My father yells, “What you gonna do with your life?”
And there he is. It’s the video to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and that man wagging his finger at her is Lou Albano. Captain Lou Albano, WWF well-loved manager. And he’s there because of the Rock ’n’ Wrestling connection.
Now, this piece isn’t about that, its about a certain musical WWF product of variable quality. But it’s important to put it in context.
That context is about…
Legitimacy.
Yes, legitimacy. And not sporting either, entertainment; WWF and now WWE was and is sports entertainment and that’s what Vincent K. McMahon seems to crave, which is why we see execrable movies like No Holds Barred and the twice attempted XFL – after all, Hulk Hogan appeared in Rocky III as Thunderlips, but that was before he was WWF superstar/champion/icon.
And so the Rock ’n’ Wrestling connection was important. Not Just because it brought entertainment icons like Lauper, Mr. T and Liberace to the WWF, crossing over to legitimate entertainment, it also created a kids cartoon, Hulk Hogan’s Rock n’ Wrestling and that TV legitimacy is something money can’t buy.
As the USA Network wrote: “While pro wrestling had its fair share of fans at that point, the WWE wanted to become the global sports entertainment powerhouse it is today. To do that, they needed help. So, they partnered with one of the music world’s brightest stars, Lauper.”
There are other wrestling options at this time, of course. There’s still a small number of territory promotions, but WCW is the big rival and that was always thought of as Wrestling versus razzmatazz. WWF was an event organization not even really a wrestling promotion, the grappling was a delivery system of the entertainment aspiration.
That’s continued with the World Bodybuilding Federation, that those XFL attempts and big movie stars like Dwayne Johnson… ah, that’s not quite right.
Because stars like Johnson, Dave Bautista and John Cena (to a lesser extent) made it after their WWE run. So which crossover wrestler do they have? The Miz. Ah…
But WWE keep trying. And this is a particularly florid example of that trying.
Music and Wrestling
A recent Dark Side Of The Ring episode mentioned that Chris Colt may well have been the first wrestler to use entrance music, but there was one wrestler who stood head and shoulders above all his peers in the use of music.
Yes, the Exotic one even had his own music, written for him, florid and fantastic “I’m In Love With Me” and his spectacular Glam bang theme tune “Imagine What I Could Do To You”; he even had a couple of albums with the piledrivers, Shake, Wrestle & Roll and Naughty But Nice. In 1987, Continental Wrestling even had an event with both elements entwined.
So music and wrestling, which had existed before those two examples, ramped up the heat, excitement and event. And that’s what the WWF wanted.
To The WWF
1985 is the year. The Wrestling Album is the name. It’s the WWF’s opportunity to make it into the Billboard album chart. Which it did, reaching number 84.
So it must be good, right? Well…
The Album
Pretty Good Efforts:
Junk Yard Dog can carry a tune. And he gets to sing a song called “Grab Them Cakes”, so he’s onto a winner already (remember, this is the mid-1980s and the WWF was, apparently, running wild). What we get here though is a small amount of music, so as not to confuse us, it has a an early ’80s brittle Funk feel and JYD gets to speak and sing (similarly to Captain Chameleon on the original version of the song), with that voice laying the syrup on us somewhat. Makes a big noise but ultimately says nothing.
Now then, they try “Tutti Frutti”, oh do they try. A lot is put into this, horn-infused, soul review backing, it’s faithful and Mean Gene can sing and also deliver. This is overwrought and he gets tight in the middle of it, with the horns and club style piano, shaking a tush and cutting a rug. No, of course he doesn’t give us the Little Richard scream, it’s more of a ‘hey!’ and that’s a little disappointing, but only because in this showing, he might have been able to pull it off.
Roddy Piper does well here. Yes, Rowdy Roddy is entertaining with “For Everybody”, a PG version of “F— Everybody” by Mike Angelo & the Idols. Not that Piper’s a real warbling find, more because he’s given a lot of help with those blaring horns and a bump ’n’ grind intention, which Roddy works very well with.
And the best thing is the bright mid-’80s college Rock feel of “Eat Your Heart Out, Rick Springfield”, Jimmy Hart’s turn behind the mic; we know he had a musical career with The Gentrys and their big selling 1965 track “Keep On Dancing”, so he must have been salivating at this prospect. Here he allies AOR verses to a sort of The Cars’ New Wave style chorus in a tale about his girl wanting Rick more than him. He wrote it too, with JJ Maguire and it’s fun from first to last note.
