Mr. Mister frontman Richard Page was flying high in the mid-’80s – but sometimes there are victims of success, and in this case it was Page’s pet dog Banjo who almost paid the ultimate price.
In December 1985, Mr. Mister had a No.1 hit in the US with the ballad Broken Wings. Just three months later they repeated the trick with the anthem Kyrie.
And in between, another US No.1 was a charity single in which Page played a background role – That’s What Friends Are For, performed by the all-star quartet of Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder.
Before working on this track, Page had collaborated with many other artists across the years as a session musician and backing vocalist.
He had sung on records by a wide array of acts including Julio Iglesias, Twisted Sister, Kenny Loggins and the Village People.
One of the biggest hits on which he featured was REO Speedwagon’s 1980 classic hit Keep On Loving You.
He also did a session for Mötley Crüe’s 1983 album Shout At The Devil, for which he was enlisted alongside Tom Kelly, a singer whose songwriting partnership with Billy Steinberg would yield mega-hits such as Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors and Madonna’s Like A Virgin.
In an interview with Rock Candy magazine, Page said of the Mötley Crüe session: “Tom Kelly and myself ended up singing this song called Bastard. And literally that’s all it was: ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ So we did that about twelve times.
“And that whole scene inside the studio [with Mötley Crüe] was everything you can imagine that it would be: the stereotypical Jack Daniels on the console, the big mirror full of coke, and some chicks running around. But those guys were really very cool. They were actually really nice!”
In complete contrast, That’s What Friends Are For was a charity single for the American Foundation for AIDS Research – and Page worked on the song’s arrangement with its original writers, two legendary masters of the art, Burt Bacharach and his then wife Carole Bayer Sager.
“There’s a funny story about that,” Page recalled to Rock Candy. “I had this dog called Banjo, a scruffy little thing, part wolf or something. We had some friends visiting our house, and Banjo had fallen asleep under my friend’s car.
“I got a call from Burt Bacharach: ‘Can you come to the studio right now?’ I said, ‘Okay.’ So my friend has to move his car so that I can get out, and he runs over Banjo.
“When we pulled him out, his face was flattened. It looked really bad. I said, ‘Oh my God, I gotta take him have him euthanised.’
“So I rushed to the vet while my wife called Burt to explain what happened, and after an hour of waiting the vet tells me that Banjo is going to be okay – they’ve wired up his face and he’s going to make it.”
Page continued: “When I finally got to the studio, there’s Burt and Carole, there’s Elton John here and Stevie Wonder over there.”
What’s more, alongside these music superstars was a Hollywood icon.
“Sitting on a couch, looking very glamorous, was Elizabeth Taylor!” Page said. “And I'm looking around going, ‘What the hell?’
“So Burt introduced me to everybody, and when we got to Elizabeth Taylor, she took my hand and said, ‘Is your dog okay?’ And I thought, wow – if only Banjo knew who was asking after him!”
That’s What Friends Are For spent four weeks at the top of the US chart in January 1986.
And keeping it in the family, the next No.1 was How Will I Know, sung by Dionne Warwick’s maternal first cousin Whitney Houston.
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