In honor of the asthma flareup that has sidelined me for several days:
A pleasant record, and it deserved to be a hit, but — like so much of the Hollies’ music — ultimately unsatisfying. But it is a very pretty tune.
In this entry in the ongoing occasional series on stalker pop, we move into the ’80s, or the Decade of the Stalker, pop-music-wise. So, just to get it out of the way, we kick off with perhaps the biggest stalker hit ever:
(No really good version of the video seems to be out there.) Ever since this came out, in 1984, there have been stories claiming people thought this was a love song and played it at proms and at weddings. I believe Sting even said he’d had fans tell him how romantic they thought it was.
But I dunno, that’s a little tough to buy. At best, this is a breakup song. And you know, the Police were not all sunshine-’n'-roses at the best of times, the creepy video doesn’t suggest that anybody’s having a good time, the tick-tock tune is not exactly cheery, and — most to the point — there is nothing ambiguous about the words:
“Every move you make/And every vow you break/Every smile you fake/Every claim you stake/I’ll be watching you.”
This is classic stalker stuff, creepy and accusing. And all the while he’s whining, “Oh, can’t you see/You belong to me” and complaining that “Since you’re gone, I’ve been lost without a trace.” Because, of course, it’s really all about his feelings….
And on a similar, earlier (1981) note, we have this, one of many inexplicable hits from the generally inexplicable and frequently misogynistic Hall & Oates:
This dude is following a woman around, apparently for the purpose of providing a running critique on her behavior: “I see you/You see me/Watch you blowin’ the lines/When you’re making a scene.” (I actually have no idea what that means.)
These magical “private eyes” apparently allow our singer to keep permanent tabs on this chick: “You can play with words/You play with love/You can twist it around.” And after this barrage of accusations, he requests: “Don’t lie when you’re hurting inside.” How very sensitive of him. But would you tell this dude your innermost feelings?
More, much more, to come.
Earlier stalker entries:
It’s only Tuesday, and it’s already been a long week. But here’s a look at the Who’s rockin’ first single, from 1965:
Keith Moon would be about 18 here, and the others just a couple of years older.
Pete Townshend described “I Can’t Explain” as “straightforward Kinks-copying,” and that pretty much covers it, though Ray and the boys would’ve done a song like this both faster and louder in those days. The Who were not an especially attractive group of young men, but, as you can see in the video, they look just like the boys in the crowd (and are there any girls in the crowd)?
Dressing the mod part, both clothes and haircuts, was very much part of the marketing for the Who in the early days, and that working-class flash was part of the reason their reputation in the ’60s was a lot tougher than their music ever was. “My Generation” aside, the Who spent their first several years essentially doing novelty songs and sort of proto-prog things like “Armenia, City in the Sky” and the “Rael” songs. Some of it’s interesting, and some of it’s great — but the Who’s real prime, both artistically and as a touring band, was in the ’70s.
When choosing your groupie songs, Southern-fried rock is a good place to start. How about some Lynyrd Skynyrd?
“What’s Your Name”
This sums it up pretty well. “I’ll find a little queen and I know I can treat her right.” I can only presume this means he plans on at least being a gentleman about it. But isn’t that a bit contradictory to the whole idea? At least it does have a sense of humor about the whole thing.
How about some good old Grand Funk?
We’re an American Band!
“Now these fine ladies, they had a plan. They was out to meet the boys in the band.
They said, ‘Come on dudes, let’s get it on!’ And we proceeded to tear that hotel down!”
Ah, life on the road. I always love this powerhouse of a song. Great drums, killer bass and guitar wrapped up in a cowbell-infected package of straight up rock n’ roll! A true story? More likely a combination of many true stories condensed for brevity’s sake. (It can’t be for modesty’s sake, now could it?)
How about some British groupie songs?
Rod Stewart and the Faces, “Stay With Me.”
