🚢Yacht Pop Anchors #5: The Kings ("This Beat/Switchin' to Glide"), Donnie Iris ("Ah! Leah!"), 1980
⚓Like Yacht Rock, but with a little more octane, more harmonies, infinitely hummable melodies, and some jangly guitars.
As it so often does, the dynamism runs deep in this duo of songs that coulda/shoulda been hits, or if they dented the charts at all, shoulda been bigger hits. Regardless, even if heard, they seem to have gotten a bit lost in the cobwebs of time, and deserve far more air time! And, that’s why we’re here! Gather for muster drill!
1. The Kings, “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ To Glide,” 1980
The demo as recorded for a proposed indie album (below): This is what Bob Ezrin heard. He had just finished spending well over a year producing Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and had hoped to take some time off.
According to the video’s YouTube content creator: “This version contains an alternate chord progression and extra lyrics which most people have never heard before.”
From the official Kings YouTube channel (@thekingsarehere), the band itself leaves this comment: “For what it’s worth, this is the way we were recording it when we were making an indie album. We met Bob Ezrin (production credits include Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, KISS, among many others) in the studio, and he agreed to mix this, but when he did, he said there was lots wrong with it, but it had promise. He got us a deal [with Elektra Records], we rewrote the song and the rest is history.”
Their debut album, The Kings are Here, went Gold in Canada, and peaked at #74 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart in October 1980, spending 26 weeks there. The single “Switchin’ to Glide”/”This Beat Goes On” reached #43 on Billboard's Hot 100.
The Kings were formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Oakville, Ontario in the late 1970s. The original lineup included David Diamond, bass and lead vocals; Mister Zero (aka John Picard, listed as Aryan Zero in the original debut Kings Are Here LP liner notes), guitar; Sonny Keyes, keyboards and vocals; and Max Styles (drums), with Zero and Diamond serving as the main songwriters with contributions from Keyes.
From 2016, this interview from the Boom 97.3 YouTube channel: “We had guitarist, Mister Zero, and bass/lead vocalist, David Diamond, from The Kings came by the Boom 97.3 studios to share their story about their song, ‘This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ To Glide’ on vinyl! They talk about the genesis of the main riff of the song, the writing, the decision to move two songs into one and more!”
And, from the early 2000s, a reunited original line-up performing live for a benefit:
2. Donnie Iris, “Ah! Leah!,” 1980
Born Dominic Ierace in 1943, Donnie grew up in the greater Pittsburgh area. Taking up the guitar and drums by his teens, he had done quite a bit of singing in elementary school, singing at weddings, on local TV and in talent contests.
The Walk-Up to “Ah! Leah!”: Time With 2 Major Label Acts
In the mid-’60s, Iris helped form The Jaggerz, who recorded their first album in 1969, and, after a label switch from Gamble Records to Kama Sutra (distributed by Buddah Records) the following year, the band released We Went to Different Schools Together.
It’s for this album that Iris wrote “The Rapper,” which, while climbing its way to #2 in the U.S., was kept from the top spot by Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Iris to Songfacts: “We recorded ‘The Rapper’ around the summer of ‘69. It came out in late ‘69 and hit the top of the charts by 1970 [in March]. The song itself was just something I wrote watching people in nightclubs and all the bars we were playing in. I’d see these dudes go over and start rapping to all the chicks. In those days, we used to call trying to pick up chicks ‘rappin’. What they were doing, though, was basically just hitting on them. That’s how the song came about, just watching these guys and all their moves.
“Who the hell knows? Those things just happen.” Donnie was trying to explain how the song got to be so huge: “Probably 8 or 10 different record companies had turned us down before Neil Bogart at Buddha gave us a shot” [3 years before the exec started Casablanca Records by signing Kiss and talking Warner Bros. into what turned out to be a short-lived distribution deal].
“So, I don’t know if anybody else really heard a hit in it, but I guess he did. He thought it had a good shot at doing something. And he was right. I mean, it took off like crazy!”
“I was in Wild Cherry after [“Play That Funky Music,” written and produced by Rob Parissi] became a hit.” Donnie would play that song on the road on Wild Cherry tours, but had nothing to do with the song’s recording. “That song was obviously a huge #1 hit, and, I don’t know what happened in that band, but a couple of the guys from it had left, and they asked me to join. That’s how I met Mark Avsec, my keyboard player. He was in that band.”
