On the same songfacts.com site where I found Rupert Holmes talking about "Timothy," there's also an interview with guitarist Jane Wiedlin (right, upside down) of the Go-Go's discussing the unforgettable video for their "Vacation."
"Well, we were at the A&M sound stage, and it was a big budget video, because of course by that time we were really popular, because it was our second album, and our first album had sold like, I don't know, over 2 million copies or something," says La Wiedlin. "So we had a lot of money to do the video, which was the first time for us, because the other videos we just spent, like $5,000 on or something. And it was fun, but it was a way of working that we weren't accustomed to. And I remember it being a really long day, like a fourteen-hour day, and about eight hours into it we all were getting really bored and restless, so we started drinking. But by the time they actually shot the scene where we're on the water skis, skiing one-handed and waving and stuff, we were all really looped. It's so funny, if you look at us, look in our eyes in those parts, we're all like cross-eyed drunk."
Am I crazy, or does this stuff hold up about as well as anything else recorded in 1982? The secret weapon is drummer Gina Schock, who sounds like Max Weinberg backing up the Ventures.
Strange as it may seem, I can't find the original "Vacation" video on YouTube, but here are Janie and the gals on "Solid Gold," apparently performing the song live rather than lip-syncing it, interspersed with clips of them doing the Tommy Bartlett in the video:
3 comments:
Is "the Tommy Bartlett" a familiar reference to anyone here except, you know, the actual OPC and me? I'm just curious.
It's certainly familiar to any Wisconsinite or Chicagoan. As for people from elsewhere, I couldn't say. Probably not.
You see, what we're all about here at OPC is expanding our readers' knowledge. If you can't figure out who Tommy Bartlett was from the context clues, maybe you could look him up on Wikipedia. And the world's store of wisdom is thereby a skosh larger.
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