Rod is rather direct, isn’t he? “In the morning Don’t say you love me, Cause I’ll only kick you out of the door.” At least she knows where she stands… or doesn’t…
Rod and the guys enjoying the lifestyle. All in all pretty much in good fun, and he’s honest.
Sometimes honesty can be a bit much, as in the biggest, baddest and flat-out crudest groupie song I think anyone has ever done. The Rolling Stones “Star, Star, (Star******)” I can’t put the video directly on the page, so here’s the link. It will be obvious why when you see the subtitle.
Oh my… NSFW!!!
The Rolling Stones “Star Star”
Well. Even the subtitle goes to the heart of the matter. I don’t think I will put the lyrics up here, but I do have a link.
If this doesn’t define the genre, I don’t quite know what would.
Rock n’ roll being what it is, what it wants to be or sometimes quite clearly what it not always seems to revolves around love. It can be a great love like Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” or The Beach Boys “God Only Knows.” It can also be twisted and disturbing as Bridy is relating in the Stalker Pop series.
Since the beginning of the modern music industry and no doubt before that there have been women who “stalk” musicians and singers. It’s not quite the same thing as stalking in that the guys, (usually anyway,) enjoy and want the attention. Now what could be more rock n’ roll then that, guys who want to be stalked by beautiful women?
I’m talking about groupies of course.
In the seventies and eighties it was a true subculture of popular music even inspiring a few movies here and there. (The most notable being the wonderful “Almost Famous.” )
So, what about groupie songs? It’s a surprisingly large genre when you start digging around. I’ll start with what I think is the most powerful one, it’s a bit unusual in that it is from the groupie’s point of view.
The Carpenters “Superstar”
When The Carpenters recorded this song it was at least slightly shocking even though the lyrics were changed from “wait to sleep with you again” to “wait to be with you again.” Written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell, it gets right to the disposable nature of being a groupie and how this young lady doesn’t seem to understand the “relationship.”
The soulful vocal by Karen Carpenter can’t get more emotional or powerful, she was a wonderful pop singer with such a big and warm voice. Brother Richard apparently gave her the lyrics on a napkin for a run through and he liked the vocal so much they kept it for the final record.
Coming from an entirely different angle is “Plaster Caster” from Kiss.
I can assure you that this is NSFW!!!! Or for guys in a relationship…
There was a group of young ladies who made their mark on the world of rock n’ roll by making plaster castes of rock stars… well… I’ll leave it there, you can head off to your favorite search engine for more information.
One band that would never come to mind for groupie songs is ABBA. They however recorded the funniest and most polite groupie song ever. Think about it? ABBA and groupies?
I have always wondered if Bjorn and Benny wrote this from experience or frustration, they were in a band with their wives at the time. The girls vocals with the sarcastic “does your mother know” are really funny. Not your usual groupie song, but one a mother would be pleased with.
We’ll spend a bit more time in the ’70s in this installment of the ongoing series on stalker pop. (Part 1 is here; part 2; and part 3). Starting with our first borderline call:
OK, something is really wrong with this dude. The wounded, weepy vocal by Eric Stewart makes what’s quite a nasty lyric on paper merely pathetic: “I’d like to see you/But then again/That doesn’t mean you mean that much to me/So if I call you/Don’t make a fuss/Don’t tell your friends about the two of us.”
After the peculiar, whispered “Big boys don’t cry” bridge — a female voice intended, presumably, to hint at why this guy is such an emotional train wreck — our hero assures his non-girlfriend, several times, “You’ll wait a long time for me.”
This falls into the stalker category only under the “generally weird relationships” banner. What kind of woman would tolerate such a whiny basket case? Or tolerate repeated (and repeated) assurances that he doesn’t care — even if they are delivered in the vocal equivalent of big sad puppy eyes?
And on rather a different note:
OK, it’s a bit elliptical, but this Scorpions song seems to be about a guy who is communing with his possibly (probably?) dead girlfriend by drinking brain-melting amounts of alcohol.
