True story. Once, when I was twelve or so, I thought I had written “Rock You” in my sleep. One morning I awoke with the riff and words already in my head. “Gimme an R, O, C, K. Watchya got? ROCK! And watchya gonna do? ROCK YOU!” It was brilliant and I figured not only was I on the cusp of untold fame and fortune, truly remarkable considering I’d never played a guitar chord in my life, but I was also some sort of musically genius for having this song basically come to me in a dream.
The afterglow of this delusional moment lasted a few hours until I heard “Rock You” on the radio and had my composer bubble burst. The reality was I had slept through many minutes of my radio alarm and “Rock You” had played during that time and been incorporated into my dream. It was the first time I had ever heard the song, but being in the depths of REM sleep at the time, my subconscious decided that I had actually created this epic piece of Canadian hard rock. Hey, I didn’t say it wasn’t an embarrassing story.
Helix of course became megastars, if only briefly, thanks to “Rock You”. Their follow up album had a couple hit songs too but none that matched it. That’s really too bad because it’s a pretty good rock album in my opinion. I listened to regularly on my Walkman cranked to ear-damaging levels. I could highlight three or four songs here quite easily, but true to form I’ll stick with my favourite.
I never had a crush on a girl with this name but I easily let my imagination associate the rest of the lyrics with any number of other-named girls I did like. Ha, I just looked up those lyrics online and good lord they are hilarious. What can I say, I was a leg man, errr, boy. In fact, I had a long time crush on one particular gal whom I secretly referred to as “Legs”. Yeah, I was a class act in high school. Who knew I’d eventually fall for and marry a beautiful woman from the same hometown as the lead singer? That’s some kind of fate thingy I think.
So in honour of my brief and ultimately fraudulent hit song writing career, my embarrassing hormonal teenage years, and the small Ontario town that produced two legends I’m kicking of your weekend with my favourite from the kings of Canadian hair metal. This is “Christine” by Helix from the 1985 album Long Way To Heaven.
Studio Version: