In 1973 the United States was introduced to a new term: Energy Crisis. The country learned, for the first time, that oil was a finite commodity. I was twenty-two at the time and was driving a 1965 VW bug. I remember waiting on the long lines to get to the pump to fill that small fuel tank.
My first wife and I were separated and I was living alone in our apartment in Hempstead, NY. I was working for the Oxford Pendaflex Company. At the company I had made many friends. One guy, a designer there, wanted to come and see me play and bring a bunch of his friends. He mentioned there was one woman in particular who would probably be very interested in meeting me.
One night a bunch of folks came to see me play at a small club I was soloing at. While I was on the stage getting ready, tuning and setting up, I hear a loud yell over the crowd noise, "I LOVE YOUR HAIR!!!!" I turned to the table on my left and there she was - not the most demur lady I'd met. With her was a large Hells Angel type of guy, sitting beside her, arms crossed, huge chest and gut, with long black hair and a full exploding black beard. Remember, this was the 70's and sexually, as well as 'relationship-wise', things we pretty strange.
Well this guy named Al was a film editor at NBC. We became good and close friends. One day he called me and asked me to go through my enormous record collection to find some songs for a documentary that NBC was doing on the Energy Crisis. He told me if I couldn't find anything then I should write something. Needless to say, "I couldn't find anything." I showed up at the NBC studios in NYC at about 10:00 pm (they work around the clock) and was shown old footage of oil riggers in Texas. I picked up my guitar and wrote the first verse and chorus in a few minutes. We recorded it that night and it was on the air a few days later.
I wrote the other verses several years later.
BlackHands.mp3 Copyright©Worldwide 1973-2006 Steven Marcus