Hard rock stays, but softer joins the mix

Led Zeppelin. Deep Purple. Uriah Heep. UFO. Black Sabbath.

Hard rock was my go-to music for most of my teenage and young adult years. Sure, there were some outliers tossed in: The Beatles, Chicago, Elton John, Renaissance, Procol Harum. But the energy and aggression of hard rock was my main musical sustenance. Overactive hormones with a lack of other outlets, I guess.

But something happened when I was about 20. I began hearing songs that were quiet, subdued, even tranquil. And more than just hearing, I started listening. I can even pinpoint the moment where the dam broke: It was the first time I heard the song “Nether Lands” by Dan Fogelberg.

I remember stopping what I was doing, listening to the song and thinking, “That’s pretty.” I was impressed enough to buy the album “Nether Lands” and, a few days after that, Fogelberg’s “Souvenirs,” which is still one of my favorite albums.

Now you might say my new-found enjoyment of softer songs was simply a product of growing older and more mature. I will push back on the mature theme because, at 20, it’s doubtful I was all grown up. And I still stuck with hard rock even after I started buying albums by Fogelberg, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne.

Perhaps it goes back even earlier. When I was about 13, FM radio was still in its fetal stage, so AM was the only avenue to hear music. Top 40 radio in those days was all over the musical map, playing hits from rockers like Steppenwolf, soul from The Temptations and Aretha Franklin, folk-pop from Gordon Lightfoot, and goofy pop like “Gimme Dat Ding” by Daddy Dewdrop and “Little Green Bag” by the George Baker Selection.

In other words, you heard everything because everything was played on basically the only avenue you had to hear it.

So softer stuff like “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” by Glen Campbell, “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers and “Solitary Man” by Neil Diamond was imprinted in my mind. While I sort of blanked on it during the hard rockin’ of my teens and early 20s, it was always there.

I’m older now — still “young and vibrant,” though — and I’m still listening to hard rock. But I enjoy less-ferocious material from my youth as well as newer artists like Blue Rodeo, Turnpike Troubadours and Chris Isaak, among others.

It just proves that you don’t have to give up the music of being a teen to embrace the music of being an adult.

Shawn Ryan