The verse is in metal-ballad country and even pretty, despite Klaus Meine’s rather desperate-sounding vocal. (He always seems to be reaching for that scratchy high end, doesn’t he?) “I wake up in the morning/And the sun begins to shine/The day did sneak up from the night/I see your face and I see myself.”
So far, so good — but then it’s “I try to stand it for a while.” Ah. So perhaps this is not a happy guy.
The chorus is catchy and mildly headbangy: “I’m in trance/Hey baby, can’t you hear me calling … I take too much in the Saturday night.” So he’s drinking heavily (well, the Scorps are German). But is the situation even bleaker than that? “I wanna try to stop this life.
A slightly more hopeful second verse nonetheless circles back to the pleading refrain: “I’m in trance/Hey baby, can you hear me calling?”
Not at all pure stalker pop, but certainly obsessive and quite strange. But not a bad record, for all that.
Another offbeat candidate:
Alice Cooper, “Billion Dollar Babies.”
(The original isn’t on YouTube, and the live versions aren’t any good, so this is Lala via Google.)
Alice isn’t stalking, exactly, since the object of his affection probably isn’t going anywhere: This bit of early metal (from ’72) is about a really great sex doll. This “rubber little lady” apparently provides all the affection Alice needs, though he worries about her fragile state: “If I’m too rough, tell me/I’m so scared/Your little head will come off in my hands.”
So, yes, the stalkee is inanimate. But it is obsessive, and, despite the subject matter, I’ve always kind of liked it. Alice in his heyday was goofing on his audience a fair amount of the time, and, along with being pretty funny, “Billion Dollar Babies” is a fantastic-sounding record. The sung-spoken sections, trading voices the second time around, are eerie and imaginative, it’s got a great metal bass line, the guitars are slamming, and there’s a terrific, just-off-the-beat scream after the first verse. What more could you ask from an Alice Cooper record?
Next time out: the ’80s, or the Decade of the Stalker, pop musically speaking. Including, of course, the biggest stalker hit of all (you know the one I mean).
Before the holidays I started a series on stalker pop (early stalker tunes here, and some ’60s obsessions here).
And now we head into the ’70s, which doesn’t seem to have been a prime era for tunes about people who feel just a little too strongly about those they imagine they love. But I asked Pete for some suggestions, and I think he and I came up with some worthy examples.
Starting with this charmer:
“Stranglehold” is your basic mid-’70s hard rockin’ all-day wonder, coming in at just under eight and a half minutes, and it serves as a frame for a long, long guitar break. It’s also a barely coherent address by a man to a woman who dumped him, including the peculiar warning, “If your house gets in my way, baby/You know I’ll burn it down.” What can you possibly say to that?
But the woman in question has bigger problems anyway, as our hero repeatedly declares his “stranglehold” on her while paradoxically advising her to stay out of his way (no problem. Really). The Ian Gillan-esque vocal isn’t Nugent, but Derek St. Holmes, and it’s a bit stretched and not terribly persuasive. Just as well, since this classic rock warhorse is essentially a death threat.
And so is this, albeit in more sophisticated terms:
Yes, I realize that there are lots of people who see this as a sweet, nostalgic love song. Those people are wrong. “Alison” is just one sample of the blazing misogyny that is the overriding flaw of Elvis Costello’s early work (see also “Party Girl,” “Men Called Uncle,” stalker classic “Watching the Detectives,” “B Movie,” and any number of others).
A man encounters a woman he was once fond of, and he starts off by letting her know he’s heard the gossip about her: “I hear you let that little friend of mine/Take off your party dress.” (If this is how he opens a conversation, it’s not much of a mystery why this relationship didn’t work out.)
Alison’s gotten on with her life and gotten married, but our singer isn’t buying it, and is sure she’s just manipulating her hapless husband. And he’s just so very, very disappointed at how she’s turned out: “Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking/When I hear the silly things that you say.”
So much so that perhaps he’ll do something about it: “I think somebody better put out the big light/’Cause I can’t stand to see you this way.”
