Dave Stewart

505. Irene Cara – Fame (1982)

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The Intro

Irene Cara’s infectious theme to the musical Fame failed to chart in the UK when released in the summer of 1980 as a preview to the forthcoming film. However, the movie became huge, and the title track won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Two years later, the spin-off TV series was so popular in the UK, a re-release saw the song become top of the pops.

Before

The film had been conceived by producer David De Silva in 1976, inspired by A Chorus Line. He hired Christopher Gore to write a film about the lives of ambitious students at the real-life High School of Performing Arts, based in Manhattan, New York City. It was directed by Alan Parker, an English director who had worked on some of the most memorable UK television advertisements of all time, before making his first movie, Bugsy Malone, in 1976. He named the film after David Bowie’s 1975 song. Taking the lead role of Coco Hernandez was a young singer and actress called Irene Cara, who Parker was initially sceptical of.

Irene Cara Escalera was born on 18 March 1959 in the Bronx. Her father was Puerto Rican and her mother was Cuban. She began dance lessons as a five-year-old and was only eight when she recorded her first album, Ésta es Irene. She also appeared on The Tonight Show.

As a teen in the 70s she attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and went on to appear in Broadway shows, before making the move into TV. Critical acclaim came with her role in the mini-series Roots: The Next Generations in 1976. She was originally cast in Fame as a dancer, but when De Silva, co-producer Alan Marshall and Gore heard her voice, they made her character a singer.

The musical supervisor on Fame was Michael Gore, brother of Lesley Gore, who sang the original hit version of It’s My Party – a cover of which became a UK number 1 for Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin in 1981. Gore worked with Dean Pitchford on the songs for the movie, and when he played him the chorus melody for the theme, Pitchford instantly replied ‘Fame! I’m gonna live forever!’ However, the rest of the theme came less easily, and it took a month to write.

It made perfect sense to write the song from the stardom-hungry Hernandez’s perspective, so Cara sang the funky title track. Among the backing singers was Luther Vandross, who was yet to become a star, but had provided backing vocals on Bowie’s soul album Young Americans – which featured Bowie’s Fame. It was Vandross that came up with the winning idea to chant ‘Remember’ over and over, as well as contributing other ideas.

The title track was originally released in the UK in June 1980, the same month as the film hit US cinemas (it hit UK cinemas the following month). The single sank and initially the critical response to the film was mixed, but it became a box office hit, and then came the accolades. Out of six Oscar nominations in 1981, Fame won Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Another song from the film – Out Here on My Own – had also been nominated.

Two years on from the film, a TV series sharing its name began on NBC in the US and BBC One in the UK. Many of the cast returned – but Cara had declined, with her role taken by Erica Gimpel, who sang the theme tune too. Nonetheless, it was Cara’s version that was rereleased and subsequently became number 1.

Review

I was too young to want anything to do with Fame at the time, and to be honest, even from a young age I would recoil a bit at stage show children and teenagers showing off. And there was certainly a lot of it about back then. So it’s hard to judge the theme song on its own merits.

However, I’ve always appreciated it’s very good at what it does – e.g., it makes you want to fly – high – and, as John Shuttleworth would say, ‘punch the air’. And listening with a fresh pair of ears, it’s great really. Slickly produced, a passionate vocal from Cara, and well arranged too – props to Vandross, who was spot on in inventing the ‘remember’ hook. I still don’t think I’d ever choose to listen to it, but I wouldn’t complain if I heard it for the millionth time, either.

To promote the re-release, Cara starred in a new video, with scenes filmed mainly on and around Broadway. It’s interspersed with clips from the film. Considering it coincided with the TV series, which didn’t feature Cara, this may have been rather confusing to some. It did the job though, and Cara on top of a taxi is an iconic 80s pop moment.

After

Fame was the third bestselling song in the UK of 1982. Surprisingly, neither the original release nor the 1982 single did the same feat in the US, peaking at number four only.

Cara had continued to release music and star in TV and films after the success of Fame, with mixed results. Several series she hoped to star in failed to get picked up, and her album Anyone Can Dream, released in 1982, was a commercial failure.

