80's Music Junkies: Rock

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David Bowie

David Bowie (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and audio engineer.

Active in five decades of rock and roll, and frequently re-inventing his music and image, Bowie is widely regarded as an influential innovator, particularly for his work through the 1970s. Bowie has taken cues from a wide range of fine art, philosophy and literature.

He is also a film and stage actor, music video director and visual artist. In 1981, Queen released "Under Pressure", co-written by and performed with Bowie. The song was a hit and became Bowie's 3rd and Queen's 2nd #1 single. In the same year Bowie made a cameo appearance in the German movie Christiane F. Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, the real-life story of a 13 year-old girl in Berlin who becomes addicted to heroin and ends up prostituting herself. Bowie is credited with "special cooperation" in the credits and his music features prominently in the movie. The soundtrack was released in 1982 and contained a version of "Heroes" sung partially in German.

Bowie then scored his first truly commercial blockbuster with Let's Dance in 1983, a slick dance album co-produced by CHIC's Nile Rodgers. It was a departure from Scary Monsters for which Bowie received a bit of inside criticism; rather than revolting against 1980s dance music, he had in fact joined the scene. The title track went to #1 in the United States and United Kingdom and many now consider it a standard.

The album also featured the singles "Cat People", "Modern Love" and "China Girl”, the latter causing something of a stir due to its suggestive promotional video. "China Girl" was a remake of a song which Bowie co-wrote several years earlier with Iggy Pop, who recorded it for The Idiot. In an interview by Kurt Loder, Bowie revealed that the motivation for recording China Girl was to help out his friend Iggy Pop financially, contributing to Bowie's history of support for musicians he admired. Let's Dance was also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the late Texan guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on the album and was to have supported Bowie on the consequent Serious Moonlight Tour. Vaughan, however, never joined the tour after a pay dispute between Bowie and Vaughan's manager at the time. Vaughan was replaced by Earl Slick. The Simms Brothers Band toured and performed with Bowie at this time. The tour was a huge success, and a single performance at the US festival actually scored Bowie a million dollars on its own.

The 1984 follow-up album Tonight was also dance-oriented, featuring collaborations with Tina Turner and a cover of The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows". Critics labelled it a lazy effort, dashed off by Bowie simply to recapture Let's Dance's chart success. Yet the album bore the transatlantic Top Ten hit "Blue Jean" whose complete video, a 22-minute short film directed by Julien Temple, reflected Bowie's long-standing interest in combining music with drama. This video would win Bowie his only Grammy to date, for Best Short-Form Music Video. It also featured the minor hit "Loving the Alien". The album also has a pair of dance version rewrites of "Neighborhood Threat" and "Tonight", old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop which had originally appeared on Lust for Life.

In 1985, Bowie performed several of his greatest hits at Wembley for Live Aid. At the end of his set, which comprised "Rebel Rebel", "TVC 15", "Modern Love" and "'Heroes'", he introduced a film of the Ethiopian famine, for which the event was raising funds, which was set to the song "Drive" by the Cars. At the event, the video to a fundraising single was premièred – Bowie performing a duet with Mick Jagger on a version of "Dancing in the Street", which quickly went to #1 on release.David Bowie as the Goblin King JarethAlso, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group on the song "This Is Not America", which was featured in the film The Falcon and the Snowman. This song was the centrepiece of the album, a collaboration intended to underline the espionage thriller's central themes of alienation and disaffection.

In 1986 Bowie contributed the theme song to the film Absolute Beginners. The movie was not well reviewed but Bowie maintained for many years that the song, a UK #2 hit, was one of the best and most professional he'd ever written. He also took a role in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth as Jareth, the Goblin King, who steals the baby brother of a girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly), in order to turn him into a goblin. Bowie wrote songs for the film, some of which became singles.

Bowie's final dance album was Never Let Me Down (1987), where he ditched the light dance of his two earlier albums, instead producing harder rock with a dance edge. The album, which 'only' scraped to a UK #6 peak, drew some of the harshest criticism of Bowie's career, condemned by critics as a faceless piece of product and ignored by the public — Bowie himself openly apologized in an interview for the album's quality; defenders of the album maintain that many of its songs are underrated and that Bowie at this time was simply facing the inevitable backlash of an overexposed superstar.

