ARCHIE vs. DON KIRSHNER: "BUTT NAKED BEACH PARTY"
Salem Saberhagen presents
THE ARCHIES
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Don Kirshner was executive producer for The Monkees. Their first single, “Last Train To Clarksville” had shot straight to Number One on the charts! Yet “Bang-Shang-A-Lang” hadn’t even nudged the Top Twenty - unacceptable! Mr. K felt that he needed to light a fire under The Archies, and dude hit upon a wild scheme to do that: A live-action film to showcase their music. A film that earned as close to an X-rating as possible! He got the idea after going to see the band perform live at a wild beachside club. Escúchame, amigos: The existence of that club and the part it and its founders played in this story is something you've never heard before.
T R A P P E D !
. . . IN A ROCK CANDY GROOVE.
"butt naked beach party"
THE YEAR 1988 (PART TWO)
MOVIE SOUNDTRACK SESSIONS
LATE NOVEMBER 1988
MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK
A CANNON FILM
“BUTT NAKED BEACH PARTY”
A PHIL SPECTOR PRODUCTION
RADIO RECORDERS, HOLLYWOOD
BIG HONKY BABY
(JEFF BARRY)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
ISLAND
(JEFF BARRY, BOBBY BLOOM)
- unreleased
HONEY DO
(JEFF BARRY, MARTY SANDERS)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
MARY, JANEY AND ME
(JEFF BARRY, NEIL BRIAN GOLDBERG,
ROBIN McNAMARA)
- unreleased
SHOUT MY NAME!
(JEFF BARRY)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
YOU GOT STYLE
(JEFF BARRY, ANDY KIM)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
FEELIN’ SO GOOD (SKOOBY-DOO)
(JEFF BARRY, ANDY KIM)
- single
GOTTA GIVE IT TIME
(JEFF BARRY, JOEY LEVINE)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
FRIDAY KIND OF MONDAY
(JEFF BARRY, ELLIE GREENWICH)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
BABY, LET’S STICK TOGETHER!
(JEFF BARRY, PHIL SPECTOR)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
PALM OF YOUR HAND
(JEFF BARRY, ARTIE RESNICK)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
NINE OUT OF EVERY TEN
(JEFF BARRY, ARTIE RESNICK)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
HOOTCHY KOOTCHY WING DANG DOO
short version
(JEFF BARRY, APRIL STEVENS, NINO TEMPO)
- BUTT NAKED soundtrack LP
HOOTCHY KOOTCHY WING DANG DOO
long version
(JEFF BARRY, APRIL STEVENS, NINO TEMPO)*
- unreleased
THE ARCHIES
w/NINO TEMPO + 5th AVENUE SAX
w/HONEY CONE
*w/JULIE + THE PUSSY CATS
*w/STORMY FOSTER
Music Supervisor:
DON KIRSHNER
Music Director:
AKI ALEONG
Vocal Arranger:
DARLENE LOVE
Arranger:
PERRY BOTKIN, JR
Producer:
PHIL SPECTOR
Sound Engineers:
LARRY LEVINE, YESEÑA PACIFICO
Sigfrid Büttnekit was a banker's son who emigrated from Sweden in the early 1970s. Arriving in New York City, he met and fell in love with a saxophone player named Terry Tate Wilkins. Terry's parents Dave and Donna Wilkins had owned nightclubs, and he hoped to follow in their footsteps. Making their way to Los Angeles, the lovers became business partners; they opened a club near San Onofre Beach called The Butt Naked Lounge!
Over a decade, it evolved from discothèque to male strip bar to BYOB Rock club with a "swimwear mandatory" admission policy. During that time, the partners' personal relationship cooled down; Terry ended up selling Sigfrid his share of the club. Moving back to his home town of Riverdale, Massachusetts, Terry opened a diner called The Chok'Lit Shoppe. That's right - the famous high school hangout! Locals came to know him as "Pop" Tate.
Pop met Juggy Jones as a teenager and they bonded over shared interest in Jazz. During his junior and senior years in high school, Juggy and his friend Reggie "Gino" Mantle would stay in the diner after it closed, help clean up and then and jam with Pop! Dude helped them hone their chops to a fine point. When the boys left for college, they kept in touch; Pop urged them to form their own band and subsequently became a benefactor of The Juggz. Their very first performance took place at the Chok'Lit Shoppe.
