With One Look (The Wildest Dream)

With MTV’s recent demise, Frank has been thinking a lot about the music of the Eighties. 

Going so far as to rewatch music videos from the early days of the cable station as he finds them on YouTube, which led him to stumble upon Rupert Hine and Cy Curnin’s overlooked late-Century gem WITH ONE LOOK (THE WILDEST DREAM). The song, with production by Hine and vocals by The Fixx’s Curnin, feels like a summation of mid-80s pop: slightly punchy, very danceable, with minimal production but all the faders turned up.

First, let’s talk about another MTV staple.

You must understand how the touch of your hand makes my pulse react.

There she was, in front of the camera. In a jean jacket. With a such a fierce haircut that it made Rod Stewart’s do look like your aunt would sport.

Tina Turner didn’t look old; she was charismatic and wise and experienced, more so than the other seemingly fun-loving young women featured on the channel.

But it wouldn’t be her only hit. WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT was soon followed by BETTER BE GOOD TO ME. 

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT isn’t so easy to explain. Its rhythms and chorus aren’t conventional, but BETTER BE GOOD TO ME was more traditional. It may have started out somewhat slow, but then it started to march. You were pulled right in, you were hooked, and then came the chorus… Why can’t you be, good to me?

It wasn’t as if BETTER BE GOOD TO ME was a new song. It was on Holly Knight and Spider’s debut in 1981, but that debut mostly went unheard. (They would go on tour with Tina as her backing singers.)

And this is where Rupert Hine comes in.

Tina Turner was a huge fan of The Fixx. Rupert had just finished producing their 1983 LP, Reach For The Beach. So her manager reached out to Rupert, offering him the gig as one of her songwriting-recording producers. In turn, Rupert brought The Fixx’s guitarist, Jamie West, and their vocalist, Cy Curnin, along to work on the song. Rupert would play bass and percussion on the song. And of course, for the video, the label brought in the king of early-80s music videos, UK filmmaker Brian Grant (SHOCK THE MONKEY, PHYSICAL, POP MUZIK, KIDS OF AMERICA, etc.).

BETTER BE GOOD TO BE GOOD TO ME would go on to be the second of three hits from Tina Turner's album Private Dancer, which sold 20 million copies and established Turner as a solo superstar.

Rupert Hine seemed to be a man who was able to capture the sound of the moment. 

In the 1960s, he was half of the folk duo Rupert & David. Their only notable success was having a young, unknown Jimmy Page strumming guitar on their first single (a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s THE SOUND OF SILENCE). After their breakup, Rupert was increasingly in demand as an independent producer, first with the 1972 single WHO IS THE DOCTOR, featuring Jon Pertwee narrating over the theme music from TV's Doctor Who. He then produced Yvonne Elliman's album Food of Love (1973) and Kevin Ayers's The Confessions of Dr Dream and Other Stories (1974).

But let’s skip ahead to the mid-80s, where we find Hines continuing to toil away in the pop music mines.

It’s easy to see why, in 1985, Director Savage Steve Holland and Warner Bros. pegged Rupert to create the soundtrack for their teen black comedy Better Off Dead. The studio likely wanted soundtrack work that reflected the aesthetics of a John Hughes film - new wave and pop songs that walked the margins of dance music. And there was hope that Rupert could deliver for an early vehicle for John Cusack (who was just seen in SIXTEEN CANDLES). Which WITH ONE LOOK (THE WILDEST DREAM) certainly does, it’s like a Tina Turner hit without Tina’s voice.

Better Off Dead also featured cuts from EG Daily, and Howard Jones' LIKE TO GET TO KNOW YOU WELL, Van Halen’s EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!, Neil Sedaka’s BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO, Paul Simon’s FIFTY WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR LOVER, and Muddy Waters’ MANNISH BOY.

Today’s Rare Recent Arrival 

For the theme song to TV’s massive hit comedy Cheers, the chorus features six of Gary Portnoy's vocals, recorded one on top of the other to create the "group sound" of the hook. It was also decided, by the show’s producers Glen and Les Charles, to maintain the simple feel of Gary’s demo in the television version of the song by keeping the number of instruments to a minimum. The finalized version of the Cheers theme song was recorded on August 13, 1982, at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles, California.

Shortly after the premiere of Cheers, Portnoy went back into the studio to record a longer version of the song that made the U.S. and British pop charts.

The song received an Emmy Award nomination in 1983 for Outstanding Achievement in Music and Lyrics. In a 2011 Readers Poll in Rolling Stone, WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR NAME was voted the best television theme of all time.  Two years later, the editors of TV Guide named the song the greatest TV theme of all time.

Some trivia 

The original opening verse:

Singin' the blues when the Red Sox lose,
it's a crisis in your life.
On the run 'cause all your girlfriends
wanna be your wife.
And the laundry ticket's in the wash.

was changed to:

Makin' your way in the world today
takes everything you've got.
Takin' a break from all your worries
sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?

WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR NAME was Gary Portnoy’s debut single. A year later, he composed and performed EVERY TIME I TURN AROUND, the opening theme to TV’s Punky Brewster, a sit-com centered on an abandoned second grader fending for herself in a deserted Chicago apartment.

See You Soon

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