In early 1983 she was working on a follow-up when she was contacted by Paramount Pictures to provide lyrics for the soundtrack of a new film called Flashdance. Ironically, Giorgio Moroder, the genius producer behind the project, had approached Cara after Fame, but she declined as she didn’t want to be compared to Donna Summer, who of course was best known for I Feel Love, her number 1 collaboration with Moroder.

Moroder had tasked his session drummer Keith Forsey, who played on I Feel Love, to write the lyrics to what would be the title track to the new film, which starred Jennifer Beals as a dancer who dreams of becoming a professional ballerina. Forsey had stalled, so he and Cara set to work. Having been shown the film’s final scene, in which Beals auditions in front of a panel of judges, they were inspired to write a euphoric song about achieving your dreams through dancing. Not too far removed from Fame, then, but with a more modern sound, thanks to Moroder. Cara sang Flashdance… What a Feeling, and it became number 1 in the US and around the world – although it was held off the top spot in the UK by Rod Stewart’s Baby Jane.

Cara sang Flashdance… What a Feeling, and it became number 1 in the US and around the world – although it was held off the top spot in the UK by Rod Stewart’s Baby Jane. Nonetheless, the single also won many accolades. She shared the Academy Award for Best Original Song with Moroder and Forsey, becoming the first black woman to win an Oscar in a non-acting category and the youngest to receive an Oscar for songwriting.

Cara never charted in the UK again, though she had a few more US hits. Her next album What a Feelin’ continued her collaboration with Moroder, and its single Why Me? reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. She starred as herself in the 1983 comedy movie DC Cab, and her song The Dream (Hold On To Your Dream), which played out over the end credits, reached 37. Her final US hit, Breakdance, peaked at number eight in 1984.

She continued to act, appearing in films including City Heat (1984), Certain Fury (1985) and Busted Up (1986). The following year she released the LP Carasmatic.

In the 90s, Cara starred in a touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar, released Eurodance singles and worked as a backing vocalist. 1993 saw her awarded $1.5 million from her 1985 lawsuit in which she claimed royalties from Flashdance and her first two solo LPs had been withheld from her. She later claimed this stopped record labels from working with her.

Cara appeared in the 2005 NBC TV series Hit Me Baby, One More Time, and in 2011 she released her last album, Irene Cara Presents Hot Caramel

The Outro

Cara died of arteriosclerosis and hypertensive heart disease on 25 November 2022, aged 63.

The Info

Written by

Michael Gore & Dean Mitford

Producer

Michael Gore

Weeks at number 1

3 (17 July-6 August)

Trivia

Births

18 July: Actor Andre Alexander
28 July: Footballer Michael Rose
30 July: Cricketer James Anderson
6 August: Actor Karl Davies

Deaths

19 July: Actor John Harvey
21 July: Bible translator John Bertram Phillips
22 July: Anti-apartheid activist Sir Robert Birley
27 July: Olympic swimmer Hilda James/Olympic runner Jack Powell
29 July: Engineer Maysie Chalmers/Army general Sir Richard Gale
2 August: Cathleen Nesbitt
3 August: Art historian David Carritt
5 August: Orthopaedic surgeon Sir John Charnley

Meanwhile…

19 July: Home Secretary William Whitelaw announces that the Queen’s bodyguard, Michael Trestrail, has resigned from the Metropolitan Police Service over a relationship with a male prostitute.

20 July: The Provisional IRA detonates two bombs during British military ceremonies in Hyde Park and Regents Park, Central London. Eight soldiers are killed, 47 people are wounded, and seven horses die.

21 July: The Falklands War Royal Navy flagship HMS Hermes returns home to Portsmouth to a hero’s welcome.

22 July: Production of the Ford Cortina ends after 20 years and five generations.
Also on this day, the exclusion zone around the Falklands is lifted, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rejects calls in parliament for a return of the death penalty for terrorist murder.

23 July: A coroner’s jury returns the verdict of suicide on Roberto Calvi.

1 August: The Conservative government creates Britoil as the privatised successor to the British National Oil Corporation.

