Impersonating Elvis at talent shows by age 12 seemed for a long time to electric guitarist, Mike Bolan, the closest he'd get to being a rock 'n roll star. And that suited him fine.

Bolan hadn't seriously thought about leaving Hayden to pursue a more prominent music career. He'd done well locally. Bolan joined his first band at age 13. A couple years later, he and some friends formed The Fabulous Shadows.

After graduating from Coeur d'Alene High in '65, Bolan played for a trio band with college crowd gigs in Moscow. He was content with his life. Then on the eve of 1966, Bolan received a welcomed message, which beckoned him to San Francisco, Calif.

"I was playin' this gig five or six nights a week down in Moscow. We were on Christmas break. And I was up here at the Rathskeller, downtown, listening to music, and I ran into a guy who was a friend of Tommy Dotzler's - Big George Sandall - and he said, "Dotzler's tryin' to get in touch with you. Here's his phone number."

"It's New Year's Eve, and it was a blizzard. I ran across the street and got in the phone booth and put four or five bucks in and called Tommy and he says, "You gotta get down here man. There's a scene. Don't cut your hair. I got a band. Come on down? And I didn't know what hippies were. I didn't know The Haight-Ashbury. I quit my job and two weeks later I got off the airplane with my guitar and my amp and 50 bucks and met up with Dotzler. They had a big house in The Haight. There was 30 hippies livin' in there including all the guys in the band. The Haight-Ashbury changed my whole life. I did a jillion shows with Big Brother and Grateful Dead, and The Doors and Procal Harem. I mean, I did a jillion shows in those days. I was in the same bills as all those guys."

Immediately he joined Mount Rushmore, a heavy blues rock band with psychedelic elements. The group received a national recording contract with DOT Records in the late '60s. Next, Bolan moved to Los Angeles. He worked on television soundtracks and toured worldwide filling in at guitar for different bands.

Those were the days Bolan tasted big time rock 'n roll. His passion and talent for music thrived. And it started out with his family inside their home at the bottom of Chicken Hill.

"I grew-up out on Strahorn Road right across from Avondale Golf Course. But it was just Avondale nothin' when I used to Huck Finn out there, swim naked in that lake and build rafts with my younger brother, Dennis, and Tom, Dave and Jim Gray. We lived right down the road from the Gray's. And I still got cans of pork 'n beans buried somewhere out there on that golf course. Mrs. Strahorn used to baby-sit my brother and me.

"I come from a really musical family. My dad was the only one who wasn't musical, but he was a great supporter. My mom played lap steel and all my aunts and uncles, they all played guitars and sang. My uncle Buddy was my first guitar hero. I started playing when I was 7. My dad had me buy my first guitar with my own money for $9.75. I remember being sorta dismayed. Everybody around me played instruments and it didn't occur to me that I'd have to learn how to play.

"I got professional lessons right away from Mr. Arnold in Coeur d'Alene - Harvey Arnold. He taught violin, accordion and guitar, and I took lessons from him until I was about 12 or 13. That little nine buck guitar I bought was an acoustic and then my dad bought me a Gibson ES125. It's a fat, electric jazz guitar. I think he paid $300 for it."

Bolan joined his first band, The Galaxies, playing on his new Gibson guitar.

"They probably didn't have a guitar player and couldn't find one, and so they had to hire this 13-year-old kid. I don't know. For me, it was like getting called up to the big leagues. These guys were in their 20s. We probably played in The Eagles and we used to play at the Cotton Club in Hayden. I learned a lot in that time with The Galaxies, which was very short in relative time, because I joined in 1960 and in '63, The Shadows formed.

"When I was a sophomore, The Shadows started up. We were all in DeMolay. There was a sweetheart dance at the Masonic Temple downtown and the band didn't show up. Well Dexter Yates was taking piano lessons, I was playin' in The Galaxies, Dotzler was a saxophone player. Doug Wanamaker knew a guy that had a set of drums. He didn't know how to play 'em, but he knew a guy that had a set of drums. And the four of us all ran home and got our stuff. Brought it back down and played 'Louie Louie' and 'Bluebirds Over the Mountain' 37 times a piece and then decided to stay together. Dougie started taking drum lessons. And Pete Shepperd, the bass player, and Dr. Jack Fullwiler joined a couple of months later.

"We were The Lamplighters for a few minutes and then we decided on The Shadows. Then Bob Hough, Bubblehead Bob, he was a disc jockey around here on KVNI and he played on the radio a little single we recorded. He started calling us The Fabulous Shadows. So we kept the name.

"We played a lot of high school dances and out at the colleges. We also played a lot of frat parties in Moscow. And outdoors, those are the ones I remember. The slab dances in the summertime. They used to have dances on Friday and Saturday nights because down on Independence Point, Playland Pier was there. There'd be a huge dance and all the teenagers would drive their hot rods downtown and dance and hang-out by the lake and listen to The Shadows. It was just like in the movies. When I was in high school, Coeur d'Alene was like 'American Graffiti' or 'Grease.' We used to cruise up and down Sherman listenin' to Wolfman Jack."

The Fabulous Shadows eventually disbanded. Bolan spent more than 15 years away from home. In 1984, he returned. And it didn't take long before The Fabulous Shadows once again rocked Coeur d'Alene.

"We started back up and played for about 16 years. The very first show - this is my version of the story, I wasn't really there when it happened - Jim Faucher who was kinda the head fundraiser for KMC, came to Dexter and said, "You know, we need some money for a down payment on a computer system for the cancer care center, I think." He said, "Why don't you get the Fabulous Shadows back together and we'll do a fundraiser? So Dexter started working on it and about six months later, we played out at the fairgrounds and 6,000 people showed up. And so we never stopped doing fundraisers. We raised money for everything in town. When we got back together, everybody seemed like they remembered us being famous. We have a room named after us in the new science building at the college. If you look on the plaque out in front of the band shell in the park, it's The Fabulous Shadows."

As for Bolan's future, music, music and more music.

"I get plenty of music. Bones, Bolan and Nelson is a little trio I play in at the Wine Cellar once a month. I'm partners in a recording studio/record label, HitStreet Records. Also, at BareMic Music, I've been teaching guitar for about six years. At Burt's Music and Sound, I fix and tech guitars. Then, I co-host Project Studio Network, a podcast for the home recording studio owner. I'm either writing songs or I'm mentoring some young person that's writin' songs, or helping one of my kids."

Katie Vaughan is a personal historian and owner of Sojourn Lifewriting in Post Falls. If you have a personal story to share which also illuminates our local history, please call (208) 660-8767.