Speaker 1: Hey, man, is that the Surely you Can't Be Serious?
Speaker 2: Podcast?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Man, well turn it up.
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious Podcast. We are here for our third installment
on the Beverly Hills cop theme. We just finished covering
Beverly Hills Cop one versus Beverly Hills Cop two and
we can't not talk about the Beverly Hills Cop one soundtrack.
Speaker 1: I know I love this soundtrack. I own this. This
was a tape that I carried around with me for
my Walkman, did you have this one? I?
Speaker 2: You know what? I don't know if I had this one.
Speaker 3: I know that I could listen to axel f any
day I wanted to, just by turning on the radio
and waiting for five minutes.
Speaker 1: That's true. The hits on this are amazing. Now, there's
kind of a line where the top half is great,
the bottom half is not so good. But this is
gonna be a fun one to talk about. It's such
a moment in time. It's not an album I go
back to and listen to a whole lot. Yeah, but
the songs are great and they transport me back to
nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: They are absolutely a time capsule of the eighty five
sound for sure.
Speaker 1: This actually hit number one on the Billboard two hundred
June twenty second, nineteen eighty five. Nice, so big movie,
big album. Of course, this is the time where MTV
becomes this monster and the movie studios realize that we
can get a whole bunch more publicity if we put
out a great song that has a great video. They
play every ten minutes on MTV.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've got Footloose as a go buy form to
go okay. Yeah, we need to do more with our
soundtrack albums.
Speaker 1: Well, and Flash Dance too, which was a Simpson Bruckheimer. Yeah,
and that was kind of the early model that they
followed for Beverly Hills Cup.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, So this won the Grammy for the Best
Score Soundtrack in nineteen eighty six, which means that every
artist who contributed a song to this album got a Grammy.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Some are more deserving than others. He also rams, yes, yeah,
that's right, let's dive into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get to these songs are too good, not
too okay.
Speaker 1: So the first song on the album is a song
called New Attitude by Patti Libell. All right, do let's
talk about Patty LaBelle for a second.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Patty LaBelle is the singer on this one
written by Sharon Robinson, John Gillaton and Bunny Hall, all
of whom have written songs for multiple other people.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, did you say Benny Hill?
Speaker 2: Bunny Hall? Okay, Bunny Hall? Yes is close.
Speaker 1: Hey, I make fun of that name. But she sang
backup on Thriller and for Billy Idol. Mean she's a
big time saying oh yeah, heck yeah.
Speaker 3: These are all guys that like the Wrecking Crew. Like
it's like, we need some good songs written, we need
some hits written. Let's go to these folks. Sure, all
of these folks. Right, So, so who do they enlist
to sing the song? But Patti LaBelle, who hasn't had
a hit in seven years? Right, I don't know how
that decision is made. I don't either, But you know,
I mean, do you know about Patti Labelle's like history?
I know a little bit about her. So she had
done she had come up with this group. This is
like the worst name group I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: It was. It was in the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 3: It was her and a couple of other do wop singers,
and they called themselves the Bluebells. Yeah, and they had
a few hits over the years, but ultimately reformed themselves
into like a funk soul disco group, right, called the
Love Bells, as in Patty LaBelle right right. And then
everybody knows the song of the label's called Lady Marmalade,
but you may not know it by that name.
Speaker 2: La. That's the first thing I learned in French.
Speaker 1: Id.
Speaker 3: Right, So they say, all right, let's get Patti LaBelle
to sing us this.
Speaker 2: New song on the album called New Attitude.
Speaker 1: Well, so here's the thing. She has been called the
Godmother of soul, the high Priestess of good vibrations, the
Queen of rock and soul. She's got this great voice.
But I think that they were looking for a place
to put her because they had signed her at mc A.
She's a solo artist now, but she hasn't had any hits,
and so they're like, look, we're going to attach her
to this particular movie. We're gonna write her some hits
and we're going to bank on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, like you said, they got those songwriters and they
come up with a couple of songs, including New Attitude. Now.
New Attitude is the second single, released December of nineteen
eighty four. It reaches number seventeen on the Hot one
hundred May eleventh, nineteen eighty five. But here's the interesting
thing I wanted to tell you this. You mentioned Patti
LaBelle and the Bluebells. They were the first African American
group to play the Metropolitan Opera House. They were the
first African American group to be on the cover of
Rolling Stone magazine before they broke up in nineteen seventy seven. Now,
this song, I don't know if you remember. Do you
remember the Doctor Laura Show. Yeah, she's like a call
in psychologist like the nineties. Yeah, this was like her
theme song. I live and had a coworker in the
nineties that I work with. She listened to Doctor Laura
all the time.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: And every day I'm here in a New Attitude by
Patti LaBelle. Aha. And the video for this song.
Speaker 2: It's right out of these Easy tael playbook.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's legs.
Speaker 1: It is legs. It's totally legs. Yeah, she goes like
shopping and gets a new wardrobe and comes out and
she's looking.
Speaker 3: Great, great, you gotta new that she's getting hassled by
the clerk. And then she comes out looking all foxy
and she's got a new attitude.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. So the success of new Attitude and
another song we're going to talk about here in.
Speaker 2: Just a little bit called Stir It Up, Yeah, leads her.
Speaker 1: To a new song in nineteen eighty six where she
has a duet with Michael McDonald. Oh yes, Michael McDonald
of the Doobie Brothers.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: And he didn't work with Total. We talked about my
Total episodes. That song is called on our Own One,
which was a number one hit.
Speaker 3: I think that Bruckheimer knew about her because she had
just started acting before this, like just before they enlisted
her to sing this song. She had started acting, played
a part in a soldier story.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, before we dismissed Patty LaBelle. She's in
the Grammy Hall of Fame, She's on the hollyw Would
Walk Fame, the Apollo Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall
of Fame. In two thousand and five, she received the
Legends Award, and Rolling Stone ranked her as one of
the one hundred greatest singers of all time.
Speaker 3: I think this song is great. I think the song
has it has lasting power. I would put it in
the top four or five songs on the album for sure.
It's a great leadoff song.
Speaker 1: It's a great pop song.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They don't play it in the movie at all. Okay,
it's not in the movie one one second?
Speaker 2: So why is it on the soundtrack?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Okay, I don't know. It is in
Miss Congeniality Part two though, all right, which is a
favorite with my wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're a Miss Congeniality one and two fans family too.
Speaker 1: Here's what I think. Do you want to hear what
I think?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that their original intent was to use this
for Jenny Summers. Okay, Like it's Jenny's song, Okay, gotcha.
