So, presented here in chronological order, are the songs that led me to discover that rock and roll really can be awesome.

1. The Sound of Silence
   Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
   Album: Sounds of Silence
   I swiped my mother’s cassette of Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits when I was a kid.  For some reason, this song stood out in my memory–and had a tendency to get stuck in my head for days at a time.  I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it was the first step to my eventual love of rock and roll.
2. Bat Out of Hell
   Artist: Meat Loaf
   Album: Bat Out of Hell
   This was my first baby step into the world of rock and roll on my own.  My original copy of this song was on a cassette copy of Meat Loaf’s Greatest Hits that I got as a birthday present after mentioning that I liked the song.  In many ways, Meat Loaf’s work was what bridged the gap between the Broadway soundtracks that I had been listening to, and rock music.
3. Stairway to Heaven
   Artist: Led Zeppelin
   Album: Led Zeppelin IV
   This was one of the first rock songs that I discovered that really spoke to me.  As you can tell, I really went through a phase where I was into songs of utterly epic length…
4. Refugee
   Artist: Tom Petty
   Album: Damn the Torpedoes
   I got my first Tom Petty CD because I had this song stuck in my head from hearing it on the local classic rock station, and it fit in with the story of a comic book that I was drawing at the time.  Petty was one of the first artists that I really found to be accessible–his songs were things that I could understand, but at the same time, they were awesome pieces of music.
5. Wanted Dead or Alive
   Artist: Bon Jovi
   Album: Slippery When Wet
   That one copy of Cross Road  that I bought purely to get this song was pretty much the turning point in my discovery of music.  I think I must have played that CD about ten time the first day alone.  This was finally a band that really spoke to me–and the fact that their lead singer happened to be completely gorgeous was a lovely bonus.
6. Paint it Black
   Artist: The Rolling Stones
   Album: Flashpoint
   Flashpoint was the first live album that I ever bought.  But the song itself intrigued me long before I ever bought this album.  As a matter of fact, it was one of the critical decision-making factors in buying this album–it had to have ‘Paint it Black’ on it.  The end result was that I fell in love with live albums and what they could capture.
7. I’m Eighteen
   Artist: Alice Cooper
   Album: Love It to Death
   After I’d discovered that I really liked hard rock, I went digging around in my parents’ basement through their old records in search of new stuff to discover.  As it happened, I discovered Alice Cooper that day, and never looked back.  One more step harder and darker… and I liked it.
8. One Light Burning
   Artist: Richie Sambora
   Album: Stranger in this Town
   Sure, I owned several other CDs from heavily blues-influenced bands (like Led Zeppelin) when I bought Richie’s first solo album.  But it was Richie who really made me realize how much I liked that sound.  I went through a phase where I listened to this album–and especially this song–almost all the time.
9. Rainbow in the Dark
   Artist: Dio
   Album: Holy Diver
   I first encountered this song because it had been mentioned on Deadliest Catch.  Hey, I bought Cross Road because it had the theme song to that show on it; I figured this song was worth a listen.  As it turned out, it was well worth listening to, and here I started to become a metalhead.
10. Welcome to the Jungle
    Artist: Guns N’ Roses
    Album: Appetite for Destruction
    Back when I had a longer commute, I used to drive past a used record store every time that I drove through town instead of taking the highway.  One day, I gave in and stopped there on my way home, and wound up buying a copy of this album.  I stuck it in my CD player to listen to on the rest of the drive home.  This being summertime, I had the windows down when I got stuck in traffic.  I wound up getting funny looks from people in the cars next to me.  Evidently blond girls who drive purple cars aren’t supposed to listen to this song.  But I was OK with that.  And that was when I realized that rock and roll had become part of my identity.

Related posts:

1. My Top 10 Non-Bon Jovi Songs
2. Top Ten Songs for Fixing a Rotten Day
3. The Music Video Exposed: Wayne Isham

This time, we’re looking at my top 10 songs from bands other than Bon Jovi.  To qualify for this list, Bon Jovi must be in no way involved with the song.  They cannot be credited writers or performers–even if the song is actually performed by another artist.

