Ye Olde Hit Parade: Give Blood

1985: Pete Townshend - Give Blood

1985 was a big year for me. I finished my senior year of high school. I had a shot at being valedictorian but an ill-timed C in Computer Science dropped me down to second in the class. I still gave a speech at graduation that went over pretty well.

Things in the world were interesting as always: Reagan started his second term, New Coke came and went, and it was the year of rock 'n roll charity with Live Aid and the song "We Are the World" raising money for to help fight hunger in Africa and Farm Aid helping struggling farmers here in the U.S.

My college search was pretty extensive. I had high hopes of getting into an Ivy League school and applied to Yale and Dartmouth, but my grades weren't that impressive compared to the rest of the kids who applied there. Just as well. I got into BU, Lafayette, Oberlin and Ithaca, but ultimately I went with the cheapest option, which was the in-state University of New Hampshire.

I declared as a chemical engineer, but after a couple of months of struggling with calculus and physics, I made the wise decision to cut my losses and switched to journalism. It was tough to come home after that first semester having basically bombed out, but in the end, things worked out just fine.

Dorm life was fun for the most part. My roommate freshman year was a nice enough kid but was a bit socially inept, and after a mishap involving alcohol poisoning, he went home every weekend to stay out of trouble. But I had a good group of friends and quickly became acquainted with alcohol in a way I never had before. Fortunately, things never got out of control.



Musically, things were expanding for me. I still loved me some of the heaviness, but there was a lot more that interested me. I listened to plenty of the new releases from Rush, Robert Plant and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but I was also digging the newer sounds of bands like the Cult, the Smiths, R.E.M., INXS, Big Audio Dynamite and Til Tuesday. I've always liked a lot of different kinds of music, so this was no different. And also once I got to college, my love of hard rock became something of a joke to my buddies who were more into mainstream stuff like Springsteen and John Cougar Mellencamp, so I didn't wear it on my sleeve as much. That said, I was still listening to a ton of older music as well, as I picked up back catalog stuff from Zeppelin, Van Halen and others in addition to new releases.

But picking my favorite song of '85 was difficult because there wasn't one song throughout the year that dominated it for me. I'm going to go with "Give Blood" from Pete Townshend's excellent solo album White City: A Novel. The song wasn't a big hit, per se, although it did get a lot of airplay on rock radio. It featured a killer backing band featuring David Gilmour, Pino Palladino and Simon Phillips and is a powerful opening track to a potent album about the low-income London housing projects near where Townshend grew up. White City is the last great studio album Townshend has released and "Give Blood" is a big part of that.



Honorable mentions: Pete Townshend - "Face the Face"; Rush - "The Big Money"; Robert Plant - "Little By Little"; The Cult - "She Sells Sanctuary"; The Smiths - "How Soon Is Now?"; INXS - "This Time"; INXS - "Listen Like Thieves"; INXS - "What You Need"; Til Tuesday - "Voices Carry"; R.E.M. - "Driver 8"; R.E.M. - "You Can't Get There From Here"; Dire Straits - "Money For Nothing"; Big Audio Dynamite - "E=MC2"; Big Audio Dynamite - "The Bottom Line"; Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)"; Tears For Fears - "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"; Prince - "Raspberry Beret"; Talking Heads - "Road to Nowhere"; Pet Shop Boys - "West End Girls"; Wang Chung - "To Live and Die in LA"; Talk Talk - "Life's What You Make It"; Faith No More - "We Care a Lot"'; Motley Crue - "Home Sweet Home"; Run DMC - "King of Rock"; X - "Burning House of Love"