From Riverdale, he closely monitored their evolution into The Archies. When the group signed with Kirshner Records and began spending time in Hollywood, Pop phoned Sigfrid. Patrons found his name hard to pronounce, so he now called himself Ziggy Butt Naked! "Look out for them," Pop told him. "They're good kids, and they've got talent." As a favor to his ex, dude booked The Archies for a single appearance at The Butt Naked Lounge. One gig became many as their popularity exploded! This was before they even had any records out.
So it happened that Don Kirshner caught their act at The Lounge one night in August '88. After the set was over, Archie looked around for Mr. K but he was nowhere in sight! Dude was bummed, but he didn't know what was going down in the back office: The Archies' manager had pigeonholed Ziggy Butt Naked and was busy giving him a hard sell. "What if we filmed a Rock 'n' Roll movie inside this club?" Ziggy was interested. The movie deal hadn’t even been put together yet! However, if anybody knew how to get projects greenlit in Hollywood, it was Don Kirshner.
The Kirshner Entertainment Corporation co-produced BUTT NAKED with Cannon Films. While the screenplay credited a lengthy roll call of names, Don Kirshner actually wrote most of it! (As a screenwriter, dude was a hella good record company executive - ¿compréndeme?) His narrative was raunchy, but only up to a point. “This isn’t the kind of project I’d have wanted to be involved with in the past,” he told Variety, “but times change! You’ve got to push the envelope now.” Dude ended up directing his own envelope-pushing script without credit following John Waters' departure; he withdrew from the production after two weeks!
Jughead invited his high school pal Kevin Keller onto the set, and dude ended up getting hired as an extra. “What's up with this shit?” Gino joked. “You trying to upstage us or something?” As a result of this exposure to lights! camera! and action! the acting bug bit the blond hunk hard and wouldn’t let go. A student at UCLA at the time, Kelly soon switched his major to drama. Gino was literally bitten: In a scene that also had Kelly and Archie in it, the swim trunks got ripped off his bare ass by a vicious Rottweiler named Satan! (Puppy's real name was Cupcake, and he was docile as a lamb.)
But that was nothing compared to when John Waters caught both Gino and Kelly in their birthday suits, cojiendo inside a beach cabaña like two horny chupacabras! Being the cutting-edge director that he was, John wanted to film the action: "Let's start over from the top, boys! Anybody got a can of Crisco?" ¡Ay puta! That scene got edited to within an inch of its life - you can only push a PG-13 rating so far!
Away from the movie set, they cut an excellent Surf Rock soundtrack over Thanksgiving break from school. The sessions were booked at the legendary Hollywood studio Radio Recorders, and Gino was stoked to be layin' tracks where Elvis Presley recorded most of his movie songs! Jeff Barry wrote all the lyrics and collaborated on the music with co-writers including Mentor Williams, Joey Levine, Nino Tempo, April Stevens and his ex-wife Ellie Greenwich. Dude was set to produce the tracking dates, too, but it turned out that Kirshner only wanted his songs. A film musical as controversial as this one needed to hire a controversial music producer, right? Bueno, that's how he saw it.
Mr. K had maintained a love/hate relationship with the notorious Phil Spector over the years! Phil was known to be a reclusive studio rat but Kirshner thought he would bite if enough money were dangled in front of his nose! Mucho dinero was dangled, but there was no bite; it took a share of the box office AND the promise of a cameo appearance in the film to hook his prize catch. After a respectable amount of prevaricating, Phil Spector finally came on board. Yet dude had absolutely no intention of producing an Archies record!
He despised New Wave Rock ‘n’ Roll, which was how Kirshner marketed the group; and he hated the cartoon band concept even more. "Like I'm gonna go from producing John Lennon, The Righteous Brothers, The Ramones and Tina Turner to working with The Archies," he scoffed.. "No! Fucking! Way!" A photo of Spector in the studio with Arch, Gino and Juggy circulated in the music press; but except for a remix or two, the BUTT NAKED BEACH PARTY soundtrack would be “A Phil Spector Production” in name only.