She's feeling good, she's looking good, she's got a great job,
she's busted out of the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Right, She's not in downtown Detroit anymore. That's right, She's
on bever Hills Drive.
Speaker 1: This doesn't fit with Axel. This is Jenny song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, what's our next song?
Speaker 1: Next song on the album is a song called Don't
Get Stopped in Beverly Hills by Shalamar.
Speaker 2: Okay, we've talked about Shallamar before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Shalamar had a big song on the
Footloose soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, grab.
Speaker 1: Your cold and be a good body. The friends. I
want to take you in the nine. I feel the
need to sweep you off.
Speaker 2: But your feet, you and me, we sent me dancing.
Speaker 1: That was a great song.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember when we did that episode. You you said
that this was kind of a put together band, and
so I had to go look at that.
Speaker 2: You remember soul Train.
Speaker 1: I do remember SoulTrain.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Remember the host of soul Train. He was Don Cornelius.
Well he's one of the two guys that put this
band together. Okay, Him and a booking agent named Dick
Griffy picked out these folks really for their looks more
than anything else.
Speaker 2: Their looks and their ability to dance.
Speaker 1: These guys can dance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were.
Speaker 3: I mean, the idea was, we're going to be the
trendsetters for the disco funk kind of sound and look.
And so they'd dress them up in awesome clothes and
have them sing this very hooky songs and somehow they're
still in nineteen early nineteen eighty three doing music.
Speaker 1: Shallamar. We talked about how they're dangerously close to Millie Vanilli, right.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 1: They were selected because they look good and they could dance,
not necessarily because they could sing.
Speaker 2: Right. I mean the group had Jody Wattley in it,
who she.
Speaker 1: Had some big hits in the late eighties. She had
Don't You Want Me, she had some kind of lower
she had looking for a new love.
Speaker 3: They were lip syncing, but they were pretty much lip
syncing to their own singing, right, Unlike Yes.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'll tell you who is a big fan of
Shalamar Okay, Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: In fact, he admired their dancing ability so much that
he brought him in to help him coordinate the bad video.
Speaker 2: Right, Jeff Daniels, Right that, Jeff, Jeff Old Jeff.
Speaker 3: That's a throwback to our very first episode, like four
years ago.
Speaker 1: Everybody dancing in the sheets was their biggest one. I
gotta think that they got Don't Get Stopped in Beverly
Hills off of Footloose success. This is another song that
was not in the film.
Speaker 2: What the heck?
Speaker 1: I don't don't know, Okay, I'll tell you where. It
did appear in the TV show Misfits of Science.
Speaker 3: Okay, which by the way, starred the same guy who
played Predator and the Helicopter.
Speaker 1: That is right, good job, nice pull.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: So this brings us to song number three, do You
Really Want My Love? By They Want My Love?
Speaker 1: So Junior was British Okay.
Speaker 3: He is one of the very first British R and
B artists to be successful in the US. He had
a big hit in nineteen eighty two called Mama used
to say, do you remember this song?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was actually a top forty hit in
the US, was number seven in the UK.
Speaker 2: Really don't really remember it.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I feel like they were really trying to find Michael
Jackson sound on this one.
Speaker 1: I can see that the guy's got a high pitch voice,
kind of a funky dance thing.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: You know he did have at least a U K
hit with Kim Wilde. Kim wild Oh sure, keep me
hanging on and kids in America.
Speaker 2: Kids in America love that. We need to do that
one for a Patreon episode. I'd love to oh heck yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, guys, if you haven't joined our Patreon family,
please come and do so. You can do it for
as little as five bucks a month. Go to patreon
dot com backslash Surely podcast and you can get access
to all of our special episodes where we cover one
hit wonders Where the kids in America. We've got to
do that this year. Anyway, back to Junior.
Speaker 1: So, look, this song is not good. This is not
a great song.
Speaker 2: This is on the bottom half, this.
Speaker 1: Is below the windows alignment, all right. So this actually
plays when Mikey and Axll are playing pool in Detroit's
in the background. They're at the bar, right, and he
loses the money in the pool bent And that's all
we really need to say about that.
Speaker 3: So, so you've got you've got this Patti LaBelle song,
and you've got this Shallamar song, and you don't put
them in the movie, right, And then when you got
a space that you can put a song in, you
put this Herd in there, right?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, whatever, moving on song number four.
Speaker 1: Number four. This song is called Emergency by Rocky Robins.
Speaker 4: Tweet tweet.
Speaker 3: Okay, I can I can see the I can see
the studio executives at this moment, we need another song.
Can we get Prince? Prince had a good album. No,
we can't. Can't get Prince. We can get Rocky Robbins.
I'm sorry, we can get who. I said Prince, and
you said who Rocky Robbins. He sounds a lot like Prince.
Speaker 1: He sounds like he's trying to be Prince.
Speaker 3: He sounds like he was Prince karaoke on a sad
club somewhere in northeastern olab.
Speaker 1: That's right, the great value Prince in all actuality though
he was from Minneapolis. Huh so, good chance they knew
each other at least, you know, crossed over their past. Sure,
Like I said, every artist got a Grammy for this album.
Speaker 2: I get a Yeah.
Speaker 3: Can we get the guy from Paisley Park? I know
a guy from Polka Dot Park.
Speaker 1: All right, now, listen before we totally beat up on
Rocky Robins. I've got a great Rocky Robins story.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, okay, I do.
Speaker 3: I am impressed because I had to surge high and
low to find out who Rocky Robins was at all. Okay,
a great story, I'm excited to hear.
Speaker 1: Well, a great tragedy. Oh no, okay, so he signed
with A and M Records in nineteen seventy nine. So
he's all fired up for his first record. Freaking Yes,
I got signed by a record company. I'm gonna make
my first record. So sits down with the producers, they
knock this out. They produce his first album, and on
the way to deliver the record to the record company,
the masters got erased. What I dow, I don't know.
I don't know the story of how. All I know
is that when he got to the record company to
turn it in, there is blank sound coming from the speakers.
He had to go back and re record everything and
start over.
Speaker 2: Well did the re recording sew Well?
Speaker 3: No, I did not, Okay, I literally I can imagine.
I can imagine this Rocky Robins guy sitting in a
bar that looks like the club that they're in in
Weird Science, drinking whiskey, smoking a cigarette, and telling that
same story for the hundred thousandth time to whoever will listen.
Speaker 1: I was going to be as big as prints until
my master's got a raised Prince stole my ideas.
Speaker 2: This poor guy, Uh, they just got a race. How
do they get a race? I don't know that they
were in the.
Speaker 1: Van play there was nothing there.
