Rather than record at their private studio in Montreaux with their customary producer Roy Thomas Baker, the band decided on the more-exciting atmosphere of Munich to cut their next record. Employing German producer Mack, they set out to cut “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Unlike the labored multitracked productions of their past records, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” was committed to tape after only three run throughs by the band. The session was kept loose and relaxed, and for the first time in the recording studio, Mercury felt comfortable enough to play rhythm guitar on a track. The resulting tune, says Mercury, sounds very much like the bathroom version. “It’s not typical of my work,” he told Fred Bronson, author of The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, “but that’s because nothing is typical of my work.”
Released as a single in Britain, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” rose to the Number Two spot, but that success wasn’t enough to convince Elektra Records to ship it to the United States. It had been two years since Queen had scored a Top Ten hit in the US, and the label feared that this lightweight ditty wouldn’t charm the American fans who were used to a harder, more operatic approach from the band. They changed their minds when American disc jockeys began playing imported copies of the song to great reaction. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” hit the charts in December 1979, rising to the top spot just nine weeks later and sitting there for four weeks.
That success was soon followed by the discofied “Another One Bites the Dust,” the second single from The Game. Written by bassist John Deacon, the dance song was a favorite of Michael Jackson who urged the band to release it as a single. Like its predecessor, “Another One Bites the Dust” also conquered the hit parade, lounging at Number One for three weeks.
In terms of Queen’s success on the American pop charts, 1980 represented their grandest moment. They placed three more singles (“Under Pressure” with David Bowie, “Body Language” and “Radio Ga-Ga) in the lower regions of the Top Thirty in the next four years before the hits dried up in 1984. Their best work behind them, the band’s prolific career was tragically cut short on November 24, 1991 when Freddie Mercury succumbed to AIDS.
In 1985, Bronson asked Mercury about his feelings toward “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” “I love it now as I did then,” he replied, “but it’s easy to love the thing that brings you money.”
“Uptown Girl,” Billy Joel’s 1983 single, was written for supermodel Christie Brinkley. They met after the accidental death of Brinkley’s boyfriend Oliver Chandon, heir to the Chandon Champagne estate. Joel wooed her with the song, and the two were soon married.
Whip It/Satisfaction/Jocko Homo
Devo
Herky-jerky. The thinking man’s Kiss. Unorthodox. Comical. Catchy. All these terms described Devo, the five self-described “spud boys” from Akron, Ohio, who burst on the new-wave scene in 1978. Driven by a desire to strip away modern music of its excesses, they created a robotic, postmodern sound that de-evolved rock and roll to its barest roots. “The music that was coming out then was concert rock and disco,” said Devo cofounder Mark Mothersbaugh. “Concert rock was just stupid, bloated and overblown. It was the epitome of what America was about. (We are conspicuous consumers and proud of it.) Then there was disco music which was kind of like a beautiful woman with no brain.
“The music we were writing at that time was like the Flintstones meet the Jetsons. It was really much more influenced by Captain Beefheart, M.C. Escher and Muddy Waters. We really respected Andy Warhol and the pop-art movement and the concept that an artist — that an idea and a concept — was bigger than the specific media you worked in.”
This sensibility led to a dozen musically radical records that remain as humorous as they are adventurous. Starting with their biggest hit, here are the stories behind three of Devo’s best-known songs.
The five self-described “spud boys” from Akron, Ohio. Left to right are Mark Mothersbaugh (vocal/keyboard/guitar), Alan Myers (drums), Jerry Casale (bass/vocal), Bob Casale (guitar/vocal) and Bob Mothersbaugh (guitar/vocal).
WHIP IT
Devo fooled everyone with the release of “Whip It” in 1980. On the surface, the single appears to glamorize sadomasochism and masturbation, two subjects near and dear to the heart of every red-blooded North American — just ask Jerry Springer. This misconception propelled the danceable tune to the Top Twenty. The provocative double entendre of the line “Whip it good!” drew the ire of church groups, with one preacher railing against them for “abandoning God’s principles governing sex.” Actually, the song was written with a higher purpose in mind.
