Last Friday, I saw Billy Squier in concert on Long Island at the Capital One Bank Theatre. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, Squier was a rock icon in the 1980s. His breakthrough 1981 album, “Don’t Say No,” was one of those rare rock records in which every single song was both a hit and a thoroughly pleasurable tune. It still stands up today on its own terms and as a symbol for Squier’s distinctive sound, one that registers lots of “ups”: an up-front guitar sounding memorable riffs, upper-register vocals with just enough roughness (more than Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, less than Bon Scott or Brian Johnson of AC/DC) to signal for our culture a kind of masculine bravado, an up-energy stage presence and urgent vocal throes that get people up to move. I had remembered Squier as a rock musician with lots of “brightness,” in the sense of that knob on amplifiers that renders the sound crisp, direct, gathered, and wound-up, forbidding all dull droning and floor-exploring bottom end by zinging them up into neon-sign like crackles. And definitely no loose noodling, no meandering solos, no spare parts. His songs are built to register a rockish plea in a way that makes sure you will not lose focus, even on some of the “slower” tunes. These are all ways of saying that he innovated a distinctive sound, and did I mention he was huge, huge in the 1980s?

(See “In the Dark” and “The Stroke” on YouTube — I am not able to embed the videos here.)

There was also his live persona, which – as academic studies of rock show – helped “validate” as well as “complicate” the music heard on record. He had a sexy 1970s mane of hair, but coiffed enough to make it qualify for the 80s. And then there were the white tennis shoes (an inventive choice) that seemed to signify a suburban mood, then again there were the tight jeans that also connected him to 70s rock and urban masculinity. These things too were a part of the rock culture which he helped create and in which he operated, and gave a sexual patina that was becoming familiar but was still new, compelling, and a little confusing to his suburban (male, anyway) fans like me: he could work the spectrums of androgyny as a rock artist that — certainly by the close of the 1980s — was almost expected in harder rock, but also there were the feints that back then we would have called (or even maligned as) “gay,” but now (in academic terms) we might examine as “queer,” by which I mean lyrics and gestures that were culturally coded “gay” (or better, outside what is taken to be typical heterosexual display) being performed by an artist framed culturally as “straight.” (I am talking here about cultural codes for how sex/gender are understood, and not about Squier’s “personal life”). In hindsight, this is one of the things that made me interested in Squier: the palette of masculinities on offer in the register of rock. He sang about women and seemed to fit in performance-wise with the erotic rock god. Lots of women screamed for him at his shows. But he also sang lyrics that could be interpreted homoerotically, and used gestures on stage that were outside the “straight” cultural scripts.

This fertile palette of masculinities, which are more common in rock than is often recognized, are frequently misunderstood as somehow telling something “directly” about Squier’s personal life, and it is easy enough to find lots of speculation about that on the internet. (An infamous music video for the song “Rock Me Tonight” has made such speculation a permanent part of Squier lore.)

A Billy Squier show (with Def Leppard opening) was also the very first rock concert I ever saw, in the spring of 1983, at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City. Squier was at that time near the height of his fame. So it was with many memories and much curiosity that I saw him again a few nights ago on Long Island for the first time in 26 years. He is now, incredibly, almost 60 years old, and has played for the last several years with Ringo Starr, but he has not put out a rock album for about 15 years and this is his first rock tour in a long time.

His hair is much shorter, but he is skinny as ever, the tight jeans were back, as were the white tennis shoes, and from the moment he walked on stage, the distinctive and unselfconscious way of carrying himself that instantly took me back 26 years. He and his band were in fantastic musical form, and I can hardly believe how good his voice sounds. Few rock musicians can maintain a full and strong rock vocal presence into their 50s, but Squier has managed to do it. He sounded urgent, but also more knowing in the singing, compared to a quarter century ago. The audience — evidently mostly people who found him in the 80s — were on their feet for most of the show. He has become more “jammy” than I recall, incorporating new moments for improvisation and soloing into his set, extending many of his hits into opportunities for more joyful and fresh musicianship. I wondered what we all wanted out of the evening, and also what he wanted out of it.

I am left thinking about those 26 years, the interim between 1983, my first inauguration into live rock music, and 2009, when I now am involved in this Rock and Theology project, joining my work as a theologian to my playing in amateur rock bands and my longstanding rock fandom, the interim between when I first saw Squier at 13, and myself now at 40. I wonder what it all adds up to, and I suppose that having this Project, these colleagues, these readers, and this “career,” but most important, this theological life, are all ways of trying to answer that question.

Rock cultures help make people into sensing, feeling, hearing, desiring beings. (Or in Squier’s imperative: “Learn how to live!“). And for this and many other reasons, rock cultures overlap with what theological cultures try to do. This overlap, as fostered in my life during these First Twenty Six Years Of Squier, continues to energize and intrigue me, in a way that I hope continues to open onto the energies and intrigues of many others.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

1 Comment »

1. 

   Interesting analysis. I have been a die-hard Squier fan since 1983. He is not gay. A few years ago he married a German woman. I actually met him on this tour recently, and he isn’t even effeminate in person. Nice guy too.

   If you are truly interested in the theological implications of his (and other artists’) lyrical message, you should check out the lyrics to Billy’s “G.O.D.” off of the Hear & Now CD. The lyrics are essentially an interpretation of the book of Job in the first person. Cool stuff.

   I was at the Westbury show as well. Awesome show. Not wild about the barricade ten feet from the stage though.

   Comment by Dianna — August 7, 2009 @ 7:23 pm

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