1. Poison
   Artist: Alice Cooper
   Album: Trash
   This has long been sitting uncontested at the top of my most-played list–the margin between it and the next closest song is huge.
2. Rainbow in the Dark
   Artist: Dio
   Album: Holy Diver
   This was one of the songs that really introduced me to metal, and I still love it.  Evidently, I love it a lot.
3. Los Angeloser
   Artist: Meat Loaf
   Album: Hang Cool Teddy Bear
   Compared to some of the other songs on this list, I haven’t had this one all that long.  It’s risen up the list fast.  I think that’s because it sounds so different.  (I’ve also done a Random Song post on this one, go check it out!)
4. Cum on Feel the Noize
   Artist: Quiet Riot
   I kind of went through a phase with this one–I listened to it a lot for awhile, and then I kind of stopped listening to it, so it dropped down the list a lot.
5. Sweet Child O’ Mine
   Artist: Guns N’ Roses
   Album: Appetite for Destruction
   This particular song has been sort of slowly creeping up the list, since it’s always a favorite.  I never get tired of it.
6. God Gave Rock and Roll to You II
   Artist: KISS
   Album: Alive III
   This was another Random Song pick that I did some time ago, but I also love this song.  This is one that I know that I seek out and play a lot.
7. Refugee
   Artist: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
   Album:  Damn the Torpedoes
   Another song that I know that I seek out and play a lot.  This one really just is a favorite of mine.
8. Badlands
   Artist: Bruce Springsteen
   Album: Darkness on the Edge of Town
   This has been another slow climber.  It’s such a great piece of rock and roll that I play it all the time.
9. Paint It Black
   Artist: Rolling Stones
   Album: Flashpoint
   So far, the only live song on the list.  But this is classic Stones, and the live recording here just makes the song.
10. Bringin’ On The Heartbreak
    Artist: Def Leppard
    Album: High ‘n’ Dry
    Seriously, this one was a surprise.  Out of all of the Def Leppard songs that I have, I’m surprised that this one’s been played the most.

Related posts:

1. My Current Top 10 Bon Jovi Songs (January 2011)
2. Five More Songs Bon Jovi Can Cut
3. Five songs Bon Jovi can cut to make room for the rarities

I was actually introduced to this song by my parents, back when I was (you guessed it) eighteen.

I was facing up to the realities of going to college and all the rest of the changes in my life at the time when my Mom told me that there was a song that she thought I needed to hear.  She dug one of her old Alice Cooper records out of the basement and played this song for me.  And she was right.

So much of this song summed up how I actually felt at the time that I can’t listen to it now without remembering how I felt then.  I was ready to move on and keep growing up, and this one song managed to say it all–in so few words.  And the music that went with it seemed to fit together with everything else perfectly.

In retrospect, my Mom is pretty awesome.   And my parents are both probably also responsible for a lot of my musical taste now, as I grew up and started to understand what they were listening to.

Related posts:

1. Random Song: Houses of the Holy
2. Random Song: Bringin’ On The Heartbreak
3. Random Song: Nobody’s Fool

This is probably one of the least subtle–and dirtiest–songs I think I’ve ever heard.    And it’s creepy and twisted in that way that Alice is so very good at.  Add a little bit of Desmond Child’s songwriting magic, and it’s great.

I especially like the spoken intro in the very beginning.  I will admit, I had some trouble understanding it the first few times I listened to the song and I ultimately had to look up the words to the intro before I could really understand them.  But they add so much to the feeling of the entire song–that’s a lot of what gives it that dark vibe.   And then it builds up perfectly into the first verse.

The chorus of this song is pretty close to a perfect rock and roll chorus.  The chorus of this song is one of my all time favorites for singing along.  I especially love the emphasis that Alice Cooper puts on the word ‘good’ here.  This whole chorus wouldn’t be the same without that one little vocal sneer in that one word.