Speaker 2: We had sound when we put him in a van,
put him out of the van. No sound. Oh my gosh,
how crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, but at least he gets a song on the
Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, he gets a Grammy phrase, I'm
Rammy winner right now. This song is not in the
film either.
Speaker 2: That was actually a good choice, good call on their
part there.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, let's finally get to one of
the big dogs on this album. Okay, this song is
called Neutron Dance by the Pointer sisters. I don't want
to take it.
Speaker 3: In, okay, So you don't have to tell me where
in the movie this song play, no doubt. I mean,
if you don't automatically think of this scene as you
hear this song, then you haven't seen the movie, because
it is the perfect music for this scene and it
absolutely sets the stage for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 1: So it's the opening scene when Axel is doing that
cigarette deal and the guy takes off any smashing cars
through the Detroit streets. It's so great, right, It's like
the perfect song.
Speaker 2: Perfect. You told me they didn't want this song.
Speaker 1: They didn't like it, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Marty breast again, who was like, dude, this song is
the song that has to be in this scene.
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. Simpson and Bruckheimer were the guys
that didn't like it.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: So they asked Richard Perry, who was another songwriter, to
create a better song, and he told him, guys, this
is a one in a million song and it works
perfectly with that opening scene.
Speaker 3: The guy they asked to write a song to take
this song's place said, you guys are idiots.
Speaker 2: Go with the song, yes, have that's right, that's freaking brilliant.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the song is by the Pointer Sisters, right, yes, okay,
so normal in this circumstance. I'd give you a little
history of the Pointer Sisters, but let me just say that, okay.
Nineteen eighty four Automatic Jump from My Love, He's so
Shy in eighty Slow Hand in eighty one, I'm So
Excited in eighty four, and then of course this one
in eighty five. The band was if you'll pardon me
on fire n see what I did there by the way,
I will save my I will save my history of
the Pointer Sisters for when we ever we do. Our
Top five of nineteen seventy nine and we cover that
song fire. I think the great story on this one
comes from a throwback to what we were talking about
in our cover in the movie of Beverly Hills Cop
is that Ali Willis is involved in this one. And
we have talked about her multiple times Patreon episode again,
we did September by Earth Wind and Fire. She's this
incredible songwriter, and in all of the times that we've
talked about her, I've never actually seen her picture and
you and I just watched a video on her and
I was like, Number One, she's white.
Speaker 2: What white girl?
Speaker 3: She grew up in Detroit, which is we went to
the Mumford High School. You know Axel Foley. Yeah, yeah,
it wears the Mumford t shirt in Beverly Hills Cop.
But she grew up outside of Motown and so that
was the kind of music that she listened to.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: In our Patreon episode, we did a great job of
covering that song, but we didn't know until just now
that when she got the call from Maurice White to
come help them write this song September, she was looking
at food stamps to figure out what she needed most
for the next week.
Speaker 1: She's like I need some bread. Here are some food stamps.
Speaker 3: It was from food stamps to recording one of writing
one of the greatest songs of the seventies.
Speaker 1: I guarantee September will be on our Best of seventy
nine at some point.
Speaker 3: Yes, and then goes on and writes with Linda ronstat right,
I mean just the amount of people. It just opens
this door because it's such a huge success. And then
the next thing that I think of when I look
at her is not only is she white, but she
looks like the lady you see at the seven eleven
who's getting her eighth pack of cigarettes for the day
and filling the coffee up with mostly sugar and has
a dog with her that needs to be groomed and bathed.
She looks not like a star at all.
Speaker 1: No, not at all. And in fact, I just told
you we watch where she lived. She looks like she
lives in Peebe's playhouse. Let me just give you a
list of just the highlights of her career. Okay, so
we talked about September by earth Wind and Fire Boogie
Wonderland by earth Wind and Fire, Right, You're the Best,
the song from the Karate Kid nice, right, which we'll
be covering here shortly.
Speaker 2: Uh huh?
Speaker 1: What have I done to deserve this? By the pet
Shop Boys?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Not only does she write songs for artists like this
to be just big hits off of an album, right,
And not only did she write songs like New Tron Danced,
where it's going to be in a movie. She gets
a call in the early nineties to say, hey, we
need you to help us write a song for this
TV show and she's like, Okay, what's it about? And
they tell her and then she's like, this sounds awful,
and they're like, yeah, it's not going to be a hit,
don't worry about it. Just write us something. We'll throw
it in there so the show will be gone in
no time. And she says, so I write the whitest
song I've ever.
Speaker 2: Written in my life. You know what the song was?
Speaker 1: I do? Wow?
Speaker 3: So go back and check out our top five TV
themes from nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety nine where
we covered this song.
Speaker 2: But what the heck?
Speaker 3: She thought it was a throwaway song and it becomes
one of the biggest TV themes of all time.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the song for just a second.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So it was released in December of nineteen eighty four.
It goes on to hit number six on the Hot
one hundred. Here's the thing about this song. I love
the story. So she gets together. She's very disappointed and
frustrated with her life. Okay, so she had written a
couple of gigantic hits and she's still not doing very well.
And so she's meeting with this other songwriter named Danny Simbelo.
This is the brother of Michael Simbelo, the guy who
did Maniac from Flashdance. Oh nice, okay, yeah, yeah right,
And he's got all this energy and he's excited to
be there and he wants to help her write the song. Well,
they're trying to write the song for the movie Streets
of Fire. Well, Streets of Fire as we know it
as this movie that came and went and really didn't
do anything. It gave us a couple of songs like
I Can Dream About You by Dan Hartman. They're writing
the lyrics for this song. She's upset with her life.
She's looking out the window while they're working on the song,
and somebody is trying to steal her car, right and
she owned this nineteen sixty two corvet. She looks out
the window. She's like, somebody's trying to steal my brand
new Chevrolet. And that's how you get that line.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now, the song itself is about a fear of nuclear
holocaust and sort of partying in the wake of that
nine very similar to Princess nineteen ninety nine. Like on
the news they had talked about this new neutron bomb
that was more powerful than a regular atomic or a
nuclear bomb. Yeah, and so that's what the neutron Dance was.
Speaker 2: It's like I'll melt with you.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'll melt with you.
Speaker 3: That's oh gosh, that's so good. That's so fantastic. Yeah,
you said that. Her house looks like Pee Wee's playhouse.
