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Authors: Mitch Ryder
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personal choices all come together in his voice and he is then perceived to sound black. That is where racism becomes elusive.
It is tragic that, even today, young, good-looking white boys are packaged and sold to a targeted young white girl audience and one of the most desirable attributes to their talent is their ability to sound black. You may as well just come right out and say, if you were to borrow from the lengthy past on this issue, “We like the music the Negroes make but we don’t want our children, especially our daughters, to be around them.”
I believe that music can heal. I believe it knows nothing of racism, and I believe it is given and taken as an expression of love. Having said and meant that, the boys and I were on our way to New York City where the hunger that was so deeply felt by our young white rock ‘n’ rollers in the Detroit area would now be satisfied, along with the rest of their American counter-parts. This was because we were only months away from exploding onto the music charts with our own little home-grown style of Detroit rock ‘n’ roll. And best of all, we would become ambassadors of good will for our beloved native city as we were now to be called Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.
But before that could happen, we had to leave our families and friends, our contracts had to be signed by our parents––as none of us were legally old enough to have that responsibility––and we had to pretend we were not afraid.
Chapter 8
W HEN I SAY WE HAD TO pretend to not be afraid I don’t know that I was speaking for anyone but myself, and the type of fear I was feeling was more an uncertainty over the future than anything else. We knew we were good. We had a ton of self-confidence and, for the most part, my fear was kicked to the curb under the pure adventure and excitement of my first visit to New York City. But, Susan was pregnant and we had chosen to get married which, in a more innocent and responsible time, seemed the only thing to do. The feminist cry of “my body is my temple and I shall worship as I will” had not yet been clearly articulated. There were abortions, but not the mind boggling, insane numbers we have come to know today. And some were very dangerous, but they were a far cry from abortion upon demand, repeatedly, over and over.
In any case, Susan was pregnant, we married, and I had to make sure I could support my new family. It was a lot of pressure for an eighteen-year-old. I remember thinking at the time, when the boys and I boarded the train for New York City and Susan stood on the platform as the train slowly pulled away, that she was beautiful. I tried to imagine what our baby would look like and, as we waved to each other and she grew smaller and smaller, I determined that he or she would be beautiful, like his or her mother, and I wasn’t going to let my child go through a childhood like the one I had survived. But sixteen hours later, when the train pulled into New York City, paternal muse had grown smaller and smaller and the adventure had begun.
It was not as if we had started somewhere in middle America, with its chaste knowledge of sophisticated big city intercourse, and slowly worked our way from hamlet to village to town to Mecca. No, we had pretty much gone right from an auto-body shop to the greatest party on earth, and we didn’t have a clue.
Chapter 9
N EW Y ORK . I T IS SAID THAT first impressions are lasting ones and when we stepped out of Grand Central Station, stretching our necks upward to just barely see the sky, our smallness made even the wind-blown New York street trash look more honest and important than the everyday common-place litter on the weed-lined streets of Detroit. Around us lay the ultimate phallic monument to men who would be kings and we were being invited to sample the power of thousands of men, living and dead, whose dreams, even in failure, were greater than anything we dared imagine.
In the outer
It is tragic that, even today, young, good-looking white boys are packaged and sold to a targeted young white girl audience and one of the most desirable attributes to their talent is their ability to sound black. You may as well just come right out and say, if you were to borrow from the lengthy past on this issue, “We like the music the Negroes make but we don’t want our children, especially our daughters, to be around them.”
I believe that music can heal. I believe it knows nothing of racism, and I believe it is given and taken as an expression of love. Having said and meant that, the boys and I were on our way to New York City where the hunger that was so deeply felt by our young white rock ‘n’ rollers in the Detroit area would now be satisfied, along with the rest of their American counter-parts. This was because we were only months away from exploding onto the music charts with our own little home-grown style of Detroit rock ‘n’ roll. And best of all, we would become ambassadors of good will for our beloved native city as we were now to be called Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.
But before that could happen, we had to leave our families and friends, our contracts had to be signed by our parents––as none of us were legally old enough to have that responsibility––and we had to pretend we were not afraid.
Chapter 8
W HEN I SAY WE HAD TO pretend to not be afraid I don’t know that I was speaking for anyone but myself, and the type of fear I was feeling was more an uncertainty over the future than anything else. We knew we were good. We had a ton of self-confidence and, for the most part, my fear was kicked to the curb under the pure adventure and excitement of my first visit to New York City. But, Susan was pregnant and we had chosen to get married which, in a more innocent and responsible time, seemed the only thing to do. The feminist cry of “my body is my temple and I shall worship as I will” had not yet been clearly articulated. There were abortions, but not the mind boggling, insane numbers we have come to know today. And some were very dangerous, but they were a far cry from abortion upon demand, repeatedly, over and over.
In any case, Susan was pregnant, we married, and I had to make sure I could support my new family. It was a lot of pressure for an eighteen-year-old. I remember thinking at the time, when the boys and I boarded the train for New York City and Susan stood on the platform as the train slowly pulled away, that she was beautiful. I tried to imagine what our baby would look like and, as we waved to each other and she grew smaller and smaller, I determined that he or she would be beautiful, like his or her mother, and I wasn’t going to let my child go through a childhood like the one I had survived. But sixteen hours later, when the train pulled into New York City, paternal muse had grown smaller and smaller and the adventure had begun.
It was not as if we had started somewhere in middle America, with its chaste knowledge of sophisticated big city intercourse, and slowly worked our way from hamlet to village to town to Mecca. No, we had pretty much gone right from an auto-body shop to the greatest party on earth, and we didn’t have a clue.
Chapter 9
N EW Y ORK . I T IS SAID THAT first impressions are lasting ones and when we stepped out of Grand Central Station, stretching our necks upward to just barely see the sky, our smallness made even the wind-blown New York street trash look more honest and important than the everyday common-place litter on the weed-lined streets of Detroit. Around us lay the ultimate phallic monument to men who would be kings and we were being invited to sample the power of thousands of men, living and dead, whose dreams, even in failure, were greater than anything we dared imagine.
In the outer
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