“My aim is true” indeed.
Here’s a little cheerier but still stalky song, from 1979:
Deborah Harry’s vocal is a bit less inept than usual on this undemanding tune, which expresses the simple determination to “getcha getcha getcha getcha.” And by any means necessary, including late-night drive-bys, following buses, and lurking around in malls. There is a moment of mixed emotions as Debbie says she will also “lose ya lose ya lose ya lose ya,” but soon we’re back to the topic at hand: “I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha.”
The lyrics are startlingly creepy on paper, but listening to the words on Blondie records is an unrewarding thing to do and I’m not sure many people put a lot of time into it. And this is undeniably a catchy little tune — sonically, this was right out on the edge for pop radio in ’79.
This is getting long, so look for a couple more stalkers of the ’70s to be up over the weekend.
One of the staples of Rock n’ Roll is the love song. We all know this. From “Heartbreak Hotel” to whatever Lady Gaga is pining over these days heartbreak is always a good way to start out on your next number one hit.
A favorite of mine is Marty Balin’s “Hearts.”
This is one tough song to get through. Marty’s vocals are right on the edge. A lesser singer than Balin would just sound kind of foolish with all the vocal slides and runs. With him it’s completely convincing. Whatever was going on in his life at the time having recently parted ways with Jefferson Starship, getting divorced, stubbing his toe, I have no idea. But, I do know that this song is sung with the real feelings of heartbreak and loss. A classic by any standard.
This is just about as sad a song as I can think of. But then I spend most of my time thinking of such things so I have one that I think is even more heartbreaking.
In 1975 Ambrosia released their eponymous first album, Ambrosia, produced by Freddie Piro. A true masterpiece of music and heartbreak was created.
A passionate lead vocal with simple but meaningful words bringing the story out into the open. You can really feel what is going on in the singers mind as the words slip out into the air.
“I keep thinking that I’m lonely but it’s only missing you inside.”
Engineered by the always wonderful Alan Parsons, the mix is full of tension and emotion. Bass and piano start out together soon joined by a solo guitar lead that sets the tone for what’s to come. From the first note you know it’s sad. The harmonies are intense and full following the lead vocal through the opening chorus and then disappearing for the verse leaving the full sensation of loneliness. When the verse comes in, it grabs your attention and holds you. The bridge starts with a sweet guitar solo that gets harder and more complex as a violin flies over in the background to join with a vocal “ohh and ahh” harmony that fills up the picture perfectly. Magically.
“Lord I don’t know when I’ll see you, I can’t reach you anymore.”
The addition of the violin is the small part that makes everything complete. It complements the vocals and the feel, the emotion and truly, the heartbreak of the song. I think it’s about as close to perfect as it can be.
In the early days of MTV some really strange things made it on the air. Brought to you in the then new concept of a music video only channel. We have seen how that worked out. It seems about every three years or so Viacom/MTV comes up with a brilliant new idea. A channel that only plays music videos. At last count they are going on about 432 channels and yet somehow each and every one sneaks more and more “content” into the schedule until it becomes MTV, MTV2, VH1, VH1 Classic, MTV water-sports channel, (with Daisy Fuentes or the current bikini clad bimbo just because?), VH1 personal crisis channel for artists that dropped off the radar years ago, MTV reality channel, that doesn’t really have anything to do with music, but we used to, and now we are just using the MTV title to draw you into the recent travails of a group of young people being rude to each other, but they do listen to music occasionally. Off camera.
I digress.
Some of the early videos were and are classics. Golden Earring’s “Twilight Zone” stood out. Still does, though I never quite got the dancing vixen bit.
A truly impressive video. It starts with a great song, that’s always a good thing. It played the cold war spy angle quite well, dancing vixens aside. And it holds up. I still enjoy watching this one.