3 August: The Queen Elizabeth 2 returns to civilian use.

4 August: The first child of The Prince and Princess of Wales is christened William Arthur Philip Louis.

6 August: The Kessock Bridge in Inverness is opened by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

487. Dave Stewart With Barbara Gaskin – It’s My Party (1981)

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The Intro

Look for this song anywhere online and the first thing you’ll read is ‘No, not that Dave Stewart’. Nonetheless this Dave Stewart, with Barbara Haskin’s version of the 60s teen classic It’s My Party by Lesley Gore is an interesting curio in the history of number 1s.

Before

It’s My Party had been written in 1962. The original was penned by John Gluck, Wally Gold and Herb Weiner, who were staff writers at Aaron Schroeder Music. However, the lyrics actually came from Seymour Gottlieb, a freelance songwriter, who had worked with Weiner (oo-er). He had been inspired by his daughter Judy’s tears over her grandparents being invited to her 16th birthday party.

The writers took the song to Barbara Jean English, the receptionist at their firm, who cut the demo version. However, Musicor, the label owned by Schroeder, wasn’t interested.

It could have, potentially, become Helen Shapiro’s third number 1 single. The young British star, who had scored two chart-toppers with You Don’t Know and Walkin’ Back to Happiness in 1961, recorded a version for her Helen in Nashville LP in 1963. Unfortunately for her, she was beaten to the punch by 16-year-old US singer Gore. Her version, produced by the legendary Quincy Jones, was huge and is rightly remembered as a pop great from the early 60s, becoming number 1 in many countries – but, surprisingly, not in the UK, where it peaked at nine.

Stewart, who was born in Waterloo, London on 30 December 1950, would have been 12 at the time. He was still at school when he joined his first band. The Outsiders were a local covers band. From there, he joined Uriel as their organist at the age of 17, a group that also featured future progressive rock icon Steve Hillage. When university called for Hillage, Uriel continued as a trio, renamed as Egg. They recorded two albums for Decca, and stayed on good terms with Hillage, who briefly rejoined them in 1969 to record together under the name Arzachel.

Egg broke up (hahaha) in 1973, and Stewart joined upcoming Canterbury progressive rock band Hatfield and the North. When they split two years later, Stewart briefly joined Hillage’s Gong before forming National Health, which largely consisted of former Hatfield and the North bandmates. When National Health disbanded in 1980, Stewart quickly formed Rapid Eye Movement (not to be confused with the far better known and longer-lasting REM in the US).

In 1981, Stewart moved in a different direction, becoming interested in new, electronically led versions of classic pop tunes. The first of these was a cover of Jimmy Ruffin’s Motown classic What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, featuring vocals by former member of The Zombies, Colin Blunstone. Stewart had clearly hit upon a good idea, but I’d bet even he didn’t think his next single would make it all the way to number 1. This time around, he enlisted Gaskin, who had provided backing vocals in Hatfield and the North.

Gaskin, born 5 June 1950, was actually born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. In 1969 she moved to Canterbury to study at university, but quickly fell into the Canterbury scene, becoming the singer in folk-rock group Spirogyra. She met Hillage, who was also a Kent University student, as well as the band Caravan and Stewart. Through this friendship she sang backing vocals occasionally for Hatfield and the North, but when Spirogyra split up, Gaskin left England to travel around Asia.

Upon her return almost three years later, Gaskin was invited to join the all-female group Red Roll On. Soon, she became reacquainted with Stewart and after working together on an album by Bill Bruford, they collaborated on It’s My Party.

Review

Stewart and Gaskin’s prog background is very much apparent on this single, in spite of it sounding like a New Romantic track due to the use of then-futuristic early 80s synths. It’s like a mini-symphony, in which Stewart initially makes his bank of keyboards mirror Gaskin’s trauma over her missing Johnny (stop sniggering), with lots of seemingly random drum machines sounding out.

Gaskin’s vocal is, to be honest, pretty irritating, particularly the way she wines ‘you!’ at the end of each line. She reminds me a little of Toyah, here, which might explain why this single did so well – Toyah was huge at this point, thanks to singles such as It’s a Mystery. Her stuff sounded great to me as a boy, and so did this record. Not so much as a middle-aged music snob… There’s an element of high-camp irony to It’s My Party, sure, but the spoken-word section is annoyingly over-the-top, and I don’t really understand how it then switches to a finale that sounds the most like the Gore version, all bubblegum pop and kitsch jollity.