There’s a decent solo here–it fits perfectly in with the rest of the song, and I love how melodic it is.    In any other song, it would have been really good, but in this one it’s pretty much completely overshadowed by the vocals.

Related posts:

1. Random Song: I’m Eighteen
2. Random Song: Judgement Day
3. Random Song: God Gave Rock and Roll to You II

(I will admit that I was hoping for Bon Jovi to make it in.)

However, I am glad to see that Alice Cooper did get in.  You want to talk about influence?  Alice has got it in spades–not only when it comes to other artists, but even when it comes to ordinary people.  Like me.

Alice Cooper was one of my ‘revelation’ artists.  If you follow this blog, you know that when I was young, I listened to a lot of pop music and showtunes, and it was only when I got older and really started to think about what I truly liked for myself, that I began to discover hard rock and heavy metal.

The first time I encountered Alice Cooper was on one of my parents’ old records.  My stereo had a turntable, and I went poking around in the basement looking for records.  An old copy of Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits happened to be one of the records that I brought back to my room to listen to.

By that time, I was starting to discover rock music and had already branched out into Meat Loaf and Led Zeppelin.  But Alice Cooper was something entirely different again.  Listening to that album was like a bolt from the blue–it was so completely different from what I had been listening to before, and I liked it.

This was right around my senior year of high school, so both ‘I’m Eighteen’ and ‘School’s Out’ both spoke a language that I understood.  I liked those songs right away, and that led me to get into the other songs on the album, and from there to branch out even further.

Alice Cooper was one of the artists that introduced me to hard rock, which is now my favorite style of music.  I can vouch for the fact that his work certainly influenced my taste in music, if nothing else.

Related posts:

1. Review: Alice Cooper on Behind the Music
2. Alice Cooper interview
3. Alice Cooper releases Halloween Single

Granted, Behind the Music can be kind of predictable–rise to stardom, spin out, come back.  However, I watched a lot of the show back when I was in college, and I still have a fondness for it.  And Alice Cooper’s was a good one.

They gave a good history of his career.  I really hadn’t given that much thought to how revolutionary Alice Cooper’s work really was.  I knew that he was one of the first shock rockers, but I hadn’t thought about what that meant.  It really gave me the history of how the Alice Cooper character evolved.

It also got me interested in some of his newer albums, especially stuff like Dirty Diamonds and Along Came a Spider. I’m more familiar with his older work, and this rekindled my interest in his stuff.

I would totally classify this one as worth watching.

Related posts:

1. Alice Cooper releases Halloween Single
2. Alice Cooper interview
3. Alice Cooper got into the Hall of Fame

It’s a good interview–covers a lot of different stuff.  Part of it includes the first good statements I’ve seen from him about being nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I think he explained his reaction to it really well.

I love Alice Cooper’s work.  The guy is amazingly creative.   He creates stuff that’s not like anything else out there–and somehow manages to keep changing it up and keeping it fresh.  I like getting an insight (however small) into people like him and their creative process and interviews like this one give me that little insight.

Related posts:

1. Review: Alice Cooper on Behind the Music
2. Alice Cooper got into the Hall of Fame
3. Alice Cooper releases Halloween Single

Anyway, back on topic…

Both Bon Jovi and Alice Cooper have finally been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!  (You can pick up the whole list of nominees and the rest of the details from the announcement on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame site.)

Alice Cooper’s nomination has been a long time coming.  In my opinion, he should have gotten in a long time ago.  The man is a walking legend.   I can hear his influence all over the music industry.   His work was (and still is) groundbreaking stuff.

And Bon Jovi is finally, finally getting some credit for the amount of influence that they have.  Their influence should have been obvious after they did Unplugged back when Lost Highway was released.  The guys in the All-American Rejects–another band whose work I really enjoy–openly said that Bon Jovi was one of their big influences on that show.