Belatedly, Jeff Barry was offered the job but ONLY if he would agree to produce without getting credit. Understandably insulted, Jeff refused! The hands-on work ended up being done by two of Phil's associates: Arranger Perry Botkin, Jr who'd written charts for Tina Turner, and bandleader Aki Aleong, who had an extensive Surf Music background. Also on hand was Nino Tempo, a former Pop star and Spector crony who hailed from the Jazz world. Nino assembled a brass section to accompany The Archies on the big film finale, “Hootchy Kootchy Wing Dang Doo.”
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Even more talent was on tap: Darlene Love was Phil Spector’s favorite session vocalist, singing either lead or background on most of his dates. Babe was on hand for the BUTT NAKED soundtrack sessions. Darlene wrote all of the vocal arrangements, and she shared background vocals with Honey Cone, the Pop/Soul group led by her sister Edna Wright. Known as The Queen of Christmas thanks to her perennial hit “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home),” Darlene Love will reunite with The Archies for a 2013 holiday concert!
Benefiting from dynamic performances by all concerned, as well as the potent cachet of a Phil Spector credit, the soundtrack album earned good word-of-mouth and damn near bagged a Gold record. In Australia, the soundtrack spun off a single unique to that continent: While "Baby, Let's Stick Together" didn't become a huge hit, it was popular enough to generate audience requests. Years later when The Archies toured "down under" for the first time, those unexpected requests required the band to re-learn the song in a hurry! By then, they'd totally forgotten it!
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The film reviews were a whole other issue. Movie critics took note of the band’s substantial charisma on screen, particularly Jughead’s; for Veronica, comparisons to Annette Funicello were inevitable and Betty was compared to Go-Go dance queen Candy Johnson! Despite scattered bravos for the cast, most reviewers thought the film sucked ass - Rex Reed called it "a bad trip you can take without needing drugs" - and Don Kirshner's risky cinematic venture came nowhere near turning a profit.
Ziggy Butt Naked made out like a bandido, though: His beach club reaped a publicity bonanza from BUTT NAKED BEACH PARTY! But The Archies, considered the film a major embarrassment. The group did perform some of the soundtrack music on stage at The Lounge, but aside from rare renditions of that Australian single, they never added any of it to their concert repertoire. Needless to say, none of those songs were ever heard on their cartoon show!
Kirshner didn't figure on Filmation Studios making a stink about the film's content: "What's this about those kids appearing in a soft porn flick? We need to schedule a meeting right away!" The situation was un poquito fraught until Mr. K assured the nervous animators that his spicy flick didn't live up to its provocative title. "I chickened out," he admitted. "We could barely justify a P-13 rating, much less an X! That's why John Waters quit the project." Gino and Kelly's heavily censored love scene notwithstanding, very little spice actually ended up on the screen.
The single that Don Kirshner chose to herald the movie, “Feelin’ So Good (SKOOBY-DOO)” was superb - the best Archies recording yet! Phil Spector definitely worked his Wall of Sound magic on the single mix; but it fared so poorly on the charts, Mr. K yanked the cut off the soundtrack. Both it and the train wreck of a movie were destined to draw an avid cult following in subsequent years. Claro que sí, isn't that how it always is? But much to the dismay of those cultists, the soundtrack master will go missing, delaying a reissue for decades.
As indicated by additional performers credited for the finale, The Archies weren’t the only act appearing in the movie. During this time, Josie James had left her band The Pussy Cats for what she called a “sabbatical.” Subbing for her was a great Rock singer named Julie Bonaventura, and Julie fronted The Pussy Cats on two of the numbers demo’d by Darlene Love: “We Can’t Dance To Your Music” and “Right Back Where I Started From.”
Another pair of Jeff Barry songs featured Stormy Foster’s rap improvisations; BUTT NAKED BEACH PARTY captured this cutting-edge Hip-Hop artist on film just before his career took off! A few years later, he and The Archies were destined to meet again under very different circumstances. Stormy and the Pussy Cats' selections were tracked separately, in December of 1988.
ARCHIE'S BITCHIN' SUMMER TOUR
June 1989
Los Angeles CA - The Hollywood Palladium
San Francisco CA - Bill Graham Civic Center
Seattle WA - Paramount Theater
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ARCHIE vs. DON KIRSHNER:
