![]() ![]() During this trip, drummer John Bonham allegedly rode a Harley-Davidson - his 25th birthday present - up and down the halls of L.A.'s most famous hotel, the Chateau Marmont. And then there's the classic tale about Led Zeppelin's first visit to Los Angeles in December 1968. There is the legend of the Mudshark, which may or may not have actually happened. Led Zeppelin's tours were infamous for leaving a trail of ruptured eardrums and destroyed hotel rooms in their wake. The guitarist continued to release music throughout the next few decades without the Arrows, and Allan still performs live to this day. By the late Sixties, though, Allan was out, and Steppenwolf were in. While the films themselves are all but forgotten now - good luck getting finding them on Netflix - Allan's scores inspired filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, who used the Arrows' "Devil's Rumble" in Inglourious Basterds, and Jim Jarmusch ("Cycle-Delic" in Night on Earth). Allan went on to score several more films in the biker genre, including Devil's Angels, The Glory Stompers, The Born Losers and the documentary Teenage Rebellion. It was on The Wild Angels - a Corman-directed Peter Fonda biker flick that preceded Easy Rider - that Allan and his Arrows crafted their biggest hit, "Blues Theme." The instrumental wound up on the Billboard Top 40. What Corman didn't count on was Allan and his backing band, the Arrows, creating music that would long outlive the cheapo films.Īllan's instrumentals were similar to Link Wray's and Dick Dale's, but his songs had a lot more fuzz, a lot more Morricone and a lot more attitude. ![]() In the mid-Sixties, inspired by the growth of the real Hells Angels, legendary (and infamous) movie producer Roger Corman hired a session guitarist named Davie Allan to score a handful of quickie motorcycle and hotrods films he was producing. Three cutting-edge guitarists sum up the sound of their respective scene in the 1960s: the surfers had Dick Dale, the garage bands had Link Wray and the bikers had Davie Allan. Their influence continued to resonate through the decades, however: Everyone from Blondie to the Jesus and Mary Chain to post-2000s girl group-inspired bands like Vivian Girls have cited them as an influence. The Shangri-La's became the laureates of the teenage tragedy thanks to hits like "Out in the Streets," "Dressed in Black" and "I Can Never Go Home Anymore," but by 1968, the girl group had disbanded. Not exactly feel-good stuff, but "Leader of the Pack" was cloaked in enough sugary-sweet melodies and top-notch production to catapult it to Number One on the Billboard Hot 100. Jimmy speeds off angrily into the rainy night, and despite Betty's pleas to slow down, he crashes and dies. Singles like Wayne Cochran's "Last Kiss" and Jan and Dean's "Dead Man's Curve" maintained this sad pop genre's popularity, but the teenage tragedy song really hit its peak in 1964 with the Shangri-La's legendary "Leader of the Pack." Named one of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, "Leader" tells the story of a teenage girl named Betty who disobeys her parents by falling in love with Jimmy, a biker from "the wrong side of the tracks." She finally gives in and tells the leader of the pack that they're through. Despite being about a motorcyclist who crashes his bike into a diesel truck, the song became a worldwide smash single, and the "teenage tragedy song" was born. In 1955, the classic songwriting duo Lieber and Stoller penned the Cheers' "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots," a song inspired by biker culture. Given the film's success, it was only a matter of time before record labels took notice. The influential 1953 film The Wild One, which starred Marlon Brando as the young leader of a California biker gang, helped permanently shape the look and attitude of the pop-culture motorcyclist. The motorcycle has long been synonymous with disenfranchised youth. ![]()
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