billy squier, "the stroke" classic or dud?

But there're other Squier songs I like more, by far.

"Lonely Is The Night," "In The Dark," "My Kinda Lover," "Everybody Wants You," "Learn How To Live" all > "The Stroke"

I wonder why the dud people are always so silent in threads like this. They gotta be out there, right?

doesn't "the stroke" have some vocal and drum parts played backwards?

Good point - I retract my grudging acknowledgement. Just because it's the one Billy Squier track everyone remembers and its got huge-ass drums doesn't mean it has to be classic by default. EVERY track on Don't Say No has huge-ass drums, and "The Stroke" isn't even the fourth-best song on that album.

ts: "The Stroke" vs. "Mickey" vs. "Pour Some Sugar on Me"

My friend's band Knoedel used to do a DEVO-esque version of The Stroke where before the song they sample one of them saying "stroke" into a casio SK-1 then during the big break they'd play it back all low-fi and ridiculous sounding.

You just felt so bad for the guy when they were juxtaposing his interview with bits from that atrocious video. And then the fact that it was all in a segment about Def Leppard's rise...

In The Dark
My Kinda Lover
The Stroke
Lonely Is The Night
Everybody Wants You

and you could throw the song "Can't Wait" by his old band Piper on there too.

But both are classic.

gutav mahler, i invented the sonata

The song is a reference to the music industry and how musicians are used by an industry wanting more and bigger hits, and the concept of "strokes" from transactional analysis. It is not, as was widely but erroneously believed, about masturbation.

i widely believe u

i DJed a night of heavy classic rock and breaks recently and dropped this song in the middle and had someone in the audience yell "YYEAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

what else did you play? Besides The Mexican...

Are you for real am0n? How do you know? God, I haven't heard this song in a really long time. I think I'd get quite a kick out of it. That's an awesome story, Jaxon, sounds like something I would do!

in this dive club I used to frequent in the 90s, the DJ used to put NIN's Closer (which was still pretty new at the time) on the other deck and cross-fade them back and forth, and juxtapose in certain parts. it was fun.

dan, i actually don't own the mexican on vinyl except for the jellybean benitez remix (which i've been playing out a lot lately. it mixes well with Fox The Fox - Precious Little Diamond).

but i played a lot of soundtracks (schiffrin's dirty harry/enforcer, hell's belles), a buncha krauty/proggy things, some psychedlic soul norman whitfield type things, and a ton of hairy 70s stuff people like scott seward would dig on like Sir Lord Baltimore, Lucifer's Friend, Spooky Tooth, Uriah Heep, etc.

i created a playlist of this kinda stuff for dmr's viva radio show
http://threethreefourfive.blogspot.com/2008/12/viva-no-14.html

DJ used to put NIN's Closer

That break in the middle - BOOM thwak BOOM thwak has always reminded me of Holy Money era swans.

Man, Billy Squier is great. "Tale of the Tape" and "Don't Say No" are awesome, as is much of "Emotion in Motion." He deserved what he got, maybe, for the infamous "Rock Me Tonite" video, but that song is still OK. Totally tops '80s AOR.

do it

Listening to the latest Eminem album after I picked it up on sale, knowing little about it other than a couple of the producers, and this came on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab9176Srb5Y

I immediately knew that it was Rick Rubin's handiwork - he even sampled his own shit with the Beasties. But it seemed so old school using Billy Squier since all of the early hip-hop deejays always knew that "Big Beat" was the shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcQYgrm6Vv0

But "The Stroke" helped make me who I am, for better or worse. I was somewhat OCD and loved lists even at an early age. So listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem was something I got into the habit of doing at a young age - my pre-teen years. Naturally, I kept a book where I counted down along with Casey, keeping meticulous record of chart movement, debuts and weeks on the chart.

(I was ignorant that I could have bugged dad for a subscription to Billboard Magazine which would have had all I craved and even more.)

This was all taking place in the early '80s. I remember just about every song on this list and this list with alarming clarity and I had an unhealthy fascination with Stars On 45 (I was so psyched when "Medley" made it to #1, even though it was just for one week).

Well, two songs changed everything:

AC/DC's "Back In Black" spent only a couple of weeks on the countdown, peaking in the high 30s if memory serves. And around the same time, Billy Squier had a longer run with "The Stroke." It was when those two songs entered the charts and my life that I made a profound discovery: Loud guitar shits all over "Bette Davis Eyes."

With that as my backbone, I was either going to be a metalhead or a stripper. I and everyone who knows me will agree I made the right choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiJ2TYRm1u4

this is great if you like rock cautionary tales. the song/video are still not well known in the UK.

True story - I have a friend who was Billy Squier's bass player at the height of his career (1982). He was touring with Foreigner and when they did "The Stroke", they'd get some of the guys from Foreigner and crew guys and any friends of the band to come onstage and sing the "stroke me, stroke me" part and do this very exaggerated jerking off hand motion. I got recruited in Pittsburgh, Philly, and Cleveland. They were my shining moments.

― Sandy, Tuesday, June 24, 2014 5:02 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

do it

― mookieproof, Saturday, January 18, 2014 12:11 AM (five years ago)

so I learned Billy Squier was in a pre-Piper band called Kicks with Jerry Nolan of the NY Dolls

the intro on this is so Dolls, also tune reminds me of proto-Replacements at times

killer track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjMqoNYlz1g

"The Stroke"? Best song ever. I love those 1981-1982 singles.