Opening on 30 May 1987, the Glass Spider Tour sought to market the album; visiting fifteen countries and produced eighty-six performances, as well as nine promotional press shows. Musicians included: Carlos Alomar (guitar), Peter Frampton (lead guitar), Carmine Rojas (bass), Alan Childs (drums), Erdal Kizilcay (keyboards, trumpet, congas, violin) and Richard Cottle (keyboards, saxophone). Dancers included: Melissa Hurley, Viktor Manoel, Constance Marie, Craig Allen Rothwell (aka Spazz Attack), and Stephen Nichols.

Some critics called it overproduced and claimed that it was pandering to then-current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancers. However, fans that saw the shows from the Glass Spider Tour were treated to many of Bowie's classics. In August of 1988, Bowie portrayed Pontius Pilate in the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ.

Never Let Me Down is an album by David Bowie, released April 1987. It drew some of the harshest criticism of Bowie's career, condemned by critics as a faceless piece of product and ignored by the public—Bowie himself openly apologised in an interview for the album being so bad. However, defenders of the album maintain that many of its songs are underrated and that Bowie at this time was simply facing the inevitable backlash of an overexposed superstar. Featuring more of Bowie's own compositions, the album certainly maintained a greater degree of originality than its predecessor, Tonight. Tracks from Never Let Me Down formed the backbone of Bowie's highly theatrical Glass Spider world tour in 1987.

Tonight is a 1984 album by David Bowie, featuring collaborations with Tina Turner and a cover of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows". Critics slammed it as a lazy effort, dashed off by Bowie simply to recapture Let's Dance's chart success. Yet the album bore the Top 10 hit "Blue Jean" whose long-form video, a 22-minute short film directed by Julien Temple, reflected Bowie's long-standing interest in combining music with drama. It also featured the minor hit "Loving the Alien", a deep song about religious conflict and one of the few songs from Tonight to later return to Bowie's stage repetoire. The album also has a pair of dance version rewrites of "Neighbourhood Threat" and "Tonight", old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop, both of which originally appeared on Lust for Life, possibly to recreate the success of his earlier rewrite, "China Girl".

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T'Pau - The Essential 80s Rock

T'Pau was a late-1980s rock group led by singer Carol Decker. They had a string of Top 40 hits in the UK, and several hits in the United States and Europe.

T'Pau formed in 1986 and took their name from a Star Trek character. Their debut single and first hit was the 1987 release Heart and Soul. Initially a flop in the UK, it first became a hit in the U.S. Billboard charts, reaching #4, after being featured on a Levi's jeans advert, it repeated the feat in the UK Singles Chart some months later. The following year, the band had their biggest hit with the ballad, China in Your Hand, which spent five weeks at Number 1 in the UK chart, and also claimed the top slot in several European countries, although oddly the song made little impact on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

They had a number of smaller hits which made it to at least the UK Top 40, including the singles Valentine, Sex Talk (a new recording of early flop single Intimate Strangers), I Will Be With You, and Secret Garden. Their 1987 album Bridge Of Spies (the album was called T'Pau in the U.S.) was a best seller and won several British record industry awards.

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Heart - The Essential 80s Rock

Heart is an American rock band which came out of Newport High School in Bellevue, Washington. Going through several line-up changes, the only constant members of the group are sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. The group's music during the 1970s was influenced by hard rock groups like Led Zeppelin, and folk music. In the 1980s, they became a mainstream rock act, before dropping out of the public consciousness in the late 1990s.

The Wilson sisters grew up in Southern California and Taiwan before their Marine Corps father retired to the Seattle suburbs. After attending college they returned to Seattle, with Nancy working as a folksinger and Ann joining a hitherto-all-male local group in 1970. (This group was formed in 1963 by Steve Fossen and Roger and Mike Fisher as the Army. They later changed their name to White Heart, shortened to Heart in 1974.) Upon joining, Ann became Mike Fisher's girlfriend, and when Nancy joined in 1974, she became involved with Fisher's brother, lead guitarist Roger.