Some others were impressive at the time and quietly faded into mediocrity such as Van Halen’s Panama. It was a big deal at the time and was said to be innovative as it only cost as much as a few cheeseburgers to shoot in today’s dollars.
NSFW!!! (Unless your boss is a VH fan. It is David Lee Roth after all.)
I don’t know. I still like the song, but the video? “Hey guys, I got this neat wire harness that they can fly me around with. Pretty cool huh?” The band members jumping, not quite together is perhaps earnest. Does Van Halen need earnestness in it’s videos?
Around the same time a new band entered the MTV world. As Bridey reminded me they were a one hit wonder. I was going to put them in the Dark Matter song catagory but as we were all fortunate enough to only be plagued by them once they didn’t really qualify for the Dark Matter universe.
I, reluctantly give you…
Dexy’s Midnight Runners.
My first response after hearing this bit of audio crime was simply, “Come On!”
Where does one start with how truly terrible this song and video is? The stupid outfits? The fact that the drummer goes missing half way through it? Or simply the fact that this is one piece of auditory horror. It’s well played. OK. I give it that. But what is with the warbling singer? And the oh so powerful “breakdown” chorus with all the impact of a tissue hitting the floor. Did someone at the record company think, “Hey, a period costume jug band is just what we need right now to compete with Duran Duran.” I do have to wonder what they were thinking at the old record company when the Dexy’s came in and played this song for them. I know it was the early eighties but there is only so much that can be explained by drug abuse.
And we kick off part two of the stalker pop roundup with a classic that hit the top 10 on both the pop and R&B charts in 1964:
Just your basic romantic disappointment, right? But listen to the words: He’s been checking up on her, friends are urging him to leave her alone, he knows she has someone else but is still begging her to “stay, and let me make it up to you.” Then we have: “I’ll do anything you want me to/You loved me before, please love me again/I can’t let you go back to him.” Restraining order, anyone?
Then we have the Beatles in ’65, with a protagonist who has moved past the restraining-order stage and on to felony charges. I am a big Beatles fan, but this one outpaces several other strong contenders as the most despicable song they ever recorded.
Not gonna quote the lyrics — I’d have to quote the whole thing — but this is Lennon at his crude, too-clever-by-half worst, and it is a measure of the Beatles’ clout that they could get away with such a repellent, misogynistic sick joke of a song. Ghastly.
Stepping back to something (relatively) harmless, let us take the Association, or the 1960s’ leading producers of tunes that could be safely played, without alteration, in any elevator in America. The sound is not great on this version, alas. I almost posted a live clip, but there is just something too mind-blowingly weird about the idea that anyone ever went to see the Association in concert. From 1966:
“I wish that I could mold you into someone/Who could cherish me as much as I cherish you.” Or “I’m beginning to think that man has never found/The words that could make you want me.” He also assures the poor woman that any other guys who say they love her are lying. More obsessive than threatening, but, considering the band we’re talking about, intense stuff.
Moving back to straight-up stalking — magic stalking — we have the Who, and “I Can See for Miles.”
Some have said this is a drug song of some sort, but the lyrics don’t support it, and Pete Townshend has said himself that it is intended to be taken literally. And the theme of a guy who just has really, really good eyesight fits in with the oddball topics and novelty tunes that were such a big part of the Who’s early work.
Our hero says, “I know you’ve deceived me/But here’s a surprise/I know that you have/’Cause there’s magic in my eyes.” Surprising news indeed. He reports that he can see the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal “on clearer days” so weather is evidently a factor here (though it seems the curvature of the earth is not).
With nearly unlimited powers of vision, one might use one’s time more productively than in checking up on one’s girlfriend, but obsession is what stalker pop is all about.
Still, though this is definitely a stalker song — I mean, he’s watching her all the time — it’s not an especially sinister example. Though the protagonist says, “You gotta stand trial,” and his suspicions are apparently justified, evidently he is not considering any action more serious than dropping his cheating girl. A bit of a relief, considering.
Next up: Stalker tunes of the ’70s!
