TONI BASIL'S MICKEY MANIA

TONI BASIL'S MICKEY MANIA

FEATURES

HOW TO CHEERLEAD & INFLUENCE PEOPLE!

by

Sylvie Simmons

“Well, dear. What seems to be the problem?”

“It’s like this, Doc. There I’ll be, minding my own business, listening to Motorhead or something, and all of a sudden it—Doc, help me Doc, I can’t hold it back any—OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND HEY MIC-KEY, HEY MICKEY!! See what I mean, Doc? It’s been the same ever since that single came out. Two and a half years, Doc. Do you know what that does to a person? The cheerleading outfits I can live with—my old man reckons it’s a vast improvement on the leather pants and ‘Ace Of Spades’ T-shirt—and even the cats aren’t scared of the pompoms anymore. But it’s taken over my mind, Doc. I’ll wake up in the morning and there it’ll be when the radio alarm goes off, and my eyes’ll start darting around my head like guppies and my feet’ll skip out of bed and my—Here it comes again!— OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE YOU’RE SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND-”

“Hey Mickey! Hey Mickey! Hmm, seems this thing is mighty contagious.”

“See, that’s it, Doc. It’s the catchiest thing you can imagine. At last count, over a million and a half people have got the thing. It’s popping out of record stores like spots on a greasy teenager. Everyone’s getting T.B. Little boys, little girls, old men in raincoats, old ladies in raincoats, rock ’n’ roll stars, rock ’n’ roll writers. Not just here, Doc. They’ve got it in England. They’ve got it in Australia. Think, Doc, Httle kangaroos are jumping around like crazy!”

“And how did you get it?”

“Well, I took all the right precautions, Doc. I didn’t watch MTV all year, not that that was too great a sacrifice. Didn’t watch TV at all, except for James Brown on David Letterman becayse I reckoned that was immune. Didn’t listen to the hepcat radio stations either and kept away from KROQ like it was radioactive waste, but it got to me somehow. They started playing it on the AOR stations too. Jeez, Doc, even one of the HM stations put it on. Right after a bit of AC/DC it—Doc, help me!-OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE YOU’RE SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND HEY MIC-KEY, HEY MIC-KEY!”

“Goodness gracious me! Where did this whole thing—SIS-BOOM-BAH—sorry, start?”

“S’okay, Doc. Someone called Toni Basil. But some people blame David Bowie. She was a dancer at the time and he said to her, ‘Why aren’t you singing?’, so she did.”

“Hmm. Foot and mouth, eh?”

“And some people blame the BBC. If the Forsyte Saga wasn’t bad enough, they got this Tony Basil to do a TV special and then this ‘Mickey’ song—it was barely in the Top 30 at the time—suddenly shoots up to number two and they start playing the thing over here. And some people blame Rodney Bingenheimer.”

“Rodney who?”

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway he kept playing ‘Mickey’ in LA and they were forced to release it in the States. Can’t blame the record companies, Doc. They held off as long as they could, over a year. The public just wanted to have the thing, what can I say? OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE-”

“Nurse! The sedative! What can you tell me about this give me a T give me an O give me an N give me an I what does that spell—”

“Toni Basil comes from a showbiz family. Her mother was an acrobat-dancer, so were her aunts. Her dad was a big band leader. She was born in Philadelphia and lived in New York and Chicago and Las Vegas, where her dad got the job conducting the house orchestra at the Sahara. Nice casino. Made a few bucks on the nickel machines once. She was .head cheerleader at Las Vegas High; even got a part dancing in Viva Las Vegas with Elvis. She moved to L.A. in the late ’60s and decided to be a singer. Did some demos, no one thought much of them, then she got a job as a dancer. A revival of West Side Story. When a sprained hip put paid to her dancing for a year she became an actress. Remember the lesbian in Five Easy Pieces, Doc? That was Toni, too. Somewhere along the lane she took acting lessons and a bit of classical ballet'training, and next thing I know it’s the early ’70s and she’s put together a dance troupe called the Lockers. Real wild stuff. ‘Ghetto dancers’ she calls them. They opened for Sly Stone and Sinatra, they got a couple of TV spots—Saturday Night Live, that sort of thing—and who should be tuning in but Bowie and Bette Midler. Suddenly she’s choreographing Bette’s stuff and staging Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, making her name as ‘the only choreographer who grew up in rock ’n’ roll.’ Suddenly everybody wants her. She’s worked with Devo, the Monkees, American Graffiti, Ronstadt, Talking Heads, Devo—”

