Billy Squier

Born in Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1950, Billy Squier began playing music at age nine, taking piano lessons for several before getting his first guitar, a Danelectro. His inspiration to pursue a career in music came after hearing John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton on an album belonging to a friend. Squier saw Clapton fronting Cream at The Psychedelic Supermarket in Kenmore Square in 1967 and his own group, The Tom Swift Electric Band, became the house band at the venue after he finished high school in 1968, opening for acclaimed acts like The Grateful Dead and The Moody Blues. In 1969, Squier relocated to New York City to join the short-lived band Magic Terry & the Universe, a sort of music-and-poetry collaboration that appeared at The Boston Tea Party.

Squier attended Berklee College of Music in 1971 and later in the decade did stints with The Sidewinders and Piper, the latter of which landed a record deal with A&M in 1976. The group cut two critically acclaimed albums before Squier decided to go solo. His 1979 album Tale of the Tape included the hit single in “You Should Be High, Love” and Squier toured with Alice Cooper to support the LP. In 1981, he recorded the top-five platinum smash Don’t Say No, which spawned the hit singles “In the Dark,” “Lonely is the Night” and “The Stroke,” each of which found extensive airplay on radio and MTV, solidly establishing Squier as a solo artist. “The Stroke,” which hit #3 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart and #52 in the British pop charts, remains his best-known song.

Squier’s next studio outing was another top-five seller, 1982’s Emotions in Motion, and it established him as a headlining artist. Several arena tours followed during the ‘80s with major acts of the era including Def Leppard, who Squier brought out with him for their first US tour (supporting their 1983 album Pyromania). Since then, he’s become one of the most sampled artists of all time, which has kept his music heard on pop and hip-hop stations as well as rock ones and earned him a Grammy. Squier’s songs have been sampled by the likes of Jay Z, Eminem and Run-DMC, to name a few, but for classic-rock fans, his legacy is as a mainstay on rock radio in New England and virtually every major city around the world.

(by Mark Turner)