NEVER SAY NO
The Arrival of Billy Squier
by Ben Edmonds
As a listener, there are few moments more pleasurable than when you're presented with the music of an artist who has come into his (or her) own. The notion of finding a voice is part of it, but it's beyond that. It is about what was done with what was found; not just using that voice, but inhabiting it. When you hear it you know immediately that everything is now fully in focus. The release of the Billy Squier album Don't Say No in April 1981 was one of those moments. Don't Say No contained music that felt at once familiar but bracingly fresh, another step in the long road of hard rock history. The album was a hit, a very big hit indeed, but we're talking about something that can't be quantified with a sales print-out. More than anything, it heralded the arrival of a complete artist.
Like most musical thunderbolts, it was actually the product of a storm that had been gathering for quite some time. Born in 1950 and raised in suburban Boston, Billy Squier was bitten by the same British guitar combo bug that infected his entire generation. But while most of his contemporaries were struggling to master "Jumpin' Jack Flash," an underage Squier was already in New York attempting to leave his mark on the rock avant-garde as the lead guitarist in Magic Terry & the Universe, the first serious attempt to marry poetry with rock & roll. As the band's arranger, it was his job to devise high energy frameworks to contain the volcanic eruptions of his high school poet friend C.T. Rabinowitz. Signed to Elektra Records shortly after the label inked Detroit avant-rock pioneers the MC5 and the Stooges, Magic Terry & the Universe imploded before their visionary contribution could be captured on the album that was to have been produced by the Velvet Underground's John Cale.
Billy then surfaced in the Sidewinders, the Boston power-pop band fronted by future Brian Wilson collaborator Andy Paley, whose RCA album had made them minor cult favorites. The subsequent addition of Squier's guitar, arranging and writing skills appeared to be the supplemental muscle needed to move the Sidewinders out of the minor category, but once again a promising band broke down somewhere short of the promised land.
You would be right to note the miles of musical sky between the screaming subterranean poetry of Magic Terry & the Universe and the six-string bubblegum of the Sidewinders, but Billy was equally at home in either setting. There was something for him to learn in both and, understanding each on its own terms, something to contribute. This openness to musical experience, of never saying no to musical possibility, would serve Squier well. It armed him with tools to construct a music familiar but fresh, adventurous but never out of reach. A music all his own.
His next venture was Piper a three-guitar ensemble that could set its phasers to stun or seduce, whatever the songs demanded. Over two albums for A&M, those songs covered a range between elegant abandon and hard-rock balladry. Managed by the organization behind the Kiss phenomenon, the group opened in arenas across the country, another valuable learning experience for Billy. Though one of their songs, "Who's Your Boyfriend," became enough of a New York airplay staple to suggest it could have been a national contender, neither of Piper's excellent albums quite broke through.
The band didn't succeed, but Piper represented a quantum leap for Billy. He was the writer and arranger, a lead guitarist and, for the first time, the lead singer as well. In many ways Piper was his dream band, a guitar army that could follow him wherever he chose to go. Amid a wave of bland corporate rock contenders, here was a band that rocked with genuine passion. It was also his last band. The reality is that Piper was a Billy Squier solo project hiding behind a band name, and it was only a matter of time before he realized that he no longer needed to hide behind anything.
Yours truly played a small part in supporting that realization. In 1978 I was working for Capitol Records, stationed with the English parent company EMI in London. Billy had been a friend since junior high school whose talent I'd always believed in. When he was looking for a fresh start after the disintegration of Piper, I happily arranged for the New York office to extend him a modest studio demo budget to show what he could do. Provided with the barest of tools, Billy clinched the deal himself.
The Tale of the Tape, the first proper Billy Squier album, was released by Capitol in 1980. Queen guitarist and Squier friend Brian May was slated to produce, but when scheduling conflicts prevented his participation, Billy teamed with Yes engineer/producer Eddy Offord. "You Should Be High Love" and "The Big Beat" came closest yet to approximating the size of his expansive musical dreams, and showcased a sound designed to fill future arenas. (Over time "The Big Beat" would also become the single most-sampled rock & roll track in hip-hop history.) These songs made enough noise on AOR radio to push The Tale of the Tape into the lower reaches of the charts for a few weeks. It was his best work to date, and showed encouraging progress in the marketplace. But no-one was prepared for what came next, an album that would reduce all that came before it to preparation, mere apprenticeship.