Related posts:

1. Jon at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
2. Review: The More Things Change
3. On Fantasy, Hair, and Other Things

Anyway, it kind of got me to thinking. I can’t imagine anyone else trying to cover that particular song. Half of what made it so successful was its sound, which was really built on the accents of the original performers. Anyone else’s version would lack that particular element, and the song just wouldn’t sound right without it.

I suppose that this really goes for almost any artist who has a particular vocal style. Sure, songwriters can put a distinctive stamp on their songs–Jim Steinman comes to mind. But when you’re dealing with an artist with a completely unique sound, like the Proclaimers, the song can become inseparable from the performer. (I suspect that this effect is what made the partnership between Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf so productive–Steinman produced such distinctive songs, and then Meat Loaf owned those songs.)

As a matter of fact, a lot of Meat Loaf’s songs, especially the Steinman ones, come to mind when I try to think of other ‘uncoverable’ songs. Alice Cooper’s work wouldn’t be an easy task to cover either.

The interesting thing, in all of these cases, is that the song actually becomes bound up with the performer, leaving the song incomplete without the original artist.

Related posts:

1. Album Review: Hang Cool Teddy Bear
2. Random Song: Bat Out of Hell
3. Random Song: Los Angeloser

1. Poison
   Artist: Alice Cooper
   Album: Trash
   I knew I liked this song–after all, I specifically ordered Trash just to get it.  But I had no idea that I played it so much that it had gotten all the way to #1!

2. Hell is Living Without You
   Artist: Alice Cooper
   Album: Trash
   Not a surprise here–this is actually one of my favorites, being a collaboration between Alice, Richie, Jon and Desmond Child, and I knew I listened to it a lot.  It’s in most of my custom playlists.

3. Cum on Feel the Noize
   Artist: Quiet Riot
   Okay, a bit of a surprise here.  I like Quiet Riot well enough, but they aren’t one of my all-time favorite bands.  But evidently I really like this song.

4. Roulette
   Artist: Bon Jovi
   Album:  Bon Jovi
   Odd choice here.  I’m guessing because it shows up early in the list when I list out all of the songs in my collection, so I end up starting here a lot.  Otherwise, I don’t really seek this one out.

5. This Ain’t a Love Song
   Artist: Bon Jovi
   Album: These Days
   I would have actually expected this one to rank a bit higher–in the #1 or 2 range, because this is actually a favorite that I do seek out on a fairly regular basis.

6. Rainbow in the Dark
   Artist: Dio
   Album: Holy Diver
   I would have put this one as another of my top favorites–I know I seek this one out a lot, and include it in my playlists.

7. Why Aren’t You Dead
   Artist: Bon Jovi
   Album: 100,000,000 Million Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong
   This isn’t a song that I truly think of as one of my favorites–if I were asked, I probably wouldn’t list it in my favorites.  But I do include in a lot of playlists, which most likely accounts for its rank.

8. Temptation
   Artist: Bon Jovi
   Album: 100,000,000 Million Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong
   This is another song that I would have expected to clock in much higher.  This is one of the songs that I truly do think of as a favorite–but I guess I don’t actually listen to it as often as I would have thought.

9. Santa Fe
   Artist: Jon Bon Jovi
   Album: Blaze of Glory
   Another well-liked but not essential track.  Evidently I listen to it way more than I thought I did.

10. Nobody’s Hero / Livin’ on a Prayer (demo)
    Artist: Bon Jovi
    Album: 100,000,000 Million Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong
    I think this only got up this high because I replayed it a bunch of times when I was writing up a random song post on it.  I can’t think of any other explanation for it.

I find it interesting that there are no songs whatsoever from Stranger In This Town–even though I’ve long considered that to be my favorite album of all time.  Also conspicuously absent–anything from Slippery When Wet–only the most essential Bon Jovi album ever…

Related posts:

1. My Current Top 10 Bon Jovi Songs (January 2011)
2. Top Ten Songs for Fixing a Rotten Day
3. The ten songs that made me like music