“Hmm yes. Mark Mothersbaugh was in just the other day. Told me ‘We really like Toni. She’s been our friend for a long time. She’s a great choreographer and a great dancer and a great video editor. The only Talking Heads video that was any good, she did. The one where David Byrne actually moves for the first time in his life and looks like he knows how to dance.’ ”

“And then what?” N

“I gave him two aspirin and a bill for $100 and sent him on his way, of course.”

“Was he-?”

“ ‘OH MICKEY’-ing? Not yet. But then he is from Akron. So if she’s dancing and choreographing and making videos, what’s with this ‘Mickey’ business?”

“It’s hard trying to piece it all together, there’s so much. With Bowie and Devo urging her to go back to singing, she gets together a dozen dancers and almost as many musicians and does a showcase at the Roxy. Some people from Radialchoice in England saw the show and approached her afterwards. Something to do with finding new acts who could meld music and video together into video albums. Video was bigger in England than in the States at the time. Remember, there’s 24 channels over here, but in the old countryx if you want to watch horror at 2 a.m., the best you can do is record the evening’s Cher Special and play it back on tape later. So her video of Word Of Mouth does real well on the video charts—yes, there is such a thing—and her ‘Michey’ single’s doing okay for a degut by an unknown artist, then the BBC gives her all this exposure and—quick, Doc! Valium!—OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE YOU’RE SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND HEY MIC-KEY. OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE.

“Hold all calls. I’m going to make a house call to this Toni Basil person.”

A cozy house in West Los Angeles: there’s a little TV in the middle of the room, a state of the art video machine, pix of Toni on the wall, work scattered everywhere, and a little white Rex cat winding in and out of the debris. Toni has just finished a gruelling rehearsal for yet another BBC Special...

DOC: “So tell me. What kind of person does it take to be a dancer, actress, choreographer, video-maker, singer and cheerleader?”

TONI: “Well, what has happened to me for the past 12 years is I’ve jumped back and forth to different jobs. I came out as a singer, made one record, nothing really happened, you don’t make any money off records. I was also a trained dancer all my life, though I grew up in rock ’n’ roll, and I found that I was able to make a living as a choreographer. I love the music. I loved the people I was working with, which was always different rock ’n’ roll stars, and I thought ‘gee, I have longevity in this business as a choreographer, much more than a singer’. So from choreography I made some films, just little 8mm, 16mm films I directed myself, because some things as a choreographer frustrated me in the way directors decided to shoot certain things that I’d choreograph. So I decided to experiment on film myself.

“And between choreographing, directing, working with people like Bowie and Bette Midler, when it came time again and. I had an opportunity to sing and do videos, all of a sudden I had all this information that put it all together and gives me total control to conceptualize the whole thing.

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CONTINUED FROM 23

“So that’s how I think that the video and recording is full circle for me, because it encompasses everything I’ve been jumping around for the last 12 years but without putting them together. So I don’t know if it takes a certain kind of personality, or maybe it’s a personality that’s fickle enough to jump around, take whatever quality work is offered you instead of sticking to one thing.”

DOC: “What’s your attention span?”

TONI: “A six year old’s. I sit there and I look at the TV and turn the channels, just turn the channels and blank out.”

DOC: “Would you say your dancing and conceptualizing, in other words the video, sold ‘Mickey’ more than the music?”

TONI: “I didn’t care if it was that. I don’t think it matters. Certainly you try to do everything as best as it can be done. I don’t second guess anything—will this outshine that, does that mean I have to pull back? I just kind of get a bit compulsive and take the ball and run with it and see where, it takes me and try to give it my fullest. As it happened, I think the video did kick off the single much more in my case than maybe other people’s cases. Because I was a new artist and nobody knew of me, and without that video I don’t think the audience would have taken to me as quickly. Because when you’re hearing, that’s one thing. When you’re seeing and hearing, you really know right away if you like that person, what’s happening. I think the video immediately makes the audience decide.”

DOC: “Let’s go back to ‘taking the ball and run with it.’. Were you really a cheerleader?”

