I think that the metal channel I have been listening to should apparently be renamed the “Judas Priest Tribute Channel” because here they are again.
If you knew my father, you may not believe it when I state that this song reminds me of him. It is not that my father liked metal, or that he listened to any music. He finally told me years later that he was tone deaf and did not enjoy listening to any music. He did have a passion for the rebellious life of the motorcycle rebel of his era. My father wanted to be the rough-edge, motorcycle riding hellion he was in his youth but he made an attempt to turn his life around, or at least swerve into a different lane because of his children. He was someone who tried to do the right thing but often in the wrong way.
When I was fairly young, before I knew more about my father’s history, he and I were watching television and something about the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club came on. He said to the room, “I wanted to be a Hells Angels and they turned me down. Now, they all look like me.” It was true in a way because many of the men on the television were middle aged, a little on the chubby side and many of them would make a silverback gorilla jealous over their facial hair.
My father was an early scrapper. He argued with his fists, his style and his loud motorcycle, which probably argued with his more technical side that got him into Amateur Radio. His interest in radio got him into the US Navy, where he boxed, and where he also operated radios in the field, likely in and around Vietnam before the war was officially declared a “hot” war. This service added to hi rebellious nature though and when he was pestered to re-up, or at least join the naval reserves, he claims that he rode his motor cycle up on deck of a reserve ship and demanded to see the XO so he could tell them “hell no” in the most undeniable of terms.
I don’t know if any of this is technically true but I feel that his stories were quite plausible. At the very least, they were consistent.
Still, I think about the different faces that my father put on over the years; First there was the rebellious youth, the disturbed adult who kept trying to do the right thing but sometimes his own demons would get in the way, and the older man who tried to make due with what he got. He went from rebellion to working in real estate for at least twenty years.
How does all of this relate to Judas Priest and the once reviled song “Turbo Lover”? Like my father, the band attempted to stay ahead of the curve, they kept running from the problem of aging and becoming boring and set aside as no longer relevant. This is my take on it. Reinvention is evolution on the small scale. Judas Priest changed their style, filed off the edges, added guitar synths and slathered on the polish. Minus the polish and synthesizers, I believe my father tried to do the same thing.
I think all of us reinvent ourselves at some level as we age. When I was young I was the confused disabled kid who tried to work with a world that didn’t want to accept people with disabilities, now I’m someone who is tired of trying to blend in, I am who I am and if you have a problem with that, well, that’s entirely your problem. In a way I’m going in reverse of my father, from someone who tried to conform to someone who rebels. Sometimes that happens too.
Maybe I should get some guitar synths.