She collects all of this weird memorabilia stuff. She literally
holds up a box and she's like, this is Sammy
Davis Junior's last box of marijuana.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the video for just a second.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So you've got the Pointer sisters and they're at a
movie theater and like in the screen behind the movie
is Beverly Hills cop So it's this big advertisement for
the Beverly Hills Cop movie, which is fun because we
love the movie. We love the song. But you know
who shows up in the video, No Bronson Pincho Oh.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, perfectly placed song in the movie.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely great great stories.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: Okay, hit stop on your tape player, kick it out,
flip it over side too, and we start off with
a banger. This song is called the Heat Is On
My Glenn Fry.
Speaker 3: Here's what I loved about this, right, I'm listening to
this song today and I'm thinking to myself, I wonder
if when I heard this song for the first time,
I went, Okay, that's that guy from the Eagles. And
then I started, you know, really thinking back. I'm like,
I don't think I knew who the Eagles were in
nineteen eighty four, right, I don't think I did. I
think I started listening to the Eagles when I was
like thirteen, and it was like starting to listen to
classic rock stations, right, And so I really started to
think about it, and I think I remember actually thinking
to myself the Eagles.
Speaker 2: Oh, hey, I know that guy. He's the guy that's
saying on the Beverly Hills cop soundtracking.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh that's the Boys of Summer. Guy. Wow, he's
got an afro all right, that's right.
Speaker 3: So I knew Don Henley and Glenn Fry from these
songs from the eighties site, right, and I mean we're
about to cover the Miami Vice soundtrack, which again we're
gonna have a couple songs from two Yeah, but this one, well, first,
he born in Detroit, like yet another Ali Jerry. Glenn
Glenn all from Detroit. Right, they didn't go to high
school together, but Glenn goes to community college, has a band,
you know, just kind of a general thing. But then
he has a happy introduction to somebody that leads him
to open some doors. And there's a weird coincidence with that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So in nineteen sixty seven, he's bouncing around Detroit
playing for different bands, trying to make it, and he
runs into this guy named Bob Seeger, Bob freaking Seeker,
Bob freaking Seeger, Yeah, who helps him get a record
deal and helps him write his first single. Coincidentally, when
we talk about Shakedown.
Speaker 3: Are we gonna well Shakedowns on Beverly Hills Cop too?
Speaker 2: Is that? Are we going to cover maybe.
Speaker 1: We should just cover that at the end of this album. Okay,
another bonus song, we'll throw in Shakedown. Bonus song of
Shakedown at the end of this episode. We're bringing it,
so let's we'll come back to that.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So Glenn Frye and Bob Seger have been friends since
the sixties. So Bob Seger helps him put out his
first single. You know, he has, you know, a little
bit of success whatever. So he decides he's gonna move
to California. So in nineteen sixty nine, he moves to
California and he meets this guy named Jad Souther. If
you're an Eagles fan, you know this guy is. He
helped him write a ton.
Speaker 2: Of their hits. Yep.
Speaker 1: Well, JD. Souther was dating Linda Ronstadt at the time.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Linda Ronstadt needed a backing band to help her with
her album, so she puts together this backing band, Glenn Frye,
Randy Meisner, Bernie Leaden, and Don Henley. Of course, these
guys then add Don Felder later and they become the Eagles. Yeah,
the freaking Eagles.
Speaker 2: See freaking Eagle.
Speaker 1: Take it easy, peaceful easy, feeling already gone Lion Eyes,
New Kid in Town, Hotel, California. The list goes on
and on.
Speaker 3: I mean they're in a category with Beatles, Beach Boys,
Pink Floyd.
Speaker 2: They are icons.
Speaker 1: They are icons. They last from the early seventies, I
think seventy one until nineteen eighty they break up.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: The big line, you know, when are you guys going
to get back together? Glenn Fry and Don Henley they
always say when hell Freeze is over?
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Of course, in ninety four they released an album called
Hell Freezes Over when they got back together.
Speaker 2: I saw him perform live in ninety four.
Speaker 1: I saw him perform live in ninety four.
Speaker 4: Two.
Speaker 1: What did you see?
Speaker 2: I saw him in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I saw him in Dallas.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: They were, by the way, flawless, Like there are those
bands that are made in the studio that's not these guys.
These guys' music was perfect. It sounded just like the album,
despite the fact that they were not playing any backing tracks.
Speaker 2: This was all them brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the song is written by Harold Faltemyer and Keith Forcy.
Speaker 3: Right, So we talked about Keith Forcy of course in
relationship Ship to Georgio Moroder. Both he and Harold Faldemeyer
worked heavily with Georgiomroder Keith Force. He's also the guy
who wrote Don't You Forget About Me?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And of course Harold Faltemyer has ax lef which we'll
talk about it here in a minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Glen Fry signs with MCA Records. They're having this
big screening for Beverly Hills Cop and his manager calls
him and say, hey, listen, you got to get to
the screening. This Eddie Murphy movie is coming out. It's
gonna be huge. You got to get a song on it.
So Glenn Fry's like, ah, okay. So he shows up
and he's sitting there and he says, I look over
one shoulder and there's Quincy Jones. I look over the
other shoulder and there's Stevie Wonder. I look down in
front of me and there's the Pointer sisters. He's like,
there's no way I'm getting a song on this album.
It's not happening. So later on Glen Fry gets a
call and it says we're gonna send you a song.
We think it's going to be a hit. We think
it's going to get on the Beverly Hills Cops soundtrack.
We want you to sing it. So Glenn Fry's like,
all right.
Speaker 2: Just randomly, they happen to send him a song.
Speaker 1: They said, we want you to sing a song.
Speaker 3: Jerry Bruckheimer said, I think my little brother played basketball
against that kid.
Speaker 2: Let's send him a.
Speaker 1: Song, that's right, And so they send him this song.
He says, yeah, okay, sounds good.
Speaker 4: I'll do it.
Speaker 1: They paid him fifteen grand to do it. He called
it a little Christmas money.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: He comes in, he does the vocals on one day,
he does the guitar solo on another day, and it
goes on to become listen to this the highest charting
solo Eagles song of all time.
Speaker 2: Wow wow.
Speaker 1: It reaches number two on the Hot one hundred.
Speaker 3: And we're talking about a guy who had Smugglers blues
and you belong to the City.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: In fairness, you Belong to the City hits number two
as well.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Boys of Summer only gets to number five.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Blocked by Can't Fight This Feeling by Reo Speedwagon.
Speaker 2: Well that's another great song.
Speaker 1: It's a classic. I can't argue with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wow, fantas and this song again, you hear the
song and you immediately play in the footage in your head.
Speaker 1: Right, this is the opening credits. Yeah, it's fantastic. It
gives us our foothold in Detroit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's.
Speaker 1: Move on to the next song.
Speaker 2: Next song on the album.
Speaker 1: Gratitude by Danny Elfman.
