ROCKING AROUND THE DECADES WITH ROB AND ERIC appointing ends. And before breaking The pandemic has hit pause on 20+20— through with Nervous Night they’d spent the planned 40th anniversary tour for their fi ve years performing around Philadel- phia as the Hooters evolved from an is- iconic 1980s band the Hooters—but Rob landy ska-punk brew (fi rst heard on their indie album release Amore). Hyman and Eric Bazilian insist the show Those professional immersions schooled will go on (20+20+1), while keeping them early in the dark side of the music business—the pileup of advances and musically busy in the meantime. promotional expenses and unfulfi lled promises that eventually cause most By Jonathan Takiff groups to call it quits. “Making music has always been its own reward for us,” said Hyman. “That’s what’s kept us go- ing, through thick and thin.” ife was looking good—maybe too a richly melodic, one-of-a-kind pop-rock, Making the thin years less lean, both good—for Rob Hyman C’72 and Eric reggae/ska and folk-fusing group that have also written songs, fi rst covered by Bazilian C’75 when we fi rst recon- earned “Best New Band of 1985” honors other artists, that have become modern nected back in February to refl ect from Rolling Stone. Their major label de- pop classics and are often licensed for on and toast their topsy-turvy ca- but album from Columbia Records, Ner- fi lms and TV shows—the musical equiv- Lreers in pop music: A marathon gig as vous Night—featuring the infectiously alent of annuities, earning “enough to songwriters, arrangers, band front men, danceable, keyboard-vamped (Hyman) live on,” Hyman says. These signature and featured sidemen. And a verging- and guitars a-blazing (Bazilian) anthems songs have also opened the door to col- on-half-century-long friendship that “And We Danced” and “Day by Day,” and laborations with the likes of Mick Jagger, began when they met in an electronic the heavy hitting, apocalyptic thumper Jon Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, and the Ger- music class at Penn when Rob was a se- “All You Zombies”—quickly amassed two man rock band Scorpions. nior and Eric a freshman. million sales, just in the US. For Hyman the annuity is “Time After “If we’d been just one more year apart, By that time, these guys were already Time,” a haunting ballad that was a hit we’d never have intersected, our lives would veterans of two prior bands that had fi rst for Cyndi Lauper (who shares the be drastically diff erent,” mused Hyman. sprung out of their Penn experience, Wax writing credit and royalties), with Hyman The two are best known as the lead per- and Baby Grand, both of which had gar- singing backup. The song has since been formers and composers for the Hooters, nered record deals before coming to dis- covered by everyone from country legend 44 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Sep | Oct 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY JAY BEVENOUR Sep | Oct 2020 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 45 The band in its 1980s “big hair” days ... Willie Nelson to jazz great Miles Davis The more provocative themes and mix musicians, in rock, jazz, and blues who’ve and has maintained pop currency with of Celtic folk, Cajun, and sing-along pub earned ‘most respected abroad’ status,” 21st century takes by American R&B sing- ballad fl avors that emerged in their second he adds, name-checking edgy originals ers INOJ and Javier Colon, the punk band and third Columbia albums, One Way such as 1950s rocker Eddie Cochran, who Quietdrive, Eurodance project Novaspace Home (1987) and Zig-Zag (1989), in songs died at 21 in a UK car crash; cool jazz and British synthwave group Gunship. like the jaunty TV preachers’ mocking vocalist and trumpeter Chet Baker; “God- Bazilian’s ticket to ride was (and re- “Satellite,” lovestruck “Karla with a K,” the mother of rock and roll” Sister Rosetta mains) “One of Us,” introduced by Joan ominous “Johnny B,” and their dub-beat Tharpe; and blues icon Muddy Waters. Osborne. A sly, spur-of-the-moment, remake of “500 Miles,” have won the group Chertoff and Hyman met as freshmen one-take improvisation by the writer, a huge and disparate following overseas. in biology lab, where they were dissecting —which is “how the best ones often hap- Even heavy metal fans “go crazy when frogs. They decided that going back to the pen,” he says—the song ponders the we bring out an accordion and mandolin dorms to listen to albums would be more question What if God was one of us? productive. Chertoff would become Just a slob like one of us?” the drummer in two college years bands