Qualified Successes:
The opening track in the album features all the WWF Superstars introducing us to the mainly big beating ’80s sounds within. Several grappler get their chance, although much of it is wisely left to Jimmy Hart, but Chris Kenner’s “Land of A Thousand Dances ?!!?” (with a little Fats Domino too) has a big ‘here it is, folks!’ feel to it and added exclamation points and question marks. Oh, and later on, Nikolai Volkoff sings the Russian national anthem in the background…
Even though Jesse Ventura, in the frankly embarrassing between-song chatter isn’t happy ’cos it isn’t rock (though he didn’t complain about Piper’s soul shenanigans earlier), the fiddle and fine country of “Don’t Go Messin’ With A Country Boy” showed that Hillbilly Jim can carry a tune and also sell it to us. When that fiddle solo arrives, we might all be do si do-ing and breaking out the moonshine.
Rick Derringer was heavily involved in Hulk Hogan “Real American” theme, and Cyndi Lauper provided backing vocals (her then-husband, David Wolff, oversaw the album project). This is absolutely fine and as we’ve heard it so many times while watching Hulk’s after-match posing, we’re already halfway there. Its effectiveness is not in question.
Never Do This Again:
Take classical music. Add some rockabilly with a big beat drum machine. Throw in some aka and squelches. Captain Lou Albano’s “History Of Music” is a mess, and not a hot one. He tries to sing but is his voice is a wrecking ball. This tries to be funny but is as ill advised as farmyard impressions at a funeral.
Next up is the theme tune for Hulk Hogan’s Rock N’ Wrestling Cartoon. It’s a theme tune with a big beat, thin synth ’80s AOR feel, that ultimately goes nowhere. But since it was the theme to the cartoon show, it has to be here. Played by the WWF All Stars, the song was written by Jim Steinman, who apparently redid it for a Bonnie Tyler album. It’s not what I’d expect from Steinman, it’s very “of its time” whereas his otherwise excellent work is usually not. The song doesn’t have too much grandiosity and, overall is pretty poor.
“Cara Mia” is a well-known, big seller. Lee Lange and Tulio Trapani wrote this popular tune, a top 10 seller in many countries. We all knew that Nikolai Volkoff had a mellifluous if strangulated voice, but it isn’t helped here, because they tried to disco it up. Yes. “Cara Mia”… as disco. It almost has the throbbing of Georgio Moroder. I surely don’t need to expand on this, you can surely see the inappropriateness of it. Please make it stop.
Between songs, Jesse, Mean Gene and Vince McMahon chat in an obviously-scripted and badly-written way. At one point Jesse tells us that Mean Gene is “a tutti with a frutti” — what does that even mean?
Generally Jesse grouses, Vince first tries to say as little as possible and Gene is left with linking lines like “Talking of being a Real American” or suchlike. They even use this line when talking of Volkoff: “How do you trust a man who’s on first name terms with Mikhail Gorbachev?” As Gorbachev was the first Russian leader talk to the US, and originated closer ties with the US through glasnost and some would say ushered in the end of the USSR, that kind of line doesn’t really stand up well in history. Nor was it particularly funny at the time.
Eventually, due to Jesse wanting a duet with the three of them (yes, I know, ha ha ), Vince and Gene leave him alone to shout after them – a comedy trope. And that’s all she wrote. Thank goodness.
Overall, the Wrestling Album is a mixed bag, some appalling, some pretty good. Of course, when I praise something here, know that the bar is already really low.
They actually released singles from it, “Land Of A Thousand Dances ?!!?” with extra saxes, “Grab Them Cakes” and “Don’t Go Messin’ With A Country Boy” – though, you might not be surprised to learn that none of them charted.
The Lost Turntable described it thusly:
“Oh. And its the worst album I’ve ever heard in my entire life. And that’s really saying something! Because A: I’ve listened to a lot of shitty albums and B: I actually like two tracks on this record. But it goes to show you just how damn bad the rest of it is.”
But, if you were watching WWF in this era, the album does have some charm.
Some.
The WWF would do this again with Piledriver: The Wrestling Album II in 1987, a little more perfunctory this time, with no chat and mostly made up of wrestling themes. That one is for another deep dive at another time, but Demolition’s and The Honky Tonk Man’s themes are there, along with the superb 1970s-inflected funk of Slick’s “Jive Soul Bro” (another Captain Chameleon cover… someone was apparently a fan).
In the end, The Wrestling Album was an attempt to push the brand. The album exists to show the Federation can do showbiz. To show that WWF wasn’t dark halls with angry fans traveling to small towns with one bar and a 7-Eleven. To show that WWF is razzmatazz, primary colors and, even more importantly, an entertainment brand.
This album never quite managed it for them. And some would argue that nothing ever really has. But it was a good attempt.
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