Max Picks …songs from 1985

1985

This was an important year for me. It was the year I graduated from high school and I got into surf and alternative music. The pop charts were dismal to me so I turned to my records, tapes, and alternative radio stations. If I listed what I listened to in 1985…it would be Beatles, Jan and Dean, Beach Boys, Van Morrison, and The Who. There still were some things I listened to on the charts as you see down below.

Replacements – Bastards Of Young

This is a lost anthem of the eighties that should have been taken up by my generation. Just because a song isn’t heard by the masses doesn’t mean it isn’t great. Westerberg’s songwriting in the 1980s rivaled any artist in that decade…including Springsteen.

This song starts with a raw cool riff and a scream…how much more rock and roll can you get? The lyrics are what got me into this song in the 80s. The song was on the album Tim released in 1985. It was produced by Tommy Ramone. Alex Chilton also helped out with the album.

It has no giant 80’s production…it’s raw and honest about youthful uncertainty and alienation.

Dire Straits – Money For Nothing

This was the first video played on MTV Europe. The network went on the air on August 1, 1987, six years after MTV in the US… This was back when MTV (Music Television) actually played music but now has questionable shows.

The clipped guitar sound won me over the first time I heard this.

In the US, this stayed at #1 for three weeks. It also won a Grammy in 1986 for best Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.

Dire Straits recorded this in Montserrat. Sting was on vacation there and came by to help. Sting sings on this and helped write it…Sting and Knophler were credited as songwriters. Sting did not want a songwriting credit, but his record company did because they would have earned royalties from it. It’s been said that the line “I Want My MTV” sounded very similar to a song Sting wrote for The Police: “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.”…well the same amount of syllables anyway.

Tom Petty – Don’t Come Around Here No More

When I first heard this song in the 1980s…the instrument that stood out was the sitar. I’ve been in love with that instrument since I heard Norwegian Wood. I want one and if I find a cheap one I will get it. One strum and you are back in the sixties and it fit this song well…or this song fits the sitar.

After Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers toured in 1983, they took some time off, and Petty started working with Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics. This was the first song they wrote together, and the psychedelic sound was a big departure from Petty’s work with The Heartbreakers.

It was at the time, my favorite video hands down.

The Smiths – How Soon Is Now? –

This intro is just plain epic. The Smiths had difficulty playing this song live. Johnny Marr had trouble recreating the guitar effect in concert. The tremolo is perfect in this song.

Bassist, Andy Rourke, called the song “the bane of The Smiths’ live career.”

This incredible song was the B side to William, It Was Really Nothing. It was on the album Hatful of Hollow. The album was a compilation album released in 1984 and Q magazine placed the album at No. 44 on its list of the “100 Greatest British Albums Ever.”

John Fogerty – Centerfield

Near spring training every year I listen to John Fogerty’s Centerfield. This was John Fogerty’s comeback after being away from the charts since 1975.

Along with “Talkin’ Baseball” and “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” this quickly became one of the most popular baseball songs ever. It’s a fixture at ballparks between innings of games and plays at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

John Fogerty: “I’d hear about Ruth and DiMaggio, and as my dad and older brothers talked about the Babe’s exploits, their eyes would get so big. When I was a little kid, there were no teams on the West Coast, so the idea of a Major League team was really mythical to me. The players were heroes to me as long as I can remember.”

“It is about baseball, but it is also a metaphor about getting yourself motivated, about facing the challenge of one thing or another at least at the beginning of an endeavor. About getting yourself all ready, whatever is necessary for the job.”

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

38 thoughts on “Max Picks …songs from 1985”

    1. I was listening to Alternative music back then…and REM before they made it big…I just didn’t like the pop charts very much…those synth drums and instruments…were cold to me.

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  2. Ditto on the Replacements and Smiths being new, I have not seen that Tom Petty video believe it or not! I remember listening to the Dire Straits tune on the jukebox at the bar with the guys, great song. Anytime you post JF is good with me.

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    1. Alternative is where I lived and older stuff in this year…Yea I replaced Old Man Down The Road with Centerfield…next month pitchers and catchers report so it fits!

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  3. “Money for Nothing” reminds me of “Cover of the Rolling Stone” (Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show) in making fun of fame while seeking it. I love the old baseball footage with “Centerfield”. The opening guitar riff is reminiscent of Ritchie Valens’ riff to open “La Bamba”.

    Each of your best of a year posts makes me think (or look) back to that time. Each time I realize something we both left out from just before that. 1983 was when Van Morrison released “Inarticulate Speech of the Heart”, a new direction for him – people found it boring or hypnotic. I was in Australia late in 1984 and folks there were hooked on it. It was on an automatic turntable in the place I stayed in Sydney for a couple of days and became the soundtrack to that time. Every time we came back to the house someone would start it up again. (I’ve started a 1986 list in hopes I don’t forget when you post it.)

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    1. I agree…and I bought “Inarticulate Speech of the Heart” at that time and also enjoyed it. I also missed “Beautiful Vision” released in 1982…but I didn’t find it until later…in fact around this time in the eighties… Cleaning Windows remains one of my favorite songs by Van.
      I hate that I missed that one…another one for the missed post or posts.
      La Bamba is very close to it I will say… I just listened to La Bamba by Los Lobos the other night.

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  5. Nice list! ‘How Soon is Now?’ would make my top 5 of the decade list – I liked other Smiths singles, but this one was so far above those and different than anything else even college stations were playing. . It’s one of possibly ten songs in my life that have literally made me stop what I was doing and either turn it up or go nearer the speaker and listen the very first time I heard it. Another first, Dire Straits ‘Brothers in ARms’ was as likely as not the first CD I listened to at home. I remember it was one of four I got to go with the first CD player I bought… Moody Blues GH was another, the other pair I forget now. It was a great album, this was possibly the best track off it but I’ve gotten a wee bit tired of it by now. And it was the year for REM’s ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’, which would have given me probably 7 of my top 10 for the year, but narrowing it down I’d have taken ‘Driver 8’. It was another good year for music.

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  6. Good picks, I even appreciate the Smiths song, very insistent in a good way. Mention of Alex Chilton and the sitar made me think of ‘Cry Like A Baby…’ This posting business just makes one thing lead into another, and before you know it you’re on Yootoob for another hour…

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    1. Thanks Obbverse…I tried to get a mixture of Alt and Main…Yes it does…I’ve went down that rabbit hole a lot. Now that baseball spring training is around the corner…I’m looking at all the news there.

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      1. Ah, the anticipation of another promising season- as a you know, as a Palace fan I’m familiar with that building giddy hopeful feeling, not yet thinking of the reality yet to come.😬 But one day…

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  8. I’ve been hooked into the Mats, Ramones, X, Pixies, Clash, Stooges and the like for past two days. ‘Bastards’ is just such a cool cut.
    I peek in on your picks (of coarse I do) but dont always comment even though most the songs resonate with me. I will say this Max. Every “year” produces cool songs. They might not be on the surface of the mainstream music world but they are there. We just have to dig. I know you’re a cover guy. In my listening the Ramones covered both ‘Needles and Pins’ and ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’. How’s that for eclectic. Plus a little Fogerty tag to go with one of your picks.

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    1. The Stooges…it’s been a while since I listened to them…and The New York Dolls. I don’t know why but I put them together for some reason in my head.
      I agree with you about the years…each year has something good in it….not always the top 40 but somewhere yes. I didn’t know either if you liked The Smiths.
      I’ve heard Needles and Pins….but never have I heard the Ramones to Have You Ever Seen The Rain….just did…man they can cover anything and make it sound good….different but good.

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  9. Throughout the ’80s I still paid attention to the mainstream charts. Things changed for me starting in the ’90s when I mostly ignored contemporary music and happily lived in a retro bubble. The only contemporary music I listened to was when “old artists” like Springsteen, Mellencamp and Sting came out with new albums. I missed most of ’90s alternative rock.

    I like all of your picks here. I’m still relatively new to The Replacements. I pretty much love everything Tom Petty did, including this song. “How Soon Is Now” by the Smiths has a really cool sound. Even though it features what sounds like synth claps, I also dig John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” and bought that album on vinyl around the time it came out. “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits is a classic, though personally I prefer the music from their eponymous debut and the “Making Movies” album.

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    1. Yea I’m trying to weave my favorite mainstream picks and Alternative together…so it’s a mix bag on what most people know but like you… just being honest. I may be the only person to do this and to leave out Michael Jackson…I liked the Jackson 5 though…don’t get me wrong.
      Yes I prefer other Dire Straits songs also…this one is worn out in a way but in 85 I was listening to it.

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      1. I still very well remember when Dire Straits came out with their “Brothers In Arms” album I believe it was the first or among the first fully digitally recorded CDs. The sound was so crystal clear – for my taste nowadays perhaps too perfect! I think they used it to test loudspeakers.

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  10. ‘Money for Nothing’ is a classic, and I always like what you post by the Replacements. I should like the Smiths more… but I’ve always struggled with them. Something slightly inaccesible in their sound, I don’t know.

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    1. The Smith’s lead singer throws me off…they called The Smiths the British Replacements…but The Smiths were not as rough to me.
      The Replacements regrouped in 2014 or so and toured for a couple of years….they made more money in one tour than they did in the 80s….and sold out arenas…which is cool for a band that wasnt’ played on mainstream radio.

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      2. Yea but I like the guitar player a lot…for me he made them with that jangle sound. He was like Peter Buck was to REM..
        Oh yea…Marr

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  11. I’m surprised 5 Replacement songs didn’t show up here. lol Good list Max. When I caught Big Wreck last month at their soundcheck they played snippets of Money For Nothing that segued into Owner of a Lonely Heart and one other tune that eludes me. Kinda cool hearing it as it all meshed together. The band was noodling around but it made friggin sense to my old ears hahaha

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    1. I would do that if I could believe me…but people would be a little pissed lol.
      I like medley songs like that. Those two would go together well…and very recognizable.

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  12. Don’t Come Around Here No More and How Soon Is Now are favourites. Replacements had a great three-album run in the mid 1980s.

    Was The Waterboys’ Whole of the Moon an option? Always happy to hear that one.

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    1. Yea I was listening to a lot of alternative music back then…you can think of it this way…The Replacements were like the Smiths here…we didn’t know much about the Smiths except on Alternative radio…just as The Replacements.

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