Speaker 2: That's right, everybody, he said, Danny Elfman.
Speaker 1: This is a pre Batman, pre pee wee we like
the pre Tim Burton stuff, which is pre Danny Elfman
doing soundtracks at all. This is pre Dead Man's Party,
which was I mean, obviously the song has a very
Oingo Boingo sound to it, and I guess I did
actually technically misspeak.
Speaker 2: This was not his first.
Speaker 3: Now, we talked about Danny Elfman before, remember when we
did Batman versus Dark Knight, right right, and mentioned his
work with Oingo Boingo and how weird they were. I
don't know if you remember, but I talked about the
movie The Forbidden Zone.
Speaker 2: Remember that. Oh yeah, that's very weird, weird movie like softcore.
It was.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of nudity, but I mean it
was just bizarre. I mean, Danny Elfin played Satan in
addition to scoring the very weird movie. Yeah, okay, so anyway,
not technically his first score, but this is I mean
we're talking about he is on the precipice of becoming
the Danny Elfman. He's not there yet, Like this is
eighty four. Eighty five is when Oingo Boingo's biggest album
comes out. It's also when he scores Peewe's Big Adventure
for the first time. He goes on to score one
hundred or more different movies that are all iconic and
of course the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: Now listen, Danny Elfman is a prolific composer. This song's
not any good though, Yeah, where is it the movie?
It's not in the movie?
Speaker 2: Ok okay, So what is this? Like four songs that
we've had so far, they're not in the movie.
Speaker 1: And then you have a prominent song we're going to
talk about here in a minute that was not on
the soundtrack but in the movie. So okay, interesting selection process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is weird.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, So let's get on to another song
that really.
Speaker 3: Yet another Grammy winner. That's right, that's right, this is
my first Grammy for this song. That was on the soundtrack.
But now in the movie.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about another song by Patty Lebbell.
This song is called Stir It Up.
Speaker 2: This is another fantastic song.
Speaker 1: This is a great pop song.
Speaker 3: This is top half. This is still I still hear
this on the radio from time to time.
Speaker 2: This is a good one.
Speaker 1: This is what they play when Axles rolling into Beverly
Hills for the first time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's where he's laughing at the guys and the
Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: Yeah up it that he actually wore when he did
his stand up part.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: But yeah, this one is also Ali Willis we talked
about and Danny Simbello again, right. Produced by Keith Force
and Harold Faltemeyer, sung by Patty LaBelle. They had a
little magic combination with this.
Speaker 1: This is a great pop song. It's played twice in
the movie. That's actually played during the Beverly Hills scene
and then the closing credits as well.
Speaker 3: So she technically should have gotten three Grammys.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. I do have a funny little
fact for you on this. So it only hits number
forty one on the Hot one hundred, So it's a
it's a moderate hit. It's not a big time hit,
not quite top forty, but it's a catchy pop song
and it's good for this album. This song goes on
to become the theme song for the TV sitcom Stir Crazy,
based on the movie with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.
Speaker 2: I did not know that that was a thing.
Speaker 1: I did not either, Okay, I have no memory of
that show at all.
Speaker 3: Alrighty short lived, yes, short short to live.
Speaker 1: And then, of course this song is a new version
of the song appears in Chicken Little good song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great song, I like to it's better than those references.
But yes, it is a good song on its own
for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the next song. This
song is called rock and Roll Me Again by The System.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is a song by a group called
The System.
Speaker 2: The group was formed.
Speaker 3: By vocalist, guitarist Mick Murphy and keyboardist David Frank. Now,
David Frank has been called by Yamaha Music as the
founding father of electronic R and B.
Speaker 2: Really, yes, and he's very white anyway, Okay.
Speaker 3: He decided to get into the keyboard side of things
and the electronic side of things, because when he was
studying music at Berkeley, somebody brought in a copy of
Wendy Carlos's album Switched on Bach. Oh yeah, we talked
about in the Tron episode exactly. Wendy Carlos had done the
score for Tron before that, she had done this piece
that I mean it blew the doors off of what
you could do with electronic music back in the day
where she was performing basically like eight bit Bach symphonies, right.
And so at that point he had been experimenting with
getting his electric guitar sounds out of his fares foot
organ and decided, Hey, I'm going to focus on electronic music,
which Yamaha seem to think he's a pretty big influencer here.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've got a couple of nuggets for you on
the system, Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they worked on a song called It's Passion in
early eighty three. So the person that they wanted to
sing this song is a pre Lucky Star, pre borderline
Madonna Donna, right heh yeah, had creative differences with her,
so she dropped out and so act David Frank ended
up singing the song and it became a moderate hit,
kind of in and around New York City. These guys
worked on the song Sustudio by Phil Collins. Nice I
Feel for You by Shaka Khan Chaka. But here's the thing.
They had a one wonder in nineteen eighty seven, a
big one hit wonder. Do you know what it is?
Speaker 3: We're talking about the system here, Yes, no, I've got nothing.
Speaker 1: I gotta play this song for you. See if you
recognize it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is don't disturb this group?
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, you remember this one?
Speaker 2: No? I remember Nighttime Lover. I don't remember. Don't disturb
this group.
Speaker 1: Don't disturb this groove hit number four on the Hot
one hundred and nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Wow, okay, just.
Speaker 1: Listen to this group of songs that blocked it. Okay,
So I like this song. It's it's an eighty seven song.
I want to Dance with Somebody by Winning Houston. Number three,
Shakedown by Bob Seger at number two, that's ironic, and
number one is Alone by Heart.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, those are going to be three songs that
are very difficult to beat.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Okay, one more thing for you, Yeah,
David Frank, the guy who plays keyboards on the System, Yeah,
wrote the song Janina Bottle that Christina Aguilera.
Speaker 2: Sings, Oh nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these guys aren't nobody's.
Speaker 3: No no I told you man, grandfather of electronic R
and B or something like that.
Speaker 1: They also wrote the title track too Coming to America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually good. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we're done with that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the song's not good. Yeah, we can be done.
Speaker 3: We've talked up this band that nobody's heard of except
for a brief period of time in nineteen eighty seven,
and now we can move on because we're getting to
the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes, we finally get to the big one here. Yes,
all right, d We've come to the last song on
the album and maybe the most famous song off this soundtrack.
Speaker 3: This is what I came to this podcast to listen about.
This is my favorite song by far on the album.
I mean, we save the best for last.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the Banana theme otherwise known as
axel F.
Speaker 3: So we talked about Harold Faltemeyer whenever we covered Top Gun,
of course, right because he did the Top Gun theme.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you remember that story. You remember that. Like he
was sitting at doors.