TONI: “Absolutely! I was a cheerleader all my life. That’s where I probably got all my choreography background, because I was always head cheerleader—or almost always—and those are the cheerleaders that make up what they do and the half-time entertainment and lots of other stuff.”

DOC:“Ah, so you were a good girl. Popular, bright, into wholesome all-American stuff, rather than rock ’n’ roll...”

TONI: “It wasn’t the bad girls who were into rock ’n’ roll. Did you go to an all-girls school in England or sorhething?”

DOC: “I’m doing the examination around here.”

TONI: “It was always rock ’n’ roll. The cheerleaders used to hold dances after the game in the gym and charge to get in, and it would go to the cheerleaders fund. And it was rock ’n’ roll dancing. We did chants like OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE!” DOC: “Stop stop!”

TONI: “As opposed to pom-pomming to music.”

DOC: “What was the first music you got off on?”

TONI: “Chuck Berry. My father was an orchestra leader for bands, and rock ’n’ roll wasn’t his music, so he didn’t have that style of music around the house. I heard it in school.”

DOC: “Who did you impersonate in front of the mirror?”

TONI: “No one. I think maybe it’s because it was men’s music that 1 liked it so much. I wasn’t impersonating Diana Ross or—see I can’t even think of the women during the time I was listening to Chuck Berry.”

DOC: “Were you in any groups at school?”

TONI: “No, I usually just sang with the band and then put on a dance show. I always brought the dance in, no matter what I was doing.”

DOC: “Why did you wind up in L.A.?” TONI: “I think the answer was that L.A. was closer to Las Vegas than New York, and it seemed there was so much more rock ’n’ roll here. Don’t forget I was a choreographer, and the movies Were being made here, and in New York it was the Broadway shows. I mean, on Broadway you didn’t get to work with the Rolling Stones, you didn’t get to work with David Bowie. Out there I got to work with real rock ’n’ roll performers, rather than people playing rock ’n’ roll performers. Also the rock dancing out here is the finest in the world. The kids out here in California are the most influential rock ’n’ roll dancers in the world. They influence the whole world! All the different style dancers, almost all of them come from here.”

DOC: “Talking for kids, ‘Mickey’ was bought by very young people. Half your age. It’s a fickle audience, they love you one minute and the next week bye, bye. Look what happened to Andy Gibb! I know you’re writing songs for a second album right now, as opposed to using other people’s compositions like ‘Mickey.’ How will you write them?”

TONI: “What I want to do. See I did what I wanted to do with ‘Mickey,’ because I changed that around drastically. It was called ‘Kitty’ and it didn’t have—” •

DOC: “No, NO!*

TONI: “Oh Kitty you’re so fine you’re so fine you blow my mind hey Kitty in it. I wanted a cheerleading concept. And not because I was a cheerleader. I knew what that stomping, clapping sounded like in a gymnasium, and I thought there’s a backbeatto a record. And I don’t think I’ve written any of these with any different intention. I was able to weed out from the last album what was' working and what wan’t and things like that. Still, my intention when I do videos or anything is I don’t think of anyone bpt myself. And my songs—I can’t control songwriting enough to control it in any direction. It just comes out the way it does. ‘Shopping A-Z.’ That did have something to do with my finding that the chant worked in ‘Mickey.’ Each thing takes you somewhere else. I want my material to be dance material, whether it’s dance for the masses or dance for me. All my videos are dance-oripnted.”

DOC: “Does it feel odd getting a teen-hit single this late in your career? Would you rather it had happened to you when you could appreciate young Mickey types hanging around the backstage door?

TONI: “No. And I’m sure my career will change again. It’s always moved around and shifted and changed. It’s interesting that we started this project over two and a half years ago, ‘Mickey.’ That’s what’s odd. After a year goes by and you don’t get a deal in America you just figure, well there you go. But it was the public that made the record company deal with me in America. The public wanted it. It’s change again. It’ll go up and it’ll go down, it’ll always be in it. And I guess that fact that I’ll always be able to work in rock ’n’ roll, whether I have a hit record or not, probably gives me a little healthier attitude towards it all.”

DOC: “Yes, indeedy. You’re in perfect health. Now if only I could cure my—OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE YOU’RE etc., etc....” _/_%

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