It’s certainly not your average cover, but perhaps the end section appealed to parents and grandparents who loved the original, whereas the kids liked the modern sounds and incredibly of-its-time video? An interesting chart-topper, certainly – and for four weeks, to boot. But a bit of an annoying mess, too. I’d imagine the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart would have come up with a more commercial-sounding version, and Annie Lennox could have done a very good job with the vocal.

I have more time for the video than the song itself, I know that. But I’ve no idea why there are two kendo fighters battling, other than the Japanese martial art was popular at the time. And why is Stewart wearing – what is it, a face protector used by boxers? And I definitely don’t know why his face is replaced by neon light at the end, but it reminds me of the spooky kids with lights shining from where their eyes should be in the video to Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 chart-topper Total Eclipse of the Heart – and I like it. There’s lots of very 80s angular-faced mannequins scattered around the party, and yes, that’s Thomas Dolby playing Johnny.

The sleeve of the single used to mesmerise me as a child, I recall, with Gaskin wearing stupendously long nails and Stewart brandishing a sword.

After

Further Dave Stewart With Barbara Gaskin singles followed this UK and Germany number 1. They recorded an album’s worth of material but chose to release two tracks a year for the next three years. But nothing, including covers of Busy Doing Nothing in 1983 and The Locomotion three years later, managed to chart, let alone get in the top 10.

Stewart reformed National Health in 1981, and used his hippy days as inspiration for Neil’s Heavy Concept Album in 1984. The ‘Neil’ in question was Nigel Planer’s character in The Young Ones, and the LP featured his brilliant cover of Traffic’s Hole in My Shoe, which missed out on number 1 by one place. He had also composed the theme tune to BBC Two’s revamped Whistle Test in 1983. In the 1990s, he worked with cult TV critic Victor Lewis-Smith, creating the music for his two series Inside Victor Lewis-Smith (1995) and Ads Infinitum (1999).

The Outro

Gaskin continued to work with Stewart on albums and gigs sporadically through the years and in 2021, 40 years after It’s My Party, they married.

The Info

Written by

Herb Wiener, John Gluck Jr & Wally Gold

Producer

Dave Stewart

Weeks at number 1

4 (17 October-13 November)

Trivia

Births

25 October: Footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips
31 October: Physician Kate Granger
7 November: Footballer George Pilkington
13 November: Racing driver Tom Ferrier

Deaths

19 October: Footballer Johnny Doyle
22 October: Conservative MP David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter
24 October: Archer Inger K Frith
27 October: Army major-general Sir Randle Feilden
30 October: Writer Denys Rhodes
5 November: Cricketer Sir Harold Vincent
6 November: Physician Douglas Vernon Hubble/First World War nurse Beryl Hutchinson
8 November: Jockey Tim Brookshaw/Conservative MP Lionel Heald

Meanwhile…

19 October: British Telecom announces the discontinuation of the telegram in 1982, after 139 years in use.
Also on this day, Scottish Celtic footballer Johnny Doyle is accidentally electrocuted while building his new home.

22 October: The case of Dudgeon vs United Kingdom is decided by the European Court of Human Rights, which rules that laws in Northern Ireland that criminalise consensual gay sex are in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights. Ooo, those pesky woke Europeans.

23 October: A MORI poll puts the Liberal-SDP Alliance on 40%, ahead of Labour on 31% and the Conservatives on 27%.

24 October: A CND anti-nuclear march in London brings together more than 250,000 people.

29 October: A patient dies of pneumocystis pneumonia in London, making him the first patient to die in of an AIDS-related illness in the UK. In 2021, ITN identified patient zero as John Eaddie of Bournemouth.

30 November: Nicholas Reed, the chief of euthanasia charity Exit, is jailed for two-and-a-half years for aiding and abetting suicides.

1 November: The island Antigua and Barbuda becomes independent of the UK.
Also on this day, British Leyland’s workers begin a strike over pay.

13 November: Queen Elizabeth II opens the final phase of the Telford Shopping Centre.