Video killed the radio star. Or so it went in the strange and dreadful case of eighties arena rocker Billy Squier, whose fortunes were firmly on the up and up when he released the controversial MTV video for “Rock Me Tonite.” And by controversial I don’t mean it was sexist, homophobic, or racist. No blind people walked into walls. It did not advocate human sacrifice or the clubbing to death of baby seals, and included no footage of Catholic nuns having sex with barnyard animals. No, it was simply so unintentionally hilarious it got Billy laughed straight out of his career.
To say Squier makes a fool of himself on “Rock Me Tonite” video is akin to calling the sinking of the Titanic a minor boating accident. It opens with Billy crawling out of bed, tousling his mop of curly hair, donning a pair of white drawstring pants and pulling on an unspeakably awful pink sleeveless T-shirt. He then proceeds to do things no human being should do in private, much less in front of a camera.
He dances (horribly), pouts his lips, flings what appear to be a pair of pink panties (where did they come from?) into the air, slithers across the floor, rolls onto his back and gyrates his hips like a cross between Gregor Samsa and Shakira in the “La Tortura” video, does some pretty good pole dancing, flaps his arms up and down like a gaudy rooster attempting to defy the laws of nature, and in general does a very bad parody of the aerobics dancers in Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me.”
And more’s the pity, because Squier, while a second tier rocker relegated to opening for bigger and better acts, produced a handful of songs worth a listen. He was certainly peddling the product. The albums prior to 1984’s Signs of Life (which spawned “Rock Me Tonite”) scored big—1981’s Don’t Say No and 1982’s Emotion in Motion went triple and double platinum respectively.
But “Rock Me Tonite” sent Squier’s sales figures straight down the shitter. Both “Rock Me Tonite” and Signs of Life sold well before retroactive mockery took its toll—the highest selling of his subsequent singles stalled at the No. 56 spot, while the best selling of his following LPs sputtered to a stop at the No. 61 spot. His final two albums didn’t chart at all.
Squier’s ignominious decline and fall aside, the problem with 2006’s Absolute Hits is Squier didn’t have any absolute hits or hits period for that matter, unless you count the “The Stroke” and “Rock Me Tonite,” the latter of which ironically became the best-selling song of his career. This is hardly the most egregious example of rock biz false advertising–check out 2001’s The Best of Nick Gilder, whose “Hot Child in the City” remains his one and only hit.
But that title doesn’t much matter; most music listeners will want to own Absolute Hits for such classic rock radio staples as “The Stroke,” “In the Dark,” “Everybody Wants You,” “My Kinda Lover,” and “She’s a Runner,” good songs all. Which leaves listeners with seven songs on their hands, all of which fall firmly into the realm of the unremarkable and they’ve probably never heard. Oh, and you also get live versions of “Everybody Wants You” and “The Stroke.” Missing in action, inexplicably, is “Lonely Is the Night,” which may well hold the distinction of being the biggest Led Zeppelin rip off of all time.
“The Stroke” is a big-bottomed arena rock stomper that brings Queen to mind and actually encourages us to spread “ear pollution.” And this while the world’s ecologists are urging we ear owners to go electric. So far as I can tell the song’s a combination soundtrack to a dance craze/ slap at the music biz a la Pink Floyd’s “Money,” although it could well be a paean to jerking off.
“In the Dark”—which The Village Voice (in what must have been a fit of madness) placed at the No. 6 spot on their list of the 20 best arena rock songs of all time—features a big reverberating guitar riff and an Alan St. John synthesizer figure that brings late era Led Zeppelin to mind. St. John’s synthesizer plays a similar role on the heavy duty “My Kinda Lover,” which tells me Billy had a whole lotta love for Zeptunes like “All My Love.”
“Everybody Wants You” is hard and fast and earns the radio play it gets; more motion than emotion, it features a big, catchy New Wave meets Metal beat and one helluva guitar riff, and Billy never sounded better. “She’s a Runner” is the best of ‘em; on it Squier walks off the arena stage and puts melody over volume, and what you get is a distant cousin of the Rolling Stones’ “Just My Imagination” as sung by John Mellencamp. It sounds unlike any of the other songs on Absolute Hits, and for the life of me I don’t understand why it only reached the No. 75 spot on the U.S. pop charts.
What amazes me most about the video for “Rock Me Tonite” is that it found its way onto MTV in the first place. Was there no one in Billy’s camp to take him aside and say, “Billy, I showed this video to my kids and they nearly hemorrhaged laughing! I’m counting on you to feed those kids. And they’ll starve, Billy! Starve, I tell you!”
And where was Squier’s brain during all of this? Trapped inside that eerie pink elevator to stage left, screaming to be let out? Engaged in secret negotiations with the East German government to bring down the Berlin Wall? Peeking through David Lee Roth’s window, looking to cop his latest look? The smart bet would have been to take a handful of muscle relaxants and stay in bed. Doing the locomotion was Billy Squier’s downfall.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C
