John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band took an unusual route to the top of the charts.
Cafferty was hired on to compose the soundtrack for 1983's "Eddie & The Cruisers". The Beaver Brown Band was close enough to the creative concept of the Cruisers that Cafferty, after having previously composed two songs, was then asked to do the rest of the film.
As a result, it is Cafferty's voice coming out of actor Michael Pare's mouth as Eddie Wilson (Pare) performs "On The Dark Side".
Cafferty would chart with "Tender Years", and, then, land two more hits with "C.I.T.Y." and "Voice of America's Sons", the latter used in Sylvester Stallone's 1986 movie, "Cobra".
I remember this one!
ReplyDeleteIt played from damn near every radio in the world in '83-84!
Personally I was never crazy about the song - I suppose part of the reason was that it didn't feel like a song from circa 1963-64 (the year Eddie & The Cruisers was set) and I chose to ignore it. Even now, all these years later, I still can't really enjoy it.
I never saw either "Eddie" movie, though that might change if I can rent the DVD's. Cafferty went out of his way to sound like Springsteen-lite, but as it happened, he used up his 15 minutes three years later.
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