Bangles -- "Hero Takes a Fall" (1984)

Wasn't it me who said

There'll be a price to pay

Three O'Clock, Rain Parade, Green on Red, Dream Syndicate -- does anyone remember the "Paisley Underground" groups from Los Angeles whose music was inspired by the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Buffalo Springfield, the Doors and the other great L.A. bands their parents had listened to in the 1960s?

Michael Quercio, the lead singer of Three O'Clock (the band's name was inspired by an F. Scott Fitzgerald line: "In the darkest part of the mind it's always three o'clock in the morning"), gave the Paisley Underground genre its name during a radio interview.  

"Basically, we were all record collectors who played music," said Quercio.  Classic pop albums like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds were "certainly a big deal to us," he added.  

So it should come as no surprise that the Paisley Underground bands played a lot of covers of sixties songs -- the songs that their parents had listened to twenty years earlier.  (The Rainy Day album, a collaboration between members of several Paisley Underground bands that was released in 1984, featured covers of songs by Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Neil Young, the Beach Boys, the Who, Lou Reed, and Jimi Hendrix.) 

The Paisley Underground band that had the most commercial success by far was the all-female group, the Bangles.  All Over the Place, the band's major-label debut album, is one of the great power-pop records of all time.

The second Bangles album, Different Light, featured "Manic Monday" (which Prince wrote for them), "Walk Like an Egyptian" (the first single by an all-female band playing their own instruments to make it to #1 on the Billboard singles chart), and a cover of Big Star's "September Gurls."

But just when the Bangles were blowing up, they blew up.  All four of the group's members were singers/songwriters, but Susanna Hoffs began to attract the lion's share of attention from the media, so the band's record label began to release songs on which Hoffs was the lead singer as singles. 

The Bangles: Susanna Hoffs, Michael
Steele, Debbi Peterson, Vicki Peterson

Hoffs started to get all the attention in part because she was featured in the 1987 movie, The Allnighter -- a huge box-office and critical bomb that was directed by her  mother.  Here's the trailer for that movie, which also featured Joan Cusack (you remember her from Working Girl) and Michael Ontkean (you remember him from Slap Shot):

Click here to watch the most famous scene from the movie, which features Susanna undressing in front a mirror and dancing around in her knickers.  If the movie has consisted of two hours of this kind of thing, it would have made about a zillion dollars.  Boys and girls, Susanna Hoffs is not only a great pop singer but a grade-A hottie . . . although it's a little creepy when you realize that her mom directed this scene.

The Bangles broke up shortly after the release of their third album, Everything, in 1988.  It was a commercial success, and included the group's biggest-selling single, "Eternal Flame."  Hoffs recorded that song in the nude because the album's producer told her that Olivia Newton-John always was naked when she recorded vocals.

(You know, I wanted to be a record producer but my parents would only pay for law school.)

The Bangles got back together ten years later.  They toured extensively last year in support of their 2011 album, Sweetheart of the Sun.  

Susanna Hoffs is still drop-dead gorgeous.  She recently turned 54, but I think she is even more beautiful today than she was back in the eighties.

Here's "Hero Takes a Fall," the first track from All Over the Place.  It's full of jangly guitars and glorious harmonies and any of you who don't like it are banned from 2 or 3 lines for life.  The music video for the song is really goofy -- as were a lot of the music videos from that era -- but the song itself is three minutes of perfection:

And take a gander at this live (not lip-synched) performance of the song on David Letterman's show -- Susanna plays a pretty mean rhythm guitar.  (What was Letterman thinking when he got dressed for that show?)



Click here to buy the song from Amazon: