It's a difficult question to answer for a number of reasons. For a start, ones teenage years are often turbulent and subject to dramatic changes in taste. At 14 I might have loved an artist whom I loathed at 19. It is not unusual for early interests in say, pop, top forty charts and the like, to tend to dominate the conversation in the beginning. And what about the single, the staple of all who could not afford the LP but who hankered for something to play, even at at 45rpm.
In my case I am under the extra burden of memory loss for the key period in question. So I went back through my LP collection (which had sadly been decimated by a recent flood in the garage) and began to piece together a kind of chronology of the times. I remembered better than I had thought I might, probably because music is and was a source of great joy for me. There were also some homework diary jottings that confirmed my opinions.
Let me begin by saying that my first immersion in popular music (apart from Sinatra et al.) was in late primary school. I had befriended a pop fanatic and he introduced me to Russell Morris and The Master's Apprentices, both Australian acts. He was an avid reader of Go-Set music magazine and we had long talks about the music scene. A cover from this publication is displayed below.
But what the question posed above is really asking is more specific and probably tends in the direction of albums bought or collected. That usually happened during the teenage years and was subject to ones parents supplying the money. Birthdays and Christmas were also occasions for scoring an LP or two.
So, to begin with the first of those great influences. My school diary from the time (Year 8) tells of a wondrous moment when our music teacher, tired of the struggle with Beethoven and Benjamin Britten, pulled an LP out of a lurid cover and put it on the school record player. The album was Hot August Night, the artist, Neil Diamond. I was sold, then and there.
Go-Set October 1969
One of my ten.
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