While down at the local juke joint plugging in dimes to hear Herman’s Hermit’s version of “Sea Cruise” our guitar player, George Plant, brought in a magazine called Hit Parader which had pictures of our idols - Paul Revere, Mark Lindsay (Raider’s singer), Herman’s Hermits and The Dave Clark 5 - and stories of their exploits and rise to fame. The Beatles were in a different genre. You see, at 12 years-old we couldn’t play any of their hit songs because there were more than 4 chords. (George knew 5 or 6 and later went off to join a better band.) They played chords with names like Em7+5  and BbM9 (and words like “diminished” and “augmented”) that we couldn’t follow even with the chord charts.

But the best thing about Hit Parader was that it had the words to the big songs that we so desperately needed. We could now match the words with the droning, distortion of the Wurlitzer speaker, amid the pops and cracks of the worn 45’s, and come up with a bare semblance of the song. I could even sit up in a my bedroom and croon “Him or Me” by PR and the Raiders and know the words.

This was when I first realized that these guys never wrote their own songs. Below the titles on the page were names like C. King, N. Diamond, T. Boyce, R. Hart and, believe it or not, Leon Russell. In the first Beatle and Rolling stone albums there was a C. Berry. At first I thought he must have been a member of both bands but a girl in my Grade 6 class who bought Tiger Beat (a girly mag) informed me that the Beatles and Stones hated each other and their fan clubs often fought en mass. Even then I didn’t completley trust information from a girl but in 1965 the Stones weren’t on my wavelength outside of “Satisfaction.” Much later I saw Chuck Berry on T.V. and it all came together.

I still have Hit Paraders from back then. The covers are missing because I got the copies that were unsold. The covers were ripped off so that my mother, who operated my grandfather’s store, could get credit for the returns.

George Plant taught us how to learn songs . . . and he made it easier with Hit Parader.