I can remember hearing Diamond Head for the first time and crying over it. Seriously. It sounded altogether just THAT good to me. And, of course, I HAD to play it. I had learned a bunch of Ventures stuff from Music Minus One type teaching LP's. But Diamond Head wasn't there. I worked a long time (I was just a 14 YO kid) to figure out Diamond Head. When I got the verse licks figured out, I would just play that song on the turntable over and over, and play along with it, working to get it just as awesome as my 14-YO self could make it. It drove my parents nuts. They would made me DO SOMETHING ELSE! So I would, for a round or two, then back to Diamond Head! I still love the song. And Pipeline. And WDR. And Apache. And, and and ....
18 years on, Mel Taylor, Bob Bogle, Gerry McGee, and Don Wilson have passed away, and Yūzō Kayama is retiring from stage performances. Really the end of an era.