During this year, I discovered ELO, The Bee Gees (No, it wasn’t the Disco releases like Stayin’ Alive, etc that really caught my attention with them, but more on their mellower releases, like Spirits Having Flown, and stuff like Dream Weaver by Gary Wright.
Probably the second most influential band I discovered this year was Rush. And boy was it a rush for me :). Sequential Circuits released the Prophet 5 which was used by just about every favorite artist of mine, and Superman The Motion Picture was released. Yet again here we go with John Williams creating yet more inspiring music for me.
John Williams is great, but there was another artist named John that really got me hooked, and it was probably this year that I decided and said to my self
“When I grow up, I wanna be just like John Carpenter!”
Yep, the quintessential horror movie King John Carpenter.
This was the year that Halloween was released. (Yes, I saw it when I was 8 years old ), and the pulsing sequence in the main title was all I needed to hear. I thought this was the coolest thing…dark, eerie, electronic. I was hooked!. Over the years, this began a buying spree of everything he produced as well. It was this thing alone that made me want to do soundtrack work. Later, as I discovered that he also wrote; directed; and scored more movies….I knew for sure that eventually some day, I would do something similar to what John did.
(I know I’m jumping ahead in years here, but My personal favorite John Carpenter / Alan Howarth tunes are Chariot of Pumpkins from Halloween III, the Theme song from The Fog, and from the Big Trouble in Little China Soundtrack Lo Pan’s Domain and Into the Spirit Path are both great tracks.)
He’s the primary reason I wanted to get into doing short films, and is the inspiration behind my album March of the Inanimate. You may notice the influence here
There were tons more artists this year, but these were the primary ones who influenced me during that classic year of 1978.
1979
As well, I kept hearing things “Moving in Stereo”, and was immediately hooked. It was a couple of years later, but my brother and I became serious fans of The Cars. For my brother, it was the everything about The Cars. For me, it was learning who Greg Hawkes was. I still have his Niagara Falls LP :).
Next up 1980-1981
History of Musical Influences starting page.
– Keith
Keith Richie 