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Listening to music inspires us to take action. Upon hearing an I.E.—Instant Ear-worm—we must then determine the best way we can go about listening to it again (and again) at our convenience. Prior to the free-for-all streaming era, our I.E. follow-through measures typically meant seeking out a specific playback medium for our favorite music, initially based on budgetary constraints. In those formative, pre-employment preteen years, 45s—and/or, depending on how far back we're talking here, possibly even 78s—fit the literal dollar bill before we could afford to move up the media ladder and begin purchasing LPs en masse. Our then-limited playback options tended to start with those self-contained, close-and-play record players and/or our parents' living-room consoles before we could afford to acquire separate components for more personal, higher-fidelity listening sessions. We were, to be blunt, obsessed.

Across the pond, hungry young listeners were eager to do the exact same thing. Take garage/punk glam-pop vocalist Michael Des Barres (aka MDB), who had duly been shuffled off to Repton School in Derbyshire, England, as a lad in the 1950s and found his initial aural inspiration by listening to his mates' records, since he couldn't yet afford to buy any of his own. "A friend of mine at boarding school had a Sonny Boy Williamson record, and I just lost my mind," Des Barres recalls. "That's how it began for those of us who grew up in England in the '50s and '60s. It was all blues-based and Motown to start, because American music was what turned us on. And then it was dressed up in velvet and mutated into something else."

Des Barres soon became addicted to finding and spinning records by the likes of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, and The Rolling Stones. In turn, those foundational listening lessons led him to want to make music himself, whether it was by fronting bands in the trenches like Silverhead and Detective in the '70s, Chequered Past, and (briefly) The Power Station in the '80s, or by taking full charge as a solo artist. Lately, Des Barres—who recently celebrated the 10-year marker of his morning deejay shift on Little Steven's Underground Garage channel on SiriusXM—has felt compelled to find ways to give back to the artform that made his bones, as well as look toward reaching newer generations perhaps not as familiar with the rock-era tableau as we are. MDB's initial foray into his multitiered plan to serially span multiple decades of music is a new, 12-song '70s-centric covers album, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, which is currently available via Rock Ridge Music on all major digital outlets (footnote 1).

Tracked and cut live at bassist Paul Ill's Psychedelic Shack in the Valley just outside Los Angeles, Des Barres and his three-piece band put modern garage-rock grease on Sweet's "Fox on the Run," saw fit to sprinkle a spicy snarl into T. Rex's "20th Century Boy," and added generational gravitas to Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen." A fresh take on Roxy Music's ever-sleek "Love Is the Drug" concludes with Eric Schermerhorn's blistering, spur-of-the-moment guitar solo that was not part of the original arrangement. "We had to find the right structure," Des Barres explains, "because we need those youngsters to know what real guitar, bass, drums, and a voice sound like together. You don't need a tambourine. You don't need a synthesizer. The logic of what I was trying to do here was to bring it back to the core of what rock'n'roll is all about."

The one '60s track Des Barres felt made absolute sense to include on It's Only Rock 'n' Roll was "I'm Waiting for the Man," Lou Reed's harrowing uptown fix-chasing chronicle from The Velvet Underground & Nico's self-titled March 1967 debut LP (Verve V-5008). "Man" actually shares some quite pointed, shall we say, lines of DNA with "Obsession," a song MDB co-wrote with Holly Knight in 1983 that later became a hit single for Animotion (footnote 2). While many listeners assume the perpetually catchy "Obsession"—which is fueled by a throbbing, E-string–propelled bass line—is mainly about chasing and fulfilling a desire for romantic love, it was actually Des Barres's poison-pill love-letter twist to having fallen prey to heroin addiction. "Yes, there is a connection between those two songs," Des Barres confirms. "The feeling of obsession is such a strong feeling. Why would I write about daisies or why it's such a lovely day when it isn't, you know? Lou had to be on the album, because he birthed this idea of lyrical simplicity and honesty about his drug addiction. And I know that, for me in London in the late '60s and early '70s, it was very much like the times of Nero."

It's Only Rock 'n' Roll reminds us of the heady rush we got from ultimately figuring out how we could best fuel our initial obsession with music—by injecting that feeling over and over again upon finding the right combination of turntable, receiver, headphones, and/or speakers to assist with our aural fix. So how did MDB conquer his own sonic demons? "Well, I'll give you this: A lead singer playing maracas in 1964 in the East End of London is just as important as being in any half-a-million-dollar studio in Burbank—probably more so," Des Barres explains. "That's the feeling I wanted for It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, right there—it's spiritualized, carnal, honest, and true."

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Footnote 1: As of presstime, Des Barres is researching how to best get It's Only Rock 'n' Roll onto vinyl where it belongs, most likely as a special edition with newly recorded bonus tracks.

Footnote 2: Animotion is one of the many synth-pop outfits to have emerged from Los Angeles in the 1980s. Their version of "Obsession," which was driven by a suggestive, of-era performance-oriented video that garnered heavy rotation on MTV, reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in late 1984.