A few months ago my cousin Shirin emailed some old photos. They were from the summer of 1976. I was 14 and had just arrived from Abadan, waiting to start my freshman year at Thacher, a boarding school in the small town of Ojai, a couple of hours north of Los Angeles. I was staying at an apartment in Santa Monica shared by Shirin and my older brother Roger, who were in their early 20s. I couldn’t wait to grow up and live like them, free from parents, do whatever you liked, go wherever you wanted, be with whoever you desired.
When I saw the above photo, I remembered that room well even after more than 33 years. Opposite where I sat was my brother’s TV which was showing the Democratic Party’s national convention. Jimmy Carter was giving a speech. I was witnessing democracy in action for the first time. The concept of elections and voting for candidates was new to me. There was nothing close to that when I was growing up in Iran, where we had a Shah and he was the head of state forever. None of this noisy convention business impressed me. Looked more like a circus with red white and blue balloons flying and people wearing silly hats.
Much more than politics, I was into pop culture, especially music. I loved listening to FM radio and American Top 40. One of my favorite songs at the time was “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by Elton John & Kiki Dee. Obviously my taste was pretty gay, so to speak. And my very first album proved it. One day I was at a record store on Westwood Blvd with Shirin. She said she would buy any album I wanted. I’m embarrassed to say that I chose Vicki Sue Robinson’s “Turn the Beat Around“. And I still think the title track is a great song! Yikes!
A lot changed when I entered boarding school as I was exposed to a wider range of bands and musicians. Hank my next-door neighbor introduced me to Elton John’s masterpiece “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road“. Another dorm-mate frequently played Peter Frampton‘s live album on his stereo on high volume and then on his electric guitar. One of my classmates with big rock-star hair and a southern accent from New Orleans was into Lynyrd Skynyrd. Another was a big fan of Chicago.
The dorm counselor played what I thought was the strangest music. His room was behind mine and I could hear stuff never played on the radio coming through our joint wall. It wasn’t rock, it wasn’t pop, and certainly not classical. It had a great beat though. One day I was passing by his room and the door was open. I saw a big poster on the wall of a guy with crazy hair and a beautiful smile named Bob Marley. I think it was through the same wall that I fell in love with WAR.
Walking to class every morning I heard music from Heart, Jefferson Starship, the great Steve Miller Band and the incredible Blondie blaring out of the windows in another dorm building.
My father had bought me a small cassette-tape machine when I first arrived at the school. The only music I remember coming out of that box was the Bee Gees’ “Nights on Broadway“. But when my father and brother Roger visited me a couple of months later, I got the greatest gift in the world: a used, no-name-brand record player for $20 from a classmate who had a for-sale sign on his door in our dorm. From then on, my record collection steadily grew.
One of my favorite pastimes was to go to the record store — I especially remember Warehouse Records on Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach, when me and my younger sister Michelle were living with my sister Sue-San and her husband Hossein. I rarely bought anything because a) I usually couldn’t afford it and b) I didn’t know most of the artists. My main source for new music was the radio stations and they mostly played pop songs. So I would stare at the big, colorful album covers and wonder: Should I pay seven bucks for these scary guys called Aerosmith? What on earth is Led Zeppelin? The Cars? It was a big risk because you couldn’t return something once the plastic wrap had been removed. I thought long and hard before I bought Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life“. Great album.
I paid what seemed like a fortune for the best of The Beatles in two double-albums. It was worth every cent. And their collection of love songs too from the years with Capitol Records, which drowned me in romantic fantasies of my girlfriend Laura in Hawaii. I faithfully bought every album by Paul McCartney’s Wings. All except for “Band on the Run” were, I don’t want to say junk, but not so good except for a couple of hit songs in each one.
I was so obsessed with Boston‘s first album that their next didn’t have a chance in hell to meet my expectations. But everything Fleetwood Mac put out was awesome. No one was more beautiful, or could sing a ballad like Linda Ronstadt. Boz Scaggs’ “Silk Degrees” was an instant classic. The Eagles didn’t have one song I didn’t like. Same with Supertramp — God they were so good!
Music was my biggest pleasure.
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Sometime in late summer, early fall 1979, I made my decision. I put all my albums in a bag and walked over to a second-hand record store somewhere in Huntington Beach in southern California. The man paid me 50 cents for each and I walked out without sadness or hesitation. I was proud I had sacrificed my most precious possessions for Islam and the revolution.