To achieve the kind of breakthrough that Billy Squier enjoyed with Don't Say No requires a convergence of elements simultaneously arriving at excellence, a complex series of tumblers all falling the right way at just the right time. Determination, inspiration, maturation and momentum play a part, as does a pinch of luck. Phil Spector always made the crucial distinction between ideas and records. Don't Say No was the fourth album Billy had released, but it was his first record.
One key element came courtesy of Brian May. The Game, the album that had forced him to withdraw from Billy's project, marked the first time Queen worked with engineer/producer Reinhold Mack, who'd become known for his sonic contribution to the Electric Light Orchestra catalog. May recommended Mack (as he's simply billed) to Billy, and their production pairing proved inspired. Mack brought a widescreen sensibility that was perfect for Squier's evolving sound. The German engineer's facility for lovingly surrounding each instrument with the right amount of space made that sound much bigger and more intimate, a knockout combination.
The musical picture was also solidified. Boston drummer Bobby Chouinard had been on board for The Tale of the Tape, providing the monster beat that would soon place him among the cream in the estimation of his drum peers. British bassist Mark Clarke, and Alan St. Jon on keyboards and synthesizers, were recruited for the sessions and made a permanent place for themselves. When guitarist Jeff Golub joined shortly after the completion of Don't Say No, Squier had a nucleus that has helped him deliver unforgettable music for years. Ironically, it wasn't until Billy finally committed to himself as a solo artist that he attracted his most enduring band. You couldn't truly appreciate the strength of these songs until you experienced them performed onstage, something we've underscored with the inclusion of live bonus tracks.
These elements would have amounted to little more than fabulous frosting had they not been applied to the strongest collection of songs and performances of Billy Squier's career thus far. The first 26 seconds of the opener "In the Dark"—a synth rumble exploding into layered guitar fireworks—served notice that Don't Say No was where desire finally met fulfillment. Artistic realization does not always translate into commercial success, but Billy's breakthrough immediately resonated with the record-buying public. Released in April, Don't Say No was gold by July and platinum by September.
"The Stroke" was the shot that launched the album, and remains Billy Squier's signature song. It's an irresistible track, another big beat spectacular full of stop-start aggression and stadium-size vocal chants, a sure-shot hit even before you know what it's about. The words clinched it. Billy came of age at a time when rock & roll was encouraged not to shrink from matters of socio-political weight. His depiction of the showbiz hustlers who attach themselves to the success of others was a 1980s extension of the social portraiture of Ray Davies' "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and Jagger/Richards' "Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man," and he does that tradition proud. Even when he's addressing the standard boy/girl dynamic, the breadth of musical experience that informs Squier's playing also gives his writing an emotional dimension lacking in cookie-cutter arena rock.
No piece of vinyl represented 80s rock at its best better than side one of Don't Say No. It begins with the trifecta of "In the Dark," "The Stroke" and "My Kinda Lover," all chart singles as well as instant AOR classics. Add "You Know What I Like" and "Too Daze Gone" and you have a perfectly programmed, flawlessly executed, relentlessly rocking album side. The second side opens with "Lonely Is the Night," a barn-burner that seems to compress all of side one's energy into a single blast. After "Whadda You Want From Me" makes it seven rockers in a row, the spell is broken by a trio of acoustic-based numbers. "Nobody Knows" is a poignant, unabashedly personal ballad occasioned by the death of John Lennon and sung in a vulnerable falsetto. "I Need You" and the title track alternate between soft and hard to provide contrast and shading to an album where no track fails to add something unique to the completed picture.
Don't Say No was another treasure trove for club remixers and hip-hop samplers. My theory is that what they subconsciously respond to in his music is what he learned as a teenage guitarist setting avant-garde poetry to music. This sensitivity to the spoken word became part of his musical DNA, genetic information rappers somehow pick up on. Some churls suggested that his DNA leaned too heavily on certain role models, principally Led Zeppelin, Queen and the Rolling Stones. That's a specious critique because Billy has never tried to hide his influences. He celebrates his lineage. He is confident, as he should be, that he has something significant of his own to add to the timeline forged by all the great artists who've inspired, influenced and taught him.
With Don't Say No, Billy Squier earned a place among them.
Ben Edmonds
March 2010