Sure enough, Avsec was asked to play keyboards on four tracks for the sessions to Wild Cherry’s self-titled 1976 debut album for Sweet City/Epic/CBS Records, but he didn’t play on “Play That Funky Music.” Like Iris, though, he was asked to join the band on the road. While Iris had yet to join, that should be Avsec on the keys here for this 1976 Midnight Special taping:
“Ah! Leah!” The Video
Likely shot in the summer of 1980 to coincide with the MCA Records single and Back on the Streets album release, the “Ah! Leah!” music video was still a year away from taking advantage of a little thing called MTV, which debuted in August 1981. This explains the video’s shoestring budget, as production costs were relegated to nothing more or other than a white backdrop, lunch for the two extras, and a prop Nikon:
“Ah! Leah!” got to #29 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, with many industry experts crying “foul” that it stalled in the Top 30, reasoning it was strong enough to easily reach the Top 10. Canada treated it to a #6 showing, while Australia saw it hit #34. Mark Avsec, who produced (and likely did most of the arranging), co-wrote the song with Iris.
Liner Notes: The Lyrics and a Personal Account
Earworms & Song Loops’ content creator and longtime friend of FR&B,
(pictured above), has a cool history with the song I asked him to share:Most of my life, I never knew the title of “Ah! Leah!” Maybe I’d heard a DJ say the title on the radio, but I assumed it was just a made-up trio of syllables, like “Ah Li Ya” or something like that. It wasn’t until I got SiriusXM radio in my car that I saw the actual title. “Ah,” I said to myself, “Leah!” That made better sense than my made up syllables impression.
But, maybe I was right in the first place! According to the internet, which is never wrong, the song originally was meant to be an anti-war song. Avsec thought the sound of “Ah Li Ya” (or something to that effect) sounded like a chant. Iris heard the name Leah in the chant, and did not think it sounded like a war chant in the slightest, so the duo nixed the whole anti-war anthem idea and turned it into one of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time.
It’s written as a love song, but if you look at the lyrics, it reads more like a lust song. It’s about a guy who knows that he and Leah have nothing in common other than they create magic when bumping genitals. Or more specifically:
Baby, it’s no good / We’re just asking for trouble / I can touch you / But I don't know how to love you / It ain’t no use We’re headed for disaster / Our minds said no But our hearts were talking faster.
Steve’s recent deep dive into the Earworm-iness of “Ah! Leah!”:
Donnie recently talked about the single to Songfacts’ Carl Wiser: “You know, when that song came out, I had a map in my house of the United States. That song just started to get added on all these radio stations across the country. We were going crazy. We couldn't believe it was happening.
“I still remember putting little flags in the map on all the cities that were playing the song. I also wrote down all the call letters of those radio stations. I probably still have that map at home. That thing was covered in flags all up along the East Coast. It was great!”
Concert Footage, 1981: The Live “Ah! Leah!”
A sonic wonderment and certain choral victory on record, “Ah! Leah!” transforms into a deceptively suitable concert arena rocker that would make any Winger or Night Ranger fan mumble righteously, “Awright, dood”! This live 1981 Donnie Iris and The Cruisers performance is a solid representation of the band, post-single success.
A nifty 21st-century arrangement, as Donnie and band, in 2016, begin “Ah! Leah!” as, decidedly, a ballad, before launching into a mighty impressive electric version we’ve all come to know and love! For what was originally a sonic studio production by Mark Avsec, they’ve managed to recreate onstage, quite faithfully, the wall of vocal and instrumental sound on the record!👇
The Professor of Rock reveals the “Ah! Leah!” story:
One last recent acoustic version…just Donnie, a phone, some friends, and a table:
Thanks, I hadn't heard this demo version of the The Kings song. I have fond memories of the track because I was living in Chicago at the time and the big FM rocker in town - "The Loop" played the song non-stop. My recollection is that it was much bigger there than just about anywhere else.
I highly recommend the Donnie Iris song "Love Is Like A Rock," which was one of the singles off of the follow-up album.
Love "Ah! Leah!" -- my local classic rock station occasionally plays it and I crank up the radio. Such a great cruisin' in the car record. Glad you covered this!
I forgot about "The Rapper" but it came back immediately. Pretty funny. We all knew 'rappers' back then! R&B girl group TLC called them 'scrubs' 30 years later (the broke mama's boy type) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM.