In their 2012 oral history, “I Want My MTV,” authors Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks gave an entire chapter to it. He became the only rock star in history to have his entire career killed by a single video. MTV was relentlessly promoting an imminent world premiere. “Rock Me Tonite,” the first single, was the biggest hit he had ever had. Things changed.”īy the time Squier released his next album, 1984’s “Signs of Life,” he was a megastar. He bought a Porsche at the factory at Stuttgart. He had this little Timex watch on ‘Don’t Say No.’ This one, he had the Cartier watch. “That first album we did was dead simple,” says Mack, who also produced “Emotions in Motion.” “Then, all of a sudden, it was big time. “Everybody Wants You” was the record’s biggest hit, holding at No. Freddie Mercury sang backup on one track, and while Squier began touring with the record as Queen’s opening act, he was soon headlining his own arena tour. I’d say, ‘Can you do that again?’ And he’d say, ‘I don’t think I’ll do it any better or worse.’ He did ‘The Stroke’ in two or three takes.”īy the time Squier went to record 1982’s “Emotions in Motion,” he was such a star he was able to get Andy Warhol to do the cover art. “He was prolific and quick,” recalls Mack, “even in singing. 3 on the charts and was the first single off “Don’t Say No,” which went triple-platinum. “I think I translated it pretty successfully.” Released in May 1981, “The Stroke” went to No. Exhibit A went on to become “My Kind of Lover,” Exhibit B, “The Stroke.” He told Mack the sound he wanted for the latter would be like a rowing crew plunging oars, funneling water. The next day, Squier returned to the Waldorf with his acoustic guitar and played a couple of sketched-out songs for Mack. He said he already had an album out and had something even better.” I’d love to talk to you.’ He was very credible, very determined. “He introduced himself and said, ‘I’m Billy. He was a massive fan of Queen, and when they hit New York on tour in the fall of 1980, he made sure to run into their producer, Reinhold Mack, in a bar at the Waldorf-Astoria. but I had no idea just how good.”įor his follow-up, Squier had a vision. “I’d always envisioned ‘The Big Beat’ leading off ‘The Tale of the Tape’ with the BIGGEST drumbeat the rock world had ever heard,” Squier wrote on his Web site last month. In 1980, Squier signed with Capitol Records and decamped to Woodstock to record his debut album, “The Tale of the Tape.” His secret weapon was the late drummer Bobby Chouinard, whom Squier dubbed “Mr. After graduating from Wellesley HS in 1968, he began playing in local clubs, at one point forming a band with Jerry Nolan, who went on to join the New York Dolls. “My producer found that beat,” says Mickey Avalon, who heavily sampled “The Stroke” for his 2009 single “Stroke Me.” “I didn’t even know what happened to Billy Squier.” ‘That video’īilly Squier was born on May 12, 1950, and grew up middle class in Boston. Nor do many of the artists who sample Squier know much, if anything, about him. “I didn’t even know what hip-hop was back then.” “People sometimes write that Billy is the king of hip-hop,” Squier said in 2005. Or a producer - like the legendary Rick Rubin, who sampled “The Big Beat” on Jay Z’s “99 Problems” and Squier’s 1981 hit “The Stroke” on Eminem’s “Berzerk.” He gave the B-boys and B-girls a track to dance to, but it would only be a DJ or an MC who knows who Billy Squier is.” “I would put him in the category of James Brown, the Honeydrippers and Chic. “He’s definitely someone who helped mold and shape hip-hop with his music,” Kane says. “I think he has millions of fans that love his body of work but probably thousands of fans that love him,” says Big Daddy Kane, who has sampled Squier’s “The Big Beat” so often he’s lost count. Thirty years on, the most famous of rock ’n’ roll exiles has a stealth second career as the most sampled musician in the history of hip-hop. “Flapping his wrists like a French chef whose souffle has just fallen,” said Rolling Stone.
Then, in 1984, after his unintentionally camp video for “Rock Me Tonite” hit MTV, featuring Squier prancing around in fluffy hair and satin sheets, his career was over, just like that. Squier has one of the most unusual stories in all of pop culture: a one-time superstar who, in the ’80s, straddled glam, pop and hard rock.
But that doesn’t mean they haven’t heard him. Ask anyone under 25 if they’ve heard of Billy Squier, and the answer is likely no.
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