The band moved to Canada. After many one-nighters around their new home of Vancouver, they attracted the attention of Mushroom Records in 1975, a Vancouver-based label run by Shelly Siegel. He had them cut Dreamboat Annie, which upon release in Canada sold 30,000 copies, no doubt benefiting from CRTC Canadian content regulations. In the US Siegel released the album first in Seattle, where it quickly sold another 25,000. With two hit singles - "Crazy on You" (#35, 1976) and "Magic Man" (#9, 1976), - Dreamboat Annie eventually sold over a million copies. By early 1977, Heart had broken its contract with Mushroom Records and signed with CBS' subsidiary Portrait, a move that resulted in a prolonged legal battle with Siegel. In retaliation, he released the partly completed Magazine at the same time that Portrait released Little Queen. A Seattle court ruled that Mushroom had to recall Magazine so that the group could re-mix several tracks and re-do vocals before re-releasing the disc. (They had wanted the album taken off the market completely.)

Little Queen, with the hit "Barracuda" (#11, 1977), became Heart's second million-seller; Magazine and the double-platinum Dog and Butterfly followed suit in 1978. During sessions for Bebe Le Strange the Wilson-Fisher liaison ended. Roger Fisher formed his own band in the Seattle area. Howard Lesse and Nancy took up guitar slack, and her childhood friend Sue Ennis helped out on song collaborations. The group hit the road for a 77-city tour to support Bebe Le Strange, and then returned to make Private Audition in 1982.

That album and the following year's Passionworks (featuring new bassist Mark Andes {Spirit, Jo Jo Gunne}, and drummer Denny Carmassi {Gamma}) failed to go gold, putting Heart at a career crossroads. But the group’s first album for Capitol, simply titled Heart (#1, 1985) sold five million copies on the strength of four Top-10 hits: "What About Love?" (#10, 1985), "Never" (#4, 1985), "These Dreams" (#1, 1986), and "Nothin' at All" (#10, 1986). By that time the group had abandoned their earlier hard-rock aspirations to make slick radio-friendly pop. In June 1986, Nancy Wilson married journalist, screenwriter, and director Cameron Crowe; she made a cameo appearance in his movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982. Bad Animals (#2, 1987), too, contained a chart-topper, in the power ballad "Alone", as well as "Who Will You Run To?" (#7, 1987), and "There's the Girl" (#12, 1987). In 1989, Ann Wilson and Cheap Trick's Robin Zander had a #6 hit with their duet, "Surrender to Me." Brigade (#3, 1990) became Heart's sixth multi-platinum LP and added three more Top-25 hits to its catalogue, the most notable of which was All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You.

Bad Animals was an album released in 1987 by the band Heart. The album was a hit, scoring triple platinum sales, but failed to capture the same success as their previous record. It contained the hit number one single "Alone."

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Bon Jovi - Essential 80s Rock

Bon Jovi is a Hard rock band originating from New Jersey. Fronted by lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi, the group originally achieved large-scale success in the 1980s as a hair band.

Jon Bon Jovi began to play piano and guitar at thirteen, taking lessons from his neighbour, Al Perinello. At that same age, Bon Jovi founded his first band, called Raze. Jon enrolled in an all-boys Catholic school St. Joseph High School in Metuchen, New Jersey but left after pleading his case to his parents; he wanted to attend public school. He went on to attend Sayreville War Memorial High School. At sixteen, Bon Jovi met David Bryan (born David Bryan Rashbaum) and founded a 12-piece cover band with him named Atlantic City Expressway. They played at New Jersey clubs, even though they were minors. Still in his teens, Bon Jovi played in the band John Bongiovi and the Wild Ones, playing New Jersey clubs like "The Fast Lane" and opening for known acts in the area.

By the summer of 1982, out of school and working part-time, one of his jobs being in a shoe store, Jon took a job at the Power Station Studios, a Manhattan recording facility where his cousin, Tony Bongiovi(the authentic spelling), was the co-owner.Jon made several demos (including one produced by Billy Squier) and sent them out to many record companies, but failed to make an impact.In 1983, Bon Jovi visited the local radio station WAPP 103.5FM "The Apple" in Lake Success, New York. He spoke directly to the D.J., Chip Hobart, who suggested Bon Jovi let WAPP include the song "Runaway" on a compilation album of local home-grown talent. Bon Jovi was reluctant but eventually gave them the song on which Bon Jovi had used studio musicians to play on the track "Runaway" (which was written in 1980). The studio musicians who helped record "Runaway" were known as "The All Star Review." They were:

Dave Sabo (guitar)
Tim Pierce (guitar)
Roy Bittan (keyboards)
Frankie LaRocka (drums)
Hugh McDonald (bass)

The song began to get airplay in the New York metro area, and then other sister stations in major markets began to play the song. Suddenly, all the record label A&R execs who had passed on the demo they had heard were scrambling to find out who this unsigned artist was. WAPP was doing showcases -- Bon Jovi now desperately needed a band. The soon-to-be-members of the band had crossed paths in their earlier days, but the current line-up didn't come together until March of 1983. Bon Jovi gave David Bryan a call, who in turn called bassist Alec John Such and experienced drummer Tico Torres.

Tapped to play lead guitar was Bon Jovi's neighbour, Dave Sabo (a.k.a. The Snake), who would later form the group Skid Row. One night after a show, Richie Sambora found Bon Jovi backstage and told him that he should be the guitarist. Bon Jovi wrote him off and didn't think much of it but told him to learn the material and show up for rehearsal. Sambora was early and knew the material and Bon Jovi was impressed; in that moment, Sambora became the band's lead guitarist and a musical dynamic duo was born.

Before joining the group, Sambora had toured with Joe Cocker, played with a group called Mercy and had just been called up to audition for Kiss. He also played on the album Lessons with the band Message, which was re-released on CD through Long Island Records in 1995. Message was originally signed to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song Records label, although the album was never released.Tico Torres was also an experienced musician, having recorded with Miles Davis and playing live with Phantom's Opera, The Marvelettes, and Chuck Berry. He had played on 26 records and had recently recorded with Franke and the Knockouts (a Jersey band with hit singles in the early 1980s).

David Bryan was a natural recruit. He had quit the band he and Bon Jovi founded and went to college for pre-med studies. While in college, he realized he wanted to pursue music full-time, eventually being accepted to Juilliard School, the prestigious New York music school. When Bon Jovi called his friend and said he was putting together a band and a record deal looked like it was about to become a reality, Bryan followed Bon Jovi's lead.

The Bon Jovi line-up, which would not change for a decade, was:

Jon Bon Jovi (lead vocals, rhythm guitar)
Richie Sambora (lead guitar, backing vocals)
David Bryan (keyboard, backing vocals)
Tico Torres (drums, percussion)
Alec John Such (bass guitar, backing vocals)

Slippery When Wet is the third studio album by Bon Jovi released on August 18, 1986 (see 1986 in music). It is the band's most commercially successful album, selling over 12 million copies in the U.S. Today it stands as one of the six best selling hard rock albums ever, and spawned two #1 singles, "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "Livin' on a Prayer". The third single "Wanted Dead or Alive" was a Top 10 hit, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The fourth single, "Never Say Goodbye", the album's signature ballad, reached #28 on the strength of airplay alone. Slippery When Wet stayed at #1 for 15 weeks, the record for a hard rock album on the Billboard 200. The album is the band's biggest selling album in the USA and the world. The album has sold over 27 million albums worldwide.

New Jersey was an immediate success, debuting at #1 in the United States and across the world. It shipped 2 million copies straight out of the gates in the U.S. alone. Additionally, it spawned two #1 singles, "Bad Medicine" and the ballad "I'll Be There For You", both of which ran in excess of five minutes, showing how powerful a force Bon Jovi became in the music industry. The album's three other singles ("Born to Be My Baby", "Lay Your Hands On Me", and "Living in Sin") reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to their success in the states, the band's singles all made a significant impact worldwide, more so than in the past, a trend which would continue for Bon Jovi well into the 21st Century.

New Jersey holds the record for the rock album to spawn the most Top 10 singles, with five singles charting on the Top 10 of the US Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. No other hard rock album has since equalled or broken this feat.

"New Jersey" in charts: No.1 in CNN Worldbeat, Europe, USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Brazil, Mexico. No.2 in Japan. RIAA: 7x platinum BPI: 2x platinum CRIA: 5x platinum

"Bad Medicine" was featured in the 2001 film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, in the scene where Jay (Jason Mewes) first sees Justice (Shannon Elizabeth) and fantasizes about her.

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