Last week, I finally had the chance to watch the recent Beach Boys documentary on Disney+. I've been a Beach Boys fan since I was a young kid, and I enjoyed the documentary, even though I thought it skipped over some things and probably could have been extended into a series to fully capture the band's story.
But I digress. In 1988, the Beach Boys were not exactly at the forefront of popular music. Sure, the year before, they had a #12 hit with their collaboration with The Fat Boys, "Wipeout," but they hadn't had a Top 10 hit since their 1976 cover of Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music, and they hadn't had an original Top 20 hit since 1968's "Do It Again."
Enter "Kokomo," a song about a fictional island in the Florida Keys, with a more interesting background and cast of characters than I knew about. Brian Wilson did not perform on the song, which I guess I didn't know. The song was co-written by four legends: Mike Love of the Beach Boys; John Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas; Scott McKenzie of '60s anthem "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" fame; and producer/songwriter Terry Melcher. Melcher also produced the album. As I learned while watching the Beach Boys documentary, Melcher had been connected with the Beach Boys (which I knew about), but Dennis Wilson introduced Melcher to Charles Manson, who at the time was an aspiring musician. Manson auditioned for Melcher, and Melcher turned him down. Not long after that, Melcher moved out of the house he had been renting. Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate moved in -- and that was the site of the Manson Family's first infamous killings in August 1969, where they killed Tate and several others in gruesome fashion.
Aside from the star songwriters, guitarist Ry Cooder contributed acoustic guitar, slide guitar, and mandolin work to the song, legendary session drummer Jim Keltner played drums, and Brian Wilson's late '60s songwriting partner Van Dyke Parks played accordion. Oh, and John Stamos appeared in the video.
"Kokomo" ended up being an international smash. It was featured on the soundtrack of the hit Tom Cruise/Elisabeth Shue film Cocktail, and it was nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe. The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 -- the band's fourth #1 hit in the U.S. and first since "Good Vibrations" in 1966. It also topped the pop charts in Australia and Iceland, and it reached the Top 10 on seven other international pop charts.
Stamos aside, the video was ranked by NME as the 17th worst video of all-time in a 2011 list, and the song has been derided rather mercilessly over the years by stuck-up critics. At it's base, it's a catch pop song that did what so many other Beach Boys songs did: took you to a sunny locale and made you feel warm. On top of that, it taught you more about Caribbean geography than you probably knew before you heard the song.
This Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the release of blues rockers George Thorogood and The Destroyers' sixth studio album, Maverick. The album reached #32 on the Billboard album chart -- the band's highest-charting album up to that time (1988's Born to Be Bad also hit #32). The album was a mix of originals and blues covers, and the second single from the album was an original that became one of the band's signature songs, "I Drink Alone."
An ode to alcoholism, "I Drink Alone" tells the tale of a guy who gets up in the morning and has beer for breakfast -- by himself, mind you. He then copes with everything in his life with whiskey, be it insomnia, avoiding social interactions, or dealing with the familial relationships he's ruined, presumably because of his alcholism. The song helped teach a generation of youngsters like me all kinds of brands of whiskey: Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker (black and red), and Old Grand-Dad.
The video, shot entirely in black and white, features Thorogood -- guitar strapped to his back -- riding a motorcycle to a deserted bar in the middle of nowhere. Upon his arrival, he proceeds to play the guitar, smoke a cigar, and drink alone. Then a hot chick shows up and sits next to him, since that was a common occurrence in '80s videos, but Thorogood is having none of it. He promptly gets up, grabs his guitar case, and walks out, turning back to the girl as he opens the bar door to leave to tell her "I drink alone." We don't see what happens next, but I assume a sauced Thorogood was quickly pulled over by local law enforcement after being spotted swerving all over the two-lane highway on his chopper.
It's been awhile. And no, that doesn't mean a Staind song is going to be the Retro Video of the Week. After all, it's outside the parameters of the "MTV Era" that I have wholly concocted. Anyway, due to the holidays, travel, kids' activities, work, cult obligations, and the like, I haven't posted anything in nearly a month -- and for that, I sincerely apologize. I've missed you, even if I don't know who you are.
It was slim pickins for albums or songs released this week during the MTV Era that had videos. But I'll be damned if Tuesday didn't mark the 25th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine disclosing that David Crosby was the biological father of Melissa Ethridge and her partner Julie Cypher. So that gives us something to go on.
Seven years prior, back in 1993, Crosby put out his third solo studio album, Thousand Roads. The lead single from the album was "Hero," co-written by Crosby and Phil Collins, the latter of whom provides backing vocals, drums, and keyboards on the track. The song just missed the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #44, but it did top the Canadian Adult Contemporary chart and went to #4 on the regular Canadian pop chart.
I have no recollection of this song or the video, but the video is ridiculous. It features Crosby -- who was 52 at the time, mind you -- in prison, presumably for some drug-related offense, but we don't know for sure. He is visited by his baby momma and their son, who appears to be 7 or 8 and objectively has one of the worst haircuts of all-time. It's bad enough that everyone makes fun of you because your dad's behind bars, but your mom gives you a haircut that appears to be some sort of combination of Damien from The Omen and Slade guitarist Dave Hill? This kid was literally the only person on the face of the Earth in 1993 with that haircut. But don't worry, the video ends with the kid walking alone in the middle of some train tracks, obliviously picking up rocks and throwing them at nothing in particular, fading to black before his miserable existence is brought to a merciful end by the unforgiving fury of a 55-car freight train.
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