Episode 42: Right Song, Wrong Timing | MTV’s Almost Superstars

In the early days of MTV, one unforgettable music video could make a band look like the next superstar. In this episode of Who Ordered the Pie?, we revisit five 1980s bands that had the songs, the talent, the image, and the MTV exposure to become household names, but somehow never reached the level everyone expected.

We dig into the stories behind Big Country’s “In a Big Country,” Haircut One Hundred’s “Love Plus One,” Scandal’s “The Warrior,” The Motels’ “Only the Lonely,” and The Hooters’ “And We Danced.”

Why didn’t Big Country’s massive American breakthrough last? What caused Haircut One Hundred to fall apart just as they were becoming stars? Why did Patty Smyth hate Scandal’s iconic “The Warrior” video, and what happened when Eddie Van Halen asked her to join Van Halen? What was really happening in Martha Davis’s life when The Motels recorded “Only the Lonely”? And how did The Hooters go from helping Cyndi Lauper create “She’s So Unusual” to opening the Philadelphia stage of Live Aid?

It’s another installment of our ongoing Right Song, Wrong Timing series, exploring the music history, MTV videos, chart success, behind-the-scenes stories, and bad timing that turned five potential 1980s superstars into some of the decade’s greatest what-ifs.

And because every Who Ordered the Pie? episode deserves something in your glass, we’re pairing this one with The Video Star, our tropical twist on the Pornstar Martini.

Here’s to loud riffs, quiet sips, and the stories in between.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:00

There was a time when one great MTV video could make you believe that you'd just discovered the next superstar. You'd see a band every afternoon, their song was everywhere, and the video was unforgettable. And it seemed inevitable that they'd be selling millions of records for years to come. Some did. Others came heartbreakingly close. And that's where we're headed today with another installment of our ongoing series, Right Song, Wrong Timing. This time we're going back to the early days of MTV to investigate five songs and five bands that seemed destined for something much bigger. Once again, today we're not talking about one hit wonders. These are all bands that had the songs, the talent, the image, and the MTV exposure to become household names. For a moment, they looked unstoppable. Then something happened. The bands fell apart, success came too quickly, the music industry changed, or maybe the timing was simply wrong. Welcome back to Who Ordered the Pie, the podcast for music history, the stories behind the songs, and Little Something in Your Glass all come together. Once again, this is Christopher. Today we're popping in the VHS and going back to a time when MTV could turn a promising new band into a superstar almost overnight, and find out why it never quite happened for some of these. These are MTV's almost superstars. The pounding drums, that unmistakable Stuart Anderson shout, and immediately the energy starts building. It's the kind of opening that gets you out of your chair before the song has even really started. The drums drive it forward, the adrenaline builds, and then those guitars, so cool. And if you were watching MTV in 1983, this was one of those videos that made you stop changing channels. The landscapes, the band's unmistakable look, and those guitars, they almost sounded like bagpipes at times. Except they weren't trying to get that sound. That's one of the biggest misconceptions about Big Country. Stuart Adamson and guitarist Bruce Watson weren't deliberately trying to imitate bagpipes. They were trying to get away from that blues-bass guitar playing that they had heard in countless other bands doing. Watson later said that he described their approach as something closer to electric folk. They used harmonizers, effects, and an ebo to create that long melodic guitar line. The result gave Big Country something every new band dreams about an identity. Within seconds, you knew it was them. Producer Steven Lillywhite knew it too. He had already worked with artists like U2, Peter Gabriel, and Ecstasy. And instead of smoothing out Big Country's unusual sound, he encouraged it. Lillywhite later recalled that the guitar sound that they developed while working on Fields of Fire actually helped inspire Adamson to write in a big country. That sound didn't just define the song, it helped create it. And America responded. In a big country reached number 17 on the Billboard High 100 and number 3 on the Billboard's Rock Chart. The debut album, The Crossing, reached number 20 and eventually went platinum in the United States. And suddenly, Big Country looked like another big arena band. But underneath that huge, uplifting sound was something more personal. Admiral Country wasn't simply a song about Scotland. It was about hope, about holding on to yourself when life gets difficult, and believing that there's still something better beyond the horizon. And maybe that's why it still connects more than 40 years later. It sounds triumphant even when the emotions underneath it aren't. Bruce Watson later acknowledged that those subjects didn't necessarily translate as easily to American audiences. Big Country hadn't suddenly become a worse band, they just became a more specific one, and America began to move on. But there's still one more story about Big Country's American breakthrough, and this one sounds like something out of a Martin Scorsese film. Years later, the band's manager, Alan Edwards, made an extraordinary claim. He said breaking a British band in America wasn't always just about making a great record. Sometimes it was about who got paid. According to Edwards, he was instructed to deliver a suitcase containing $70,000 in cash to a mafia-connected radio promoter in Philadelphia. And this would help secure airplay and chart position for in a big country. He even claimed that he was asked what chart position he wanted. And when the Billboard chart next appeared, Edwards said that the record landed almost exactly where he'd requested. Now, as I'm sure you'd think, that story has never been independently verified, so we can't treat it as established fact. But if Edward's account is accurate, it offers a fascinating glimpse into just how murky record promoting was back in the early 80s. And it tells us something else. People inside the music business believed big country was worth betting on. They thought they had the next superstar, and for a while, it looked like they were. The first big country. Standing in the middle of all that was Nick Haywood. He had the voice, he wrote the songs, and he understood something that was becoming increasingly important by the early 80s. Image mattered. Before the band took off, Nick had worked at a design agency. He carried around a portfolio filled with photographs of Haircut 100 and ideas for their artwork because he didn't want somebody else deciding what the band should look like. Then MTV arrived, and suddenly that instinct became incredibly valuable. Their music was different too. While synthesizers were taking over pop, Haircut 100 built their song around rhythm. Pop, funk, jazz, Latin percussion, and those bright, clean guitars. Then came the hits. Love Plus One went to number three. Favorite shirts, Boy Meets Girl, reached number four in Britain, Fantastic Day reached number nine, and Nobody's Fool gave them yet another top ten hit. Four top ten singles before they'd released a second album.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yes, I maybe.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

