The One About Flamethrowers and Career Suicide

You ever see one of those loose threads hanging from the tapestry of one of your cherished childhood memories?  The image woven so beautifully in time, but you see that thread and you just can't resist giving it a tug, only to have the whole thing unravel before your eyes?  I've done this so many times, I should know better than to go fooling with the things I loved when I was a kid, because it will ruin them.  Rarely are things as good as you remember.  More often, they're total crap.

Condor Man.  Duck Hunt.  Pitfall.  Cloak and Dagger.  Any Schwarzenegger movie not directed by Jim Cameron.

So just leave 'em alone, right?  Leave them to their remembered beauty.

Tonight was Thunderbird's Global Gala.  This is the party that the school throws for each graduating class, and it is generally a can't miss event.  I didn't leave the dance floor for three hours straight.  On the ride home, all danced out and feeling mellow, I was sitting on the bus next to an Indian classmate of mine who is a huge classic rock fan.  We were discussing great wind-down music for the end of an awesome evening when Billy Squier's "Lonely is the Night" came on the radio.  Billy Squier was huge back in the early 80's, with three albums going platinum from '81-'84.  Thanks in large part to my older brother Slut Rock, I had grown up listening to Squier.  My Indian friend had never heard of him.  So I promised to send him some YouTube links to educate him.  In trolling for songs to send, I stumbled upon what may be the single worst video of all time:  Rock Me Tonight.

It was Squier's most popular single ever based on the pop charts.  Yet some credit the release of the song's video version with the cratering of his career.  As I watched in gape-mouthed horror, I had little doubt they were right.  If Freddy Mercury, Elton John, and George Michael were to write a song and direct the video, they couldn't have conceived of a gayer vision than this.  Which is fine, if your name is Freddy Mercury, Elton John, or George Michael.  This is your milieu.  But Billy was/is a purely hetero rock and roller.  He's married to a German soccer player, for crying out loud.  You'd never guess it from the way this video plays out.

[Fade in to a shirtless Billy lying on a bed, wrapped in satin sheets.  He stands up and pulls on his lace-up jeans and ties the laces.  Slips into Jennifer Beal's ripped t-shirt from Flashdance.  Begins limp-wristed snapping, then skips stage-left to dance in front of the mirror.  Falls to the floor and army crawls back stage-right, but sexy-like.  Gets up, sugar-foots his way around the room, and rips his blouse (slo-mo.)]

Just as you think the ripped shirt will bring some machismo back to his rock persona, he grabs a pink tank top and continues his sugar-footing.  Then, as you feel the hope of rescue slipping out of sight, Billy spies his guitar, and goes off the shred with his friends, and you think they'll save him from this awful video.  But those are foolish thoughts.  Nothing can save this video.  Come to think of it, this is sort of like the gay version of Thriller, when Michael Jackson and his girlfriend are surrounded by the zombies and she clings tight to him for protection, and you think she's safe.  But when she turns around she sees that Michael is a zombie, too.

You think, "Yeah, Billy escaped the satin sheets and dancing mirror!  Now his friends will take him safely back to Rocklandia."  But then surprise!  They're in on it.  And what was a Richard Simmons clip morphs into a full-fledged Wham! video.  The only way it could have been gayer is if Billy had spontaneously combusted in an explosion of glitter at the end.

Watch the whole thing if you can.  I had to look away by about the three-minute mark.  I'm not the type to stand around roasting marshmallows on the smoldering coals of my memories.  I'll be sure to keep my Squier intake in audio form from now on.