July 2nd, 2004:
Talked to John Galt while stopped at the CarQuest auto parts store in Butte Montana. Mr. Galt is Fed Ex-ing my passport to Bismarck North Dakota, where I must rendezvous with it by 1PM (Central Time) tomorrow. Thank God for Mr. Galt.
Inside the auto parts store the radio is playing “I Can’t Drive 55.” This song seems quaint in hindsight, considering we are currently traveling through a state that only recently lowered the posted speed limit from “A Safe and Reasonable Speed” to a more enforceable 75 MPH. Considering how much better time we’re making on this journey than I ever did in previous trips, I understand the outrage of Eighties-era Sammy Hagar (back before his tragic downhill slide into the best-forgotten travesty that was Van Hagar.) I feel sympathetic pangs of righteous indignation time-transported twenty years forward. Damn straight, dude! Why would they make a speedometer that goes all the way to 120 mph if they didn’t intend the needle to ever get past 12 O’clock? They might as well call it a slowometer! Downright cruel.
This song has all the elements of a classic teenage rebellion anthem circa 1984. First, the presence of Sammy “Red Rocker” Hagar, the man who rightly pointed out that there’s only one way to rock and that heavy metal noise was a one-way ticket to paradise.
Second, it possesses a strong sense of righteous outrage at uptight authority – We’re not gonna take it because there are no stop signs or speed limits on the Highway to Hell -- we’re breaking the law and if you think you can stand in the way of us getting wild, wild, wild then you’ve got another thing comin’.
And herein lies the crucial distinction between a buttrock rebellion song and say, a punk song. Because the Red Rocker isn’t encouraging his listeners to overthrow the government or set fire to police cars. He doesn’t want to turn the world on its head. This is no “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” or “Hinckley had a vision.” Sammy’s just pissed that under the new federally-mandated speed limit it now takes him sixteen hours to reach L.A.
Realizing that teenagers have a generalized sense of anger at anything that inconveniences them or impinges on their sense of autonomy in any way, the pied pipers of buttrock obligingly turned out songs that rebelled against everything and yet nothing at all. Satan was regularly and unironically invoked in songs of the era because he signified an affront to Christian straightness and scared the hell out of god-fearing parents. According to buttrock, the world is just teeming with conformity-worshipping straights who want to stand in the way of your having good time, and it is your right, nay your moral imperative, to rock on despite their feeble imprecations. Amusingly, the Tipper Gores of the world obligingly leapt in to fill this role, acting like real-life versions of the fun-hating authorities of Rock and Roll High School or the stodgy town elders in Footloose, seemingly unaware that in so doing they completed the fantasy of righteous rebellion that the teens were buying as fast as the records could be pressed.
For these American teens, Running with the Devil served as just as effective a pressure valve as any call to anarchy spewing forth from the spittle-flecked gobs of those guitar-solo-challenged British lads with odd haircuts. You say you want a revolution? Whatever, Nigel. I just wanna drive my Camaro fast!