Speaker 1: At dinner with Ruckheimer and Simpson and they're asking him
about the top gun theme and he was like, yeah,
I think I've got it, and they're like, great, let's
hear it. And he's like, well, and I said I had.
What I meant was I had a couple of ideas
right right, And he ran home real quick, like he
left before dessert, threw it together real quick, and what
we got was like the Maverick theme.
Speaker 2: You know, he drove.
Speaker 3: Faster than they did, and then the five minutes before
they got there, he already had it down. So I've
got a reason for that. But I'm going to tell you,
like the full Harold Faltemeyer story. Okay, yeah, so number one,
he's from Germany, but Harold is not really a German
kind of name. Turns out that his parents made really
good friends with an American gi when the Americans came
in after World War Two. They made this American the
godfather of their son. And this American's name was Harold.
And so that's why this German Valtemeyer has this very
American herald name.
Speaker 1: This sounds very suspicious to me, like this gi got
mom pregnant and.
Speaker 2: No, no godfather, he's the god. I mean, it's it's
like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, Germany was in pretty bad shape after the war.
Speaker 1: It was my war American friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no that he said that, Harold, he met him
several times. Genuinely nice guy, very Southern American, you know,
Sarian style. Yeah, said he would dress up like an
Indian even though he was not a Native American. But anyway, anyway,
so his family was a group of not only musicians,
like his dad was piano player, mother was a singer,
grandmother was a singer. Violence such like that. They were
also like college professors, like very smart and very musically educated.
And then Harold Faltemeyer throws them a loop by dropping
out of school before he's done, and they're like, Okay, well,
I guess you're going to be a garbage man. But
then his dad realizes, like, just to give you an idea,
he not only was not a good enough musician to
get into the music schools that they had then, right, yeah,
but he's dropped out of school, so he can't he
can't get into those music schools, right, I mean, the
competition was steep, but what his father does is like
he goes to the principle of this school and he's like,
he has to be able to study at this school,
like he's quit school. He doesn't have the education he needs,
and his musical talents aren't good enough. He's like, I
don't care. I need to bring him in and show
you what he can do. And so he brings him
in and Harold Faltemeyer has what's kind of like perfect pitch.
Speaker 1: And wait a minute, because I read that he had
something called absolute pitch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so basically they're the same thing. But what he
can do is if you play a note, any note,
he can go that's C sharp, that's F sharp, that's
B flat, right, And he can also with chords, you know,
like that's an A seven augmented, he can he can
hear it, and he can tell you exactly what it is. Now,
his technical skills were good, just not music level good.
And so they're so impressed by his ability to do
this that they say, Okay, we will let you into
the music school to study, but you have to you
have to sign something that says you're never going to
try to teach, and you're not going to go try
to be in a symphony, because that's not what we're
qualifying you to do. We're just letting you study. It
is really just to educate him and that's it. And
so he's like, all right, great, see you guys in
the fall. And his dad's like, well, you're not just
going to hang around and do nothing, and so he's like,
we have some friends who own a recording studio. You're
gonna go be their gopher. And so, just like on
Jovie years later, he was the guy who would, hey, kid,
go get me a Jen Martini and he would go
and get that for the for the music guys, and
he said, so they it was a nine to five
kind of recording studio, and they would he would be
the one that was sweeping up whenever the lights, you know,
are about to be turned off. So when everyone left,
he would go in and he would explore all of
the equipment, all of the recording studio stuff, and really became,
you know, educated himself with his music equipment for months
before he ever goes to music school and finishes his
music schools part of things, and is an actual employee
at this place now and he's working for a producer
right these are the big time producers. And he says,
the problem that my producer had was alcohol. And he says,
so one morning, nine o'clock in the morning, we have
an entire symphony orchestra in the studio ready to record,
and my producer has gotten so drunk that he doesn't
know where he is and he's not there. And so
I'm just like, well, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do.
And the guy who's running the show says, you know
how to do this, you go do it, right. He's like,
I'm not allowed to do that. He goes, I don't
care what you're allowed to do, Go do it.
Speaker 2: We have paid all of these musicians. We're not losing
this money. Go do it.
Speaker 3: And so I can just imagine him. He's like going
and setting this stuff up, and he's got other guys
who worked there that who's like, dude, that's not where
that microphone got go, dude, that's not where those levels
go on the record or whatever.
Speaker 2: And so when the.
Speaker 3: Producer finally sobers up and gets back, he's like, it's
my fault. I will take full responsibility for however much
he screwed this thing up, right, right, of course, it
turns out to be one of the best recordings that
they've ever had. Wow, And so he gets an immediate promotion.
And now he is the wiz kid on the block
who's able to do stuff that none of the other
producers could do. And so who should happen to be
recording in a little place called music Land Studios a
couple of miles down the road.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess, Georgio Moroder, you nailed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so, of course, Georgio Moroder, if you haven't
heard our story on that, go check out the top
Gun episode. But he's heard about this wiz kid. He's like,
why aren't you working for me? Come do some stuff
with me. Fantastic and so, of course, then the relationship
is born. And then Georgia Moroder goes over to the US.
He gets hit up to do these various soundtracks. He says, Harold,
come over here, help me with these soundtracks. And so
Harold goes over. In nineteen seventy nine, he starts working
with Donna's summer. He arranges this little song you might
have heard of called hod Stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, no, wait a minute, because this is where
a world's collide when you talk about Donna Summer YEP,
and Georgia Moroder. Yeah, and Harold Faltmeyer. Keith Forcey's got
to be in there somewhere. Yeah, I'm sure that he's
I'm sure that he's a part of the deal. I
mean we talked about him as well on a couple
of different multiple different episodes now and then. Yeah, just
a little bit ago. But I don't know what that.
I didn't hear Harold talk about Keith, so I can't
give you any more info on that.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so he comes over in seventy nine, he
starts helping out with these soundtracks and these other recordings,
like with Donna Summer and stuff. Then nineteen eighty he
starts working with this group called Blondie with this movie
called American Jigglow.
Speaker 1: You are kidding, this has to be call me.
Speaker 2: You got it.
Speaker 3: Here's the bigger deal. It's not really Blondie that's playing
all that stuff. Like they came into the studio number one,
Debbie Harry wanted to decided she wanted to do the
music on this movie because she was attracted to Richard Gear.
That was her motivation. But anyway, the band comes in
and they're lack of days there are disco rock band
right right, and so they'll yes, hang out, smokes the pot,
maybe get around to play in a few bars, and
then smoke some more pody.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's just yeah, georgiemoor Oder is not into hanging out
and spending a bunch of time in the studio. And
so after a few days of this, he's just like, Okay,
we've got enough, let's go. And they're like, well, we
haven't finished, and he's like, yeah, we've got it enough.
