Either way, various publishers noticed how much “Roll With It” sounded like “(I’m A) Road Runner,” the 1966 single from Jr. In fact, Winwood was probably trying too hard to evoke that stuff, or maybe he was just copying. Winwood recorded “Roll With It” in Toronto, not in the South, but he was definitely trying to evoke some kind of classic American grit. Roll With It sounds like an album from the kid who kept a neon Budweiser sign on his dorm-room wall because he thought that made his room look like a seedy bar.įor “Roll With It,” his album’s first single and title track, Steve Winwood worked with a few musicians with deep Southern roots, including the Nashville studio keyboardist Mike Lawler (who’d had a short run with the Allman Brothers Band in the early ’80s) and with the Memphis Horns, the legendary horn section who’d played on dozens of Stax classics. In the end, though, Roll With It really just came across as a slick ’80s version of the stuff that Winwood had made decades earlier with the Spencer Davis Group, which itself was a slick ’60s version of the blues records that Winwood loved. Winwood had always loved Southern blues and soul, and Roll With It was his attempt to tap into those traditions. Winwood co-produced his 1988 album Roll With It with Tom Lord-Alge, the guy who’d engineered Back In The High Life and who’d remixed “Valerie.” Winwood had just married his second wife, an American woman, and he’d moved to Tennessee. But after the success of Back In The High Life, Winwood left Island and signed a $13 million deal with Virgin. The Spencer Davis Group had signed with Island Records in 1964, when Winwood was 16, and he’d been with the label ever since. (It’s a 5.) Suddenly, Steve Winwood was the most popular he’d ever been. Winwood stacked his 1986 album Back In The High Life with a dream team of star collaborators, and he finally reached #1 with the slickly bland “ Higher Love,” which had both Chaka Khan and Nile Rodgers in its supporting cast.Īfter “Higher Love,” Winwood got to #8 with the bloopy Back In The High Life ballad “ The Finer Things.” (It’s a 4.) Soon afterward, Winwood reached #9 with a remixed version of “ Valerie,” a 1982 single that had only made it as high as #70 in its first run. In the ’80s, Winwood made a conscious decision to play toward his mass-entertainer side, moving to New York and hiring a high-powered manager. With Traffic and Blind Faith, Winwood stayed in the rock-establishment mix for decades. With the Spencer Davis Group, Winwood had been a British blues-rock child star, a guy who wowed audiences and peers by moaning and hollering in ways that sounded so much like the blues records that British Invasion types fetishized so lovingly. In a late-’80s environment when beer-commercial aesthetics dominated, it was a towering smash.īy 1988, Steve Winwood had been doing pantomime for more than half his life. “Roll With It” is a copy of a copy, a piece of sheer pantomime. He constructed Steve Winwood the Southern fantasyland that Winwood so clearly wanted. It wouldn’t be the last.) For “Roll With It,” Fincher did the obvious thing. (“Roll With It” was the first song with a David Fincher video to hit #1. By that point, Fincher had been directing music videos for years - for Rick Springfield, for the Outfield, for the Hooters, for Johnny Hates Jazz. The same year that he shot the “Roll With It” video, Fincher also made a transfixingly coked-out Colt 45 ad with Billy Dee Williams. It all looks dazzling, in the same way that an exceptionally well-made beer commercial looks dazzling.įincher, still four years away from making his feature debut with Alien 3, knew how to make a beer commercial. Fincher shoots everything in sepia-toned black and white. The people in the crowd, most of whom are a whole lot younger and Blacker than Steve Winwood, hump each other in elaborately choreographed ways. He’s got suspenders over his white shirt and sweat sprayed on his face. Winwood, 40 years old and still plenty hot himself, bangs on a Hammond organ and makes passionate faces at the camera. The David Fincher-directed video for “Roll With It,” Steve Winwood’s second and final #1 hit, takes place in some sort of idealized Southern juke joint that only lets sexy people in the door. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.Įveryone is hot.
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