“We thought of ‘Whip It’ as people pulling together and whipping a problem,” said Mothersbaugh. It may be the highest charting self-help song ever, having reached Number Fourteen in November 1980.
SATISFACTION
Devo’s debut, 1978’s long player Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, led the listener down a path less traveled, smashing into a postmodern wall. A robotic cover of the Rolling Stones’ chestnut “Satisfaction” deconstructs the song to the point of unrecognizability, stripping the sixties’ classic of its humanist veneer and rendering it to its barest form. “It was a song that was important to us because when we would come out and play in the early days in Ohio, we just got people pissed off,” said Mothersbaugh. “They would want to get in fist fights with us. People were trying to figure out what the fuck we were. What we were doing with our music. It was the cover songs that actually helped give people a handle as to what we were about and what our music was about. They could say, ‘Oh, here’s a sixties’ classic that has been ingested, processed and regurgitated a decade later.”
Mothersbaugh explained the tune’s genesis. “It was probably around 1975 or 1976, and we were living in Akron, Ohio. A friend of mine owned a garage behind a car wash. We used to have to drive through the car wash every day to go to rehearsal. The place was cold. It wasn’t heated. It wasn’t set up for humans to actually spend any time there other than to dump shit — it was a storage unit or something.
“We were all standing around in full winter clothes — probably snow pants and mittens. [Guitarist] Bob Cassale started playing the riff that was actually the germination of the song. That little Persian goose-step riff. We were just kind of cracking up. Just the fact that we were freezing to death, and you could see your breath in front of you, had a lot to do with the way the song sounded and came out. I remember when we were playing it without lyrics on it, it felt like a slinky going down steps before it had form. So we kind of liked that. [Bassist] Jerry [Cassale] started singing “Paint It Black” to it. It didn’t really work, but it made us laugh. Then I started singing “Satisfaction,” and it made everybody laugh. The pieces fit together nicely and neatly.”
Devo’s “Satisfaction” was too odd to break the Top Forty in North America but fared well in Britain where musical eccentrics are embraced with open arms. The New Musical Express raved about it, calling it one of the “most original singles of the year.”
This rare illustration from a 1920s’ religious tract titled “Jocko-Homo Heavenbound” partially inspired Devo leader Mark Mothersbaugh to write one of his most famous songs.
JOCKO HOMO
Four decades after its release, a horror movie starring Charles Laughton inspired a classic new-wave song. The Island of Lost Souls is the source of the line “Are we not men?,” made famous by Devo in 1978’s “Jocko Homo.” “Fucking amazing movie,” said Mothersbaugh.
The idea for the song had occurred to Mothersbaugh several years before after watching the late, late show on television. “I had a little hand-held tape recorder that I would use to tape off my little black-and-white eleven-inch TV,” he said. “We didn’t have video recorders in 1972, so in my apartment, I would tape the sound tracks to movies I liked. Island of Lost Souls was one that just kind of hit at the right time.
“Charles Laughton is the mad scientist who is trying to evolve these subhumans, these pathetic animals into a superior life
form. Instead, he is creating these hideous creatures — as they describe themselves, ‘Not human. Not man. Not animal. Things.’ They say it in this wailing pathetic voice. He controls them with a whip. He’d stand on top of the rock at their meeting place and snap it, and go, ‘What is the law?’ They’d all go, ‘Not to walk on all fours. Are we not men? Not to spill blood. Are we not men?’ ”
The 1933 movie climaxes in a beautifully shot scene as the subhuman creations run through the jungle, casting eerie shadows against the House of Pain. “[They] don’t want to go to the House of Pain,” continued Mothersbaugh, “which is [Laughton’s] laboratory where he is doing these experiments that are not working out the way he was hoping they would. When the shadows went by, I just remember going ‘Holy shit’ because it reminded me of the factories in downtown Akron just a couple of blocks from where I lived. The old factories that were built during the industrial revolution. I just remember thinking, ‘I know all these people.’ I watched all the shadows go by. ‘I live here. I live on the Island of Lost Souls. I work at the House of Pain.’ That was obviously the chorus and the rallying theme behind the song. But the lyrics were inspired by a pamphlet called Jocko-Homo Heavenbound. Some reverend in Ohio wrote it.”