We'll take care of the rest. And so they leave
and Harold Fltmeyer is really the one that plays almost
everything call Me, which pissed the band off initially. I
mean he's got the keyboard solo in the middle and
the keyboards is like, that's not me. And then call
Me ends up being the biggest hit for Blondie ever. Right,
It's one of the biggest hits of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's huge. It's huge.
Speaker 3: So I can't imagine being in a band where your
biggest hit was played by somebody else.
Speaker 2: But anyway, a.
Speaker 3: Little while after that, he calls Georgio. He says, hey,
I love working with you, but I just need some
stuff to do on my own.
Speaker 2: It's that cool.
Speaker 3: And he says Georgio was totally good with it, helped
him out. And then he gets a call from a
guy named Jerry Bruckheimer, who is nobody at that point, right,
He's just he's just an executive at Paramount. He's trying
to put some movies together.
Speaker 1: Right, it's just a cowboy with cocaine and guns in
the back of it. That's Don Simpson's Oh yeah, okay, yeah, no,
I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jerry's the level aheaded that's it.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true.
Speaker 3: But Jerry is got this movie called Thief of Hearts.
Speaker 2: You heard of this? Yeah? I have?
Speaker 3: Okay, good because I had never heard of it. But
he's he calls up Harold Faltemeyer and Harold's like calling
Georgio and Jerry's like, well, Georgia is not really interested
to do it. He's like, Okay, that was a dumb
question for me to ask in the first place. All right,
that's fine, and he goes, well, you need a song,
and he's like, no, I was kind of hoping you.
Speaker 2: Would score it.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh wow, dang, all right, I guess I'll
do that, And so he writes the score to this
movie that he says has a wonderful storyline, but basically the.
Speaker 2: Movie does crap. Nobody has heard of this thing, right.
Speaker 3: And then even though the movie doesn't do as well,
Jerry Bruckhammer likes it enough that when he hits eighty
two and eighty three, he's like, Hey, I got this
other movie. I'd like you to come try to write
a score for it. He goes, oh, yeah, what's it called?
He says, a movie called Beverly Hills Cop Yes, And
so Harold Faldemyer' is like, all right, sounds good, let's
do it, and so he writes a song for him.
He plays it for Jerry and Don and whoever the
musical director is, and Marty Brest and they're like, nah,
like okay, writes a different song, brings it to him
and they're like, yeah, that's still not eat.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know, okay. And so at this.
Speaker 3: Point he's like, if I write a third song that
they don't like, I'm fired. Like I'm gonna get fired
from this movie, right, and he says, So he puts
together this little, simple little melody and does a little.
Speaker 2: I mean it's fun.
Speaker 3: Because there's a video at them out there of him
as he's programming his mood keyboard that he gets that
perfect sound on right, the perfect tone for the first
left sound, and he plays the tape for them after
he's fully recorded it, and Jerry Bruckheimer is like, oh no,
and like the musical editor is like, I don't like it.
I don't think it's gonna be any good, and Don
Simpson's like, I don't know, what do you think, Marty
and Marty He says, Marty's would smoke the cigarette marrty breast. Okay,
would smoke these cigarettes with a little tip on the
end of them, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he says.
Speaker 3: He takes a drag of his cigarettes and he's like,
play it for me one more time, and so he
plays it for him one more time. The song gets
over and Marty Brest goes, I think that may be
the perfect music cue for this movie.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Let's use it.
Speaker 3: And Jerry Bruckheimer's like, Okay, sounds good, Let's do it.
And Don Simpson's like, yeah, sounds good to me, let's
do it, and the music editors like, I still don't
like it. But whatever you guys think. Wow, And so
that is literally how I was born. And this is
the important thing is he said that at that time
with comedies, all of the music was like a symphony,
like the old Looney Tunes stuff like you.
Speaker 2: Know is that?
Speaker 3: So to do a techno sounding musical theme for a
comedy movie starring the number one comedy actor in the
world at that moment was unheard of, and fortunately it
was a risk it was well taken.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Great story, great story.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: So for me, this song is like the theme song
for the summer of nineteen eighty five, like, oh gosh,
y my running around. You know, this is just the
theme playing in the background while I'm playing whiffleball with
my buddies.
Speaker 3: I got the breakdancing cardboard back out for this song.
Speaker 1: So this song actually made it to number three on
the charts.
Speaker 2: You know who kept it on I do.
Speaker 1: So here you go. You want to hear, I'm going
to give you the top four from June first, nineteen
eighty five. Okay, so the fourth one is Don't You
Forget About Me, which has Giorgio Moroder and Keith Force's
fingerprints all over. Yes, which we talked about on our
Patreon episode Simple Minds from Breakfast Club. Right, axl F
is number three, yes, which I always kind of hated
that name, axel F. That sounded like the kid who
sat in the back of you know, third grade class.
You know, like I'm Jason C. You know you're James G.
Speaker 2: You know so fully.
Speaker 1: I know it's acxl fully, but I mean call it
axle folly. Don't call it axel F.
Speaker 2: No, axl F sounds cool. It's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like number two that week is Everybody Wants to
Rule the World by Tears for Fearce.
Speaker 3: That is I mean, my children still love that song.
Speaker 1: Oh it's it's a one of the great songs of
the nineteen eighties, which we will be going track by
track through songs from the Big Chair here in just
a few weeks.
Speaker 3: And ironically, we're going to be comparing songs from the
Big Chair to another album which contains another song which
I think you're just about to tell me about I
am I Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the number one song this week in nineteen eighty
five is Everything She Wants by Wham off of Make
It Big, which we're going to compare to songs from
the big chair.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: I think when I heard Harold talk about it, he
said it was careless whispers. I'm sure that your information
is more accurate. He was going by memory.
Speaker 2: What does he know?
Speaker 3: He was like, he was like every week they would
sell like twenty thousand more copies than right, And the
joke was, I mean, now, selling twenty thousand copies is
amazing because people.
Speaker 2: Don't buy the music anymore. Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great story, great story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, incredible song.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest songs in nineteen eighty five. Yeah, okay,
do let's talk about a bonus song. Bonus song. This
song's not on the soundtrack, but was in the movie.
Prominent in the movie. Yeah, the bonus song we're going
to talk about is Nasty Girl by Vanity six.
Speaker 3: Well, we talked about this in our Beverly Hills cop episodes.
This is the first scene of the movie that they shot.