There's another thing I love about Love Plus One. The lyrics don't necessarily tell a conventional story. Nick was influenced by people like David Bowie and Mark Bolin, and loved the idea that lyrics don't always have to make literal sense. Sometimes an image was enough, a feeling was enough. And that's how Love Plus One still works. You don't have to understand every line, you just understand exactly how it feels. By 1982, Haircut 100 weren't simply successful back home. They were becoming a phenomenon. Fans showed up outside the apartment where they lived, sometimes beginning at 7 in the morning. And on more than one occasion, the fire department reportedly had to rescue fans who had gotten themselves stuck in the railing outside. Everything about them looked like it was the beginning of a very long career. But Haircut 100 were already running out of time. Pelican West came out in February 1982. It exploded, and the record company wanted another album by Christmas, the same year. Meanwhile, Haircut 100 were touring Britain, Europe, Japan, Canada, and America, doing television, interviews, promotion, another single, another album, and most of the responsibility for writing these songs rested on Nick Hayward. He was the singer, the public figure, the primary songwriter. And he was only 20 years old. Eventually, something gave. Nick began missing recording sessions. He was struggling badly with his mental health, and at a time when depression wasn't something young stars were encouraged to talk about. But the machine kept moving, the label wanted songs, and the band had commitments. The second label still had to be finished. Nick became increasingly disconnected from the others. Then he arrived at a rehearsal and found Haircut 100 working on songs without him. Percussionist Mark Fox was singing. For Nick, the message was clear. The sessions they'd started together were abandoned, leaving behind a collection of unfinished songs that never became the follow-up everyone was expecting. And that's where this story splits in two. Nick took some of the material with him. One of those songs was Whistled Down the Wind. He re-recorded it as a solo artist, released it as his first solo single, and it became a hit. It came out in 1984 and failed to chart. Soon afterward, Haircut 100 broke up, which makes you wonder what might have happened if the original six members had simply been given more time because they hadn't run out of songs, they hadn't run out of talent, they had simply been pushed incredibly hard in an incredibly short amount of time. Looking back years later, Nick summed it up better than anyone. He said that they should have been grown up enough inside and outside the band to take their foot off the accelerator. Instead, as he put it, greed, speed, and vanity meant we drove into a brick wall. And that's exactly what happened. Haircut 100 didn't slowly fade away. They went from a number two debut album and four top ten singles to a band so fractured that the lead singer was out in less than a year. The world was still discovering Haircut 100, just as the band itself was coming apart. The Warrior by Scandal doesn't exactly ease its way into the room. It kicks the door open. That huge opening drum, the guitars come crashing in, and then Patty Smythe hits that first power note, and suddenly the whole thing is off and running.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

It's so hard.