“Jocko Homo” was not released as a single but nevertheless, remains one of Devo’s best-known tunes.
More influential than their record sales would indicate, the band was an electronic avant-garde force whose influence spreads into the nineties. Devo fans include Nirvana (they covered “Turnaround,” a 1978 Devo tune on 1992’s Incesticide), Nine Inch Nails and even heavy metallists Metallica. “I think what we represented was a different flavor,” said Mothersbaugh on Devo’s legacy. “We expanded horizons in a conceptual way.”
Take Off
Bob and Doug McKenzie
G’day, eh? Years before rock-video hucksters Beavis and Butthead hit the airwaves, another television duo pierced the screen, making the leap from TV to the Top Twenty. Bob and Doug McKenzie, two eh-holes from the Great White North, became one-hit wonders in 1982 with the novelty tune “Take Off.”
The beer-swilling, tuque-wearing hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie were the creation of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, members of the SCTV comedy troop. The characters came about as the result of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s request to SCTV’s producers for two minutes on each show of Cancon — distinctive Canadian programming. Moranis and Thomas balked at the thought, jokingly suggesting that maybe two parka-clad hosers sitting in front of a map of Canada might meet the CBC’s standards for Canadian content. “Great idea,” said the producer. “Do you think we could get a Mountie in there somewhere?”
Soon after, Rick and Dave (as Bob and Doug McKenzie) were in front of the camera, stubby beer bottles in hand, the smell of back bacon filling the studio. The first day, they improvised fifteen two-minute Great White North spots, six of which were deemed suitable for air. The spots were cheap to produce (they had the production values of a cable access show), but above all, they were funny, introducing the typical Canadian phrases “hosehead” and “take off, eh?” to SCTV’s North American audience.
The duo had no idea how popular Bob and Doug were becoming until they received a call from the Saskatchewan Roughriders football club, asking them to perform with the team’s cheerleaders. Deplaning in Saskatchewan was a scene they will never forget. Hundreds of Bob and Doug fans showed up in plaid shirts and tuques to cheer on the comedians. After that successful appearance, the fan mail began pouring in, with requests for Bob and Doug posters and autographed pictures. As fast as you could say, “Coo roo coo coo, coo coo coo coo,” the hosers — starting out as a Cancon filler for the show — became national icons and pop-culture phenomena.
The original hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, took tuques, flannel shirts and stubby beer bottles to the Top Twenty in 1982.
Anthem Records, an independent Toronto company, approached Thomas and Moranis with the idea of doing a comedy album to cash in on the wave of McKenziemania. In the studio, sitting in front of a re-creation of the set from the television show, the two comedians drank beer and improvised four hours worth of material. The rough tape was edited down to album length, and while it was funny, something was missing. Moranis, who had been a Toronto DJ before turning to acting, felt the record would never get Top Forty airplay without a hit single. They needed a song.
Remember the 1982 novelty hit “Pac-Man Fever” by (Jerry) Buckner & (Gary) Garcia? Listen carefully to the Pac-Man gobbling sound effect. It was recorded directly from a video machine at a delicatessen — in the background you can hear a customer ordering lunch.
Toronto song writers Carey Crawford and Jonathan Goldsmith were hired to write the music. Listening to a demo of the tape, Crawford, Goldsmith, Moranis and Thomas brain-stormed lyrical ideas, coming up with “Take Off.” Rush lead singer Geddy Lee, who had attended elementary school with Moranis, added his hoser-rock credentials to the project.
Produced for just a few thousand dollars, Bob and Doug McKenzie’s Great White North album eventually sold 350,000 copies in Canada and 650,000 units in the US where it was distributed by PolyGram. Released at the height of hosermania, “Take Off” hit Number One in Canada and reached Number Nine on the Billboard charts in March 1982. Moranis and Thomas followed the record’s success with a book and a full-length movie — 1983’s Strange Brew.
