There is no band that had a more improbable run through a half-a-decade (ok, maybe ZZ Top) in which you would have lost money betting they would not have had a string of hits than… .38 Special.
Hear me out, my mullet-sporting friends. Get ready to pound a Pabst.
Recommended Videos
Totally conceding that they rode the coattails of the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special just hits different. Here was a band with soaring vocals, filthy bass and crunching guitars that somehow set up shop on the Top 40 right alongside Boy George and Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. But how? How in the name of beer and smokes did this band even exist in a decade so dominated by Duran Duran that when Duran Duran’s greatest hits album came out, it was called Decade?
I was a classic rock radio DJ at the beginning of my broadcasting career. I must have played .38 Special hundreds of times. 29 years later I couldn’t tell you their lead singer’s name nor any one nugget of trivia about this southern fried band’s history. It literally boggles the mind and—WAIT. Let it be known I have done some Wikipedia research since the last sentence and now I know the singer’s name was Don Barnes and there is a Van Zandt connection in the form of Donnie. But let’s not lose focus.
It’s less important who made up .38 Special and more important that they somehow existed and had hits 10 years after they should have mattered.
I don’t care how many times I hear it. Rockin’ Into The Night will always be one of my favorite songs. The way the drum kicks in on two and a half beats and the guitar soars into the action like an avenging angel throwing shiny chrome spears at the dying carcass of disco, while also vaguely appropriating the Bee Gee’s “You Should Be Dancing” beat, this is Patrick Swayze Roadhouse Dalton rock ‘n’ roll at its peak.
This song makes me want to smoke Marlboro’s, fight guys bigger than me, date a buxom blonde wearing cutoff jean shorts, race a Camaro, learn karate, drive a semi, and drink a case of Pabst. Editors note: multiple mentions of Pabst does not constitute an endorsement. Just so we are clear.
The band’s other hits Hold On Loosely and Caught Up In You are jointly a perennial threat to be TV commercial anthems. Neither tune ever seems to age. Which is interesting because when was the last time you heard a Duran Duran song?
I would wager a decade.
Watch Jason Carr Live, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 9:45 a.m., streaming live on Local 4+ and ClickOnDetroit.