with Hyman, fi rst the bluesy ut a musician can’t live on song- Buckwheat, which was strictly a fra- writing royalties alone. With a ternity party thing, and then the jam- feeling of “let’s do this while we ming, prog-rock Wax, which also in- B still can,” back in February the cluded David Kagan C’71 on vocals now 70-year-old Hyman and 67-year- and guitarist Rick Levy C’71. old Bazilian were anticipating the The latter band endeavor lured launch of a major tour for the sum- them away from classes to record an mer of 2020—billed as “20+20”—to album in New York City for a fl edg- mark their 40 years as the Hooters. ling label run by Bob Crewe, already Hyman, who now also functions as famous as cowriter and producer of the band’s manager with his wife hit songs for the Four Seasons, Sally, had spent much of the last two among others. But that adventure years organizing the tour, which was abruptly ended for our guys when to have started on Memorial Day the label went bust, shut its doors, weekend in their still most welcom- and ate their tapes. A long-lost, cut- ing hometown, on a big bill at the Mann and our namesake Hooter,” a harmonica/ live Wax studio session made a belated Center with fellow Philly-rooted duo Da- keyboard hybrid, aka Melodica, said Ba- album debut as Melted in 2010, issued ryl Hall and John Oates. After that Hy- zilian. When I suggested that those by LightYear Entertainment, a label run man, Bazilian, and Hooters bandmates sounds could strike a rootsy, familial by a Penn friend who had been a big fan David Uosikkinen, John Lilley, Fran chord for the Euros, he agreed but added, and publicist for the band, Arnie Hol- Smith Jr., and Tommy Williams, and their “It’s also because we rock them—hard.” land C’71 L’74 [“When Wax Was Hot,” mostly Europe-based road crew of 14 Many of the scheduled summer 2020 Sep|Oct 2010]. were set to jump on the fi rst of many shows were already sold out in frosty When Chertoff went to work after “planes, trains, buses, and automobiles” February, Hyman marveled then. “We’re graduation at Arista Records, he signed for 35 rock-hall and festival dates abroad, headlining a mix of 1,000 to 1,500 [per- and produced Baby Grand. With Hyman, before returning home for more gigs into son] capacity venues and some of the Kagan, and Bazilian at the core, Baby the fall. biggest festivals—major events that go Grand aspired to be the next Steely Dan, The tour was to feature an especially on for three or four days.” even utilizing one of the same studio strong focus on festival and large club “A US band that’s bigger overseas is a musicians employed by the jazz-pop shows in Northern Europe—Germany, rare phenomenon but not unheard of,” group’s founders Donald Fagen and Wal- Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway—where says veteran record producer Rick Cher- ter Becker. Baby Grand released a pair the band is most popular these days. Iron- toff C’72, a roommate of Hyman’s at Penn of albums in 1977–78 that “didn’t have a ically, European listeners fi rst picked up whose life and career in the music world hit single between them,” Bazilian said on the Hooters “just when our American is tightly intertwined with Hyman and (though “Alligator Drive” and “Never album sales were drooping and our label Bazilian. “Historically, it’s been signifi - Enough”—later covered by new wave was losing interest,” Hyman noted. cant but less commercially successful singer-songwriter Patty Smyth—had po- 46 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Sep | Oct 2020 Photo by Columbia Records courtesy The Hooters and now(ish), playing at Circus Krone in Munich, Germany, in 2015. tential in this listener’s opinion), before going bankrupt and disbanding. After moving to Columbia Records, Chertoff shepherded Hyman and Bazil- ian’s three Hooters albums for the label. He wasn’t involved in their 1993 album for MCA, Out of Body, or their most ma- ture, life-affi rming set—2007’s Time Stand Still, self-produced by Rob and Eric on their own label—but in 1998 he did collaborate with Hyman on an inter- esting side project, the album Largo. Chertoff also had a hand in Hyman and Bazilian’s respective “annuities.” In 1983, before their fi rst Hooters set was record- ed for the same label group, he show- cased their talents on Cyndi Lauper’s 16 million-selling breakthrough album She’s So Unusual, which featured “Time After Time.” Rob and Eric, who arranged and played on the whole set (also famous for their reggae-cized “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”), were eff ectively “the band before I had a band,” Lauper would de- clare.