Bob and Doug’s popularity approached Beatlesque proportions. Moranis and Thomas were mobbed on the streets, and a hoser parade organized in Toronto by the record company drew hundreds of cars, stopping traffic from one end of the city to the other. “Oh, my God. This is embarrassing,” Thomas thought at the time, with typical Canadian reserve.
The success of the hosers ultimately overwhelmed the show that introduced them to the world, opening up opportunities for Moranis and Thomas outside the confines of SCTV. Both left the show. Moranis parleyed the Great White North’s success into a string of appearances in money-making movies (Ghost-busters; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; and Little Shop of Horrors), while Thomas has remained a constant presence on television, hosting his own syndicated series and starring on Grace Under Fire.
The 1981 Joe Dolce hit “Shaddap Your Face” was a huge worldwide hit, spawning dozens of cover versions. The novelty tune has been recorded in Japanese, Chinese, Greek and Hungarian. Even Brit rockers EMF (remember “Unbelievable” in 1991?) waxed a thrash rendering of the song.
Burning Down the House
Talking Heads
Talking Heads are regarded as one of the most vital bands to emerge from New York’s new-wave scene. Noted for their musical innovation and button-down shirts, they proved to their new-wave peers that it was hip to be square. Talking Heads scored their biggest hit with “Burning Down the House,” a funk jam from the 1983 long player Speaking in Tongues.
Scottish-born David Byrne met drummer Chris Franz and bassist Tina Weymouth at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1970. Befitting their art-school background, Franz and Byrne performed in a band called the Artistics. After graduation, the trio moved to Manhattan, renting a cramped loft on Chrystie Street that doubled as a rehearsal hall for their new and as yet untitled band.
They had a list of possible band names taped to the wall of their loft. Visitors were invited to add their suggestions to the roll. Naming the band was a time-consuming process since the art-school grads were searching for a moniker that didn’t denote any specific kind of music. Serious contenders were emblazoned on drummer Chris Franz’s kick drum. The Vogue Dots? Rejected. Too new wave. The Tunnel Tones? Nope. The World of Love? All spurned.
Marvin Gaye’s 1985 come-back single “Sexual Healing” was inspired by a conversation with biographer David Ritz. On a visit to Gaye’s apartment, he discovered a cache of pornographic books and magazines. Disgusted, he suggested Gaye needed some “sexual healing.” The singer was inspired by the phrase, quickly jotting down a set of lyrics. He added his words to an
old reggae track that had been kicking around his home studio for months, creating the song that would put his career back on track and earn two Grammy awards. Ritz was given a cowriter’s credit on the tune.
It took a visit from Wayne Zieve, a fellow RISD grad, to name the group. Leafing through TV Guide, he came across the term “talking head” — TV jargon for a head-and-shoulders shot of a news commentator. “… a talking-heads shot was to be distinguished from its opposite cousin, action footage, by the fact that it was ‘all content, no action,’ ” said Weymouth in Adam Dolgins’s book Rock Names. The band had finally found a name to match their musical philosophy. Franz rushed out and bought a red shirt, adding the band’s new name in silver letters. Wearing the shirt on Bleeker Street one day, a man approached him. “Is that the name of a band? That is a terrible name.” The incident made the band laugh, so Talking Heads it was.
Once named, they began playing in public. Their first gigs were at CBGB on the Bowery. The Penguin Guide to New York described the bar as “the heart of the city’s punk-rock movement” in the late 1970s, adding “it’s the archetypal dive — dark, worn, graffitied and odorous of beer.” Club owner Hilly Kristal agreed. “It has been pretty accurately described as long and dungeon-like,” he said.
Kristal remembers the first Talking Heads gig when they opened for the Ramones. “There were three of them then,” he says, as Jerry Harrison didn’t join the band until 1976. “I think they were probably the most disciplined group. They really worked. They practiced constantly until they got a feeling of where they wanted to go musically. They got acceptance very quickly.”
Who Wrote the Book of Love? Page 14