I gave myself over to rock ‘n’ roll the same way so many others have: young, full of hope, and surrounded by a group of completely nude musicians. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It was fall 1985, I was 13 years old. I'd been invited by my best friend Jon Beller to join him and his mom for some wholesome New England-style fun at the Topsfield Fair, a 10-day event held every October about 20 miles north of Boston. The centerpiece of our day was to be an early-evening performance in the makeshift amphitheater by doo-wop legends the Drifters.

It was an easy sell by Jon: “They sing ‘Under the Boardwalk,’ Danny. One of your favorites.”

Right, “Under the Boardwalk”! That was on the oldies mixtape I loved at the time. I didn’t know any of the singers’ names on the cassette except, I think, Little Richard. And that was only because Jon had shown me a part in Little Richard’s biography about how when Richard was growing up in Georgia there was a guy who hung out by the docks and had a hole in his abdomen that all the neighborhood kids would use for sex. That kind of image tends to rattle around in a 13-year-old’s head.