Billy Squier

Wellesley High School Author: Billy Squier (1968)

            Once in the early 1980s, Billy Squier’s mother Patty told her Wellesley Country Club friends about attending his concert at the Boston Garden.  She wore her new lavender ultra-suede Bill Blass suit, with her mother’s pearls and a little gold bumblebee pin from her husband.  Once the limousine delivered them, they were swallowed up into the out of control crowd, overwhelmed by hard-core fans of the decade’s iconic arena rocker.  The Boston Globe said “the reaction to Squier was a set-long, deep-throated roar.”

            Billy’s LP Don’t Say No (called “a landmark release in the arena rock genre”) had just spent 102 weeks in the U.S. Top Ten (selling 4 million albums in the U.S. and almost that many around the world), and Rolling Stone called him “the most articulate, emotionally intense rocker the ‘70s produced.” 

            The Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter had five Top 10 rock hits, including two at number one (“Everybody Wants You” stayed there for seven weeks), and three in a row of his albums went platinum.  He even wrote a screenplay, which was honored by the Sundance Film Festival. 

            Billy started his music career at 12 when he bought his first guitar from his neighbor, at 14 started a band (the Reltneys), and while in high school played with the Grateful Dead at Boston’s Psychedlic Supermarket club.  He described his music as “merging the power pop elements of my youth with the hard-edged reality of my street experiences.”  He is perhaps best known for his songs “Rock Me Tonite” and “All Night Long.”