11/12/24
Newsletter #682
The Crack of Dawn
Returning to the 8-track player in my VW Beetle, it worked just fine. I blasted the shit out of the terrific new album, Dark Side of the Moon, many times, as well as many other tapes. But as I mentioned, when an 8-track cartridge broke, it was junk. 8-tracks could not be fixed; they were designed that way. In any case, on a bitterly cold, clear, sunny day in the winter of 1974, I got into my car and started it. It started right up, as VWs were known for doing, but I could wait forever for it to heat up inside the car. It had a bullshit, forced heat system that didn’t work, with exposed wires dangling under the car. Ridiculous. Anyway, I popped an 8-track tape into the under-dash player, that I’d installed. It emitted a strangled gurgling sound and stopped abruptly. Remember, 8-tracks can’t be fixed. I pulled the cartridge out of the machine and tape hung out the front of the cartridge going back into the player. Without much trouble, even though it was insanely cold, I pulled the tape out of the machine. That tape was now well and truly fucked. I tossed it in the back seat—crap. I plugged in another tape, and the same thing happened—ga-ga-glurg—it stopped dead. I pulled it out, tape dangling from the front, and tossed it in the backseat. I tried yet another tape. Same thing. Five times. I didn’t have that many 8-tracks to start with, and now I had five less.
At some point later that year I traded a bag of weed for a decent, wood-sided, 8-track recorder—a very rare because nobody recorded their own 8-tracks. 8-track tapes were already on their way out—cassettes had taken over—and a good 8-track recorder was worth about a $25 bag of weed. I must bring this up, as ridiculously minute as it is. 8-track tapes didn’t have much tape in them, thus the need to keep changing tracks. On all 8-track tapes, if a song ran long, it would gently fade out, a tiny piece of metal foil tripped a switch, causing the machine’s play head to mechanically move up or down—quickly and sharply, making a ka-chunk sound—and the song would then gently fade back in. However, on the blank 8-track tapes that I bought for a short while and recorded myself, I didn’t fade in and out when tracks changed, nor could I have. So, when people listened to my home recorded versions of anything, they heard “. . . Breath, breath in the air—ka-chunk—and everybody jumped in fear when the machine’s heads moved. It frightened everybody. Not me, of course, since I recorded the tape, I knew where the tracks would change and therefore was not surprised, but consistently amused that it frightened everyone. I thought to myself, even way back then, the inventors must have encountered this phenomenon when they developed and tested the product—changing tracks scared people. The inoffensive solution was the gentle fade in and out.
Which gets us back to Bill Lear, who really did invent the 8-track tape, although that’s not nearly his biggest accomplishment. 8-track was purely a thing he did on the side. Lear was already well-known for his aviation radios. Bill Lear developed radio direction finders, autopilots, and the first fully automatic aircraft landing system—really big developments in the world of aeronautics.
But Bill had bigger goals in mind. He saw a demand and filled it—really rich, powerful people needed their own jet service. In October 1963, Bill’s company, Lear Jet (headquartered right here in Southfield, Michigan), started test flights on the Learjet 23, the first mass-produced business jet. Bill had taken the design of a military jet and reconfigured it. The first LearJet 25 began selling in 1963; it could carry eight passengers, go 560 mph and cost about $650,000, fully equipped. This was over $400,000 less than his nearest competitor at the time, which was nobody. The market was completely Bill Lear’s for 20 years—and his clients were the richest people in the world—which is why for a while there that sort of aircraft, the small business jet, was referred to as a Lear Jet (like in Dark Side of the Moon). The LearJet 25 is actually a type of jet that you can still purchase right now, for $2,400,000.
Along the way of founding and building Lear Jet into a giant company, Bill Lear also invented the 8-track tape as a way to play music in his jets. Lear Jet merged with the big company, the Siegler Corporation, becoming Lear Siegler, which is a huge corporation. Bill was out, but rich. Lear Siegler are buildings and plants are located all over the Detroit area. I think they are the world’s largest manufacturer of dashboards and car interiors.
And that’s the story of the 8-track tape and the Lear Jet.
Dark Side is one of the greatest albums ever released! Hard to believe at 50 years old.