It is the strip club scene, right, and so you've
got this, I mean, Judge yan Hold talks about, you
know this kind of awkward. This is the first time
we're shooting this movie with all these people, and here's
this woman dancing naked above it for hours and he says,
but she told us that if I were dancing in
a club, which I would be.
Speaker 2: This is the song I would be dancing too.
Speaker 1: So the stripper came up with us. That's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well this song came out in September of eighty two,
well before the movie came out right and recorded by
Vanity six, written by the.
Speaker 2: Purple One Prince. Yes, how about that?
Speaker 3: And it's great because ironically what happens not only does
it become a very big song for Vanity is their
only big song really for Fantasy six. But the reason
he wrote it for her was because they were an
item at the time, right they were. Now this was
eighty two. Purple Rain comes out in eighty four. She
was supposed to be the love interest in Purple Rain,
without a doubt it was supposed to be her. And
so whenever they have their falling out, what does he do?
He just fix a girl that looks a lot like her.
Speaker 1: I need a pretty girl that looks a lot like
my ex girlfriend, Apollonia. There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then, of course we talked about Vanity, the lead
singer for Vanity six extensively in our Doctor Feel Good
episode because after she and Prince break up. She starts
dating Nicky six of Molly cru Molly cru Yes and
The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Six. There's this moment where
he sees like several dozen roses sent by Prince to her,
and he's all mad and he's gonna kick that little
dwarf's ass, and then he's like, oh no, it was her.
She sent them to herself just to make me jealous.
Speaker 2: Vanity was a special human being.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I kind of enjoy the rest of her story. Okay,
So she and Nicky six are engaged, but he says
he never really loved her because all they are just
drug buddies and she's addicted to Heroin all this stuff.
One day, she's on a movie set with Flash Gordon
himself Sam J.
Speaker 2: Jones. Wow, okay, and Sam said, flashback to our Flash
Gordon episode.
Speaker 1: That's right, which is a great episode. I love that episode.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He says to her, Hey, you know, I just observing.
Would you like to go read the Bible with me
at lunchtime? And she says, you know, nothing else in
my life seems to be working.
Speaker 2: So she does, why not?
Speaker 1: And she becomes like this on fire evangelist. Yeah, she
drops the name Vanity, she goes back to Denise Matthews
and from that point on her life is totally changed.
She drops out of Hollywood and all she does is preach.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, she did end up dying of kidney failure because
of so many years of drug abuse. So sadly we
lost her several years ago. But girl totally changed her
life around and is not the nasty girl anymore.
Speaker 3: Right, but this song is the perfect song for that scene.
Speaker 1: But it is the perfect song.
Speaker 2: Is the perfect song for that scene.
Speaker 3: And then I love I love the build up and
then the let down at the end. The last lyrics
of the song this is a woman governing the The
last lyrics of the song are, oh is that it
is that it?
Speaker 2: Wake me when you're done? I guess you'll be the
only one having fun.
Speaker 3: Wake me up when you're done. I guess you'll be
the only one having fun. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Okay. Another bonus song, Let's do It Shakedown for Beverly
Hills Cop Part two. Another Detroit man brings it home. Yeah,
mister Bob Seeger, who's buddies with Glenn Frye. Yeah, and
they actually wanted Glenn Fry to sing this song. Yeah,
And when you listen to it, I'm like, yeah, I
mean it kind of does sound like Glenn Fry.
Speaker 3: Well, I could definitely hear him singing it. But you
know who couldn't hear him singing it?
Speaker 1: Glenn Fry.
Speaker 2: He couldn't. He was like, I don't like these lyrics.
Speaker 1: He thought it was goofy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he also is like, I got lyric itis.
I can't. Sorry, guys, I cut call Bob.
Speaker 1: I don't get that right. So, like, I know, Glenn Fry,
Glen Fry a little difficult to deal with sometimes. But
here's the thing. Harold Faldemeyer and Keith Forcey write the
song The heat is on, Glenn, You're not sing this yeah,
number two hit. Hey, Glenn, we got another movie, you
got another song. It's really good. You want to do it?
Speaker 2: No, honey, just about the time of thing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense to me, yea. This song
goes on to hit number one August first, nineteen eighty seven.
It's bob seekers only number one hit, and it was
maybe maybe the biggest song of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: It was really really big. I know that it was
on MTV Non Stop.
Speaker 1: Of all the songs on Beverly Hills Cop one and two,
this is the best song.
Speaker 3: Uh disagree, okay, but it is a great song.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: This was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original
Song and a Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Didn't win,
lost both times. Do the same song which we covered
and is another fantastic.
Speaker 3: It is fantastic. We go check out our Dirty Dancing
Soundtrack album.
Speaker 1: Episode YEP, track by track, all Right, I'm gonna blow
your skirt off with this.
Speaker 3: You're ready for Yeah, I gotta just tell everybody what
just happened, like we're we're here, I'm word. We decided
to throw this one on because it's such a great
song and nothing else on the soundtrack is worth covering
that we haven't already covered before, right, And I'm looking
reading up on it, and Jay's like, don't look at
the personnel. Don't, yeah, don't, I want to blow your
panties off. Okay, I will look, all right, So here
it is.
Speaker 2: I'm waiting show tell me what.
Speaker 1: You got, all right, Shakedown. Here's the personnel on the
song shakedown. Okay, yes, So you got Harold Faldemyer playing
the sinclavier. Whatever that is? Sure, synthesizer, keys, drum machine,
whatever's Harold feltmar Is playing that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay? The drums percussion, that's Keith Forcey okay, same guy
who wrote Don't You Forget About Me and a million
other songs? Right?
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: The vocals are by Bob Seeger, who's had a billion hits.
Speaker 3: But very few of them. Number one, that's right. This
is one of his only number ones. It may be
the only number one.
Speaker 1: It is his only number one. Oh my god, you're
talking about night moves in old time rock and roll
and like a rock all these great songs. Wow, Okay,
guitars on this song, guess is Steve Luca.
Speaker 2: No, uh my god, it's Dan Huff.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's Dan Huff on guitar.
Speaker 3: For those of you who are new to the show,
Jason takes every opportunity to point out when Dan Huff
is involved in any song because he is a huge
fan of the song See You in My Dreams by Giant,
helmed by mister Dan Huff.
Speaker 2: Mister Dan Huff, I can't believe you snuck it in
on me again. You rat all right, everybody?
Speaker 3: Well, that does it for the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack
and a couple of bonus songs. Next week, come back,
we're going to talk about another huge soundtrack from this era,
nineteen eighty five's Miami Vice soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Yes, Fire of the Testosa. There will be no socks
allowed when we record that episode.
Speaker 2: I got my loafers