SPEAKER_03 13:00

The moment she starts singing, you understand why so many people thought Patty Smythe was about to become one of Rock's biggest stars. She had the voice, the attitude, and thanks to MTV, she already had an audience. Because The Warrior wasn't Scandal's breakthrough, it was their breakthrough all over again. Two years earlier, Goodbye to You had introduced millions of MTV viewers to the band. Then came another hit, another MTV video. And I recommend you go back and take a look at that video because you're gonna spot a young guitarist who was still trying to make a name for himself in it, John Bon Jovi. He wasn't a member of Scandal, he was just a friend of the keyboardist Benji King and was hanging out with them. So when Scandal made the video, John ended up playing one of the guitars, well, my mean one of the guitars. Just another young musician in somebody else's MTV video. Not for long though, because while Scandal was about to have their biggest hit, John Bon Jovi was about to become one of the biggest stars of the decade. By 1984, Scandal looked ready to make the same leap. Producer Mike Chapman came aboard for their first full-length album. Chapman had already worked with artists like Blondie, The Knack, and Pat Benatar. And he brought Patty a song written by two people who already knew something about hits. Holly Knight, who became one of the defining songwriters in the 1980s, writing songs like Love is a Battlefield, Better Be Good to Me, and Invincible. Nick Gilder already had a number one hit of his own, Hot Child in the City. Together, Knight and Gilder wrote The Warrior specifically for Patty's Mike. Then Nick Gilder changed his mind. He decided the song was too good to give away. He wanted to keep it himself. Mike Chapman stepped in and insisted the song belonged to Patty. Fortunately, he won the argument. And when Chapman played the song for Patty, she knew. She later remembered saying, I want to do it. Good decision. The warrior reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on Billboard's Rock Chart. That album went platinum. And this was 1984, one of the most ridiculously competitive years that pop music had ever seen. Scandal still managed to break into the top 10. This should have been the beginning. Instead, it was almost the end, because while The Warrior was climbing the charts, Scandal was coming apart. And Capitol Records made a decision that revealed exactly where they thought the future was. The album wasn't credited simply to Scandal, like the previous album. It became Scandal featuring Patty Smythe. That's a very different message. The label wasn't just selling the band anymore, it was selling Patty. And apparently, Columbia wasn't the only one who saw superstar potential in Patty, because Eddie Van Halen had taken notice too, and not casually. Eddie became a huge admirer of Patty's voice. He started showing up around Scandal. He joined them on stage. And at one point, Eddie and his wife Valerie Bertinelli even spent several days traveling with the band on their tour bus. Eddie clearly saw something in Patty, and that David Lee Roth left Van Halen. Suddenly, one of the biggest rock bands in the world needed a lead singer. And Eddie knew exactly who he wanted: Patty Smythe. He offered her the job. Lead singer Van Halen. Think about that for a second. At the same exact moment the scandal's falling apart, Eddie Van Halen was looking at Patty Smythe and thinking, that's the voice I want fronting my band. But the timing couldn't have been worse. Patty was eight months pregnant, and she didn't want to move from New York to Los Angeles. And she knew enough about Van Halen to wonder whether she really wanted to step inside that world, the drinking, the fighting, the volatility. So Patty said no. Sammy Hagar eventually got the job and Van Halen went on to become even bigger. Patty later admitted that for a long time she regretted turning Eddie down. She looked back and understood why she'd made the decision. As she put it, timing is everything. And if there were ever a phrase that belonged to this episode, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

I feel the bee.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

Then came the video. Patty thought they were making something fun, something a little cartoonish. Then she saw the finished product. The wild costumes, the theatrical sets, and all that makeup. Patty later said she was crestfallen. She thought it looked like an off-Broadway production to cats, and she hated it. She hated the video so much that she begged the label not to release it. She even offered to make another one. They said no. And then MTV played the hell out of it. That's the strange irony of the warrior. The video Patty hated became one of the most recognizable images of her career. And at the same time, even the album cover is presenting Patty in this heavily stylized large-in-life image. The real Patty Smythe was becoming harder to separate from The Warrior. And while all that was happening, Scandal itself was disappearing. Metaphorically, the band was literally losing members. Internal tension and battles with the record company had been building. And by the time Scandal went on their Warrior tour, Patty Smythe and guitarist Keith Mack were reportedly the only members left in the original lineup. The album goes platinum, the single reaches number seven, MTV is playing the video constantly, and the band that made it barely exists anymore. They finished a tour and then Scandal finally broke up. Patty later explained that the real fracture had been between her and guitarist and songwriter Zach Smith, who had originally formed the band. She continued working with Mark Keith, but Scandal, as we knew it, was finished. And maybe Patty Smith's three words about turning Dan Andy Van Halen do sum up the whole story. Timing is everything. Just as the warrior was becoming the biggest hit of their career, Scandal was coming apart. And at the same time, Eddie Van Halen was offering Patty Smythe the chance to front one of the biggest rock bands in the world. It was an extraordinary opportunity that arrived when she was eight months pregnant and in absolutely no position to turn her life upside down. The biggest moments in Scandal's career, and possibly the biggest opportunity of Patty's, arrived at almost exactly the same time. And somehow, neither one became the beginning everybody might have expected. Right song, wrong timing. More than 40 years later, Only the Lonely still feels timeless, moody, mysterious. And when Martha Davis starts singing, suddenly you're completely inside her world. The motels had already released two albums by the time that they began working on All For One. They had earned critical attention, they had built a following, but the big hit hadn't happened. Then Capitol Records brought in producer Val Garray. Gareth was coming off an incredible run, including Kim Carnes's massive album, Mistaken Identity, and Betty Davis Eyes.