Now..
Back when... Hey Mickey
by:Chris Willman
Hey Toni, you’re still so fine, you’re still so fine, you still blow our minds.
Forming
a human pyramid isn’t how we usually celebrate pop artists entering
their eighth decade. But we’ll have to make an exception in the case of
Toni Basil, the symbol of early-’80s sprightliness who slipped us a
“Mickey” with her sole hit back in 1982. She turns 73 on September 22
and, if a recent viral video
of her busting a move at a 2016 dance workshop is any indication, Basil
fits into that Las Vegas High cheerleader outfit just as well as when
she starred in one of MTV’s most famous early videos.
Basil
is a one-hit wonder who’s enjoyed a successful career throughout the
last 50 years. If that sounds paradoxical, it’s worth pointing out that
“singer” has really been the least important component of her
multi-hyphenate singer/dancer/actress/choreographer/director legacy.
Like Jennifer Lopez, Basil was a dancer who parlayed that into a musical
career. But unlike J.Lo, she quickly went back to her former
profession, retiring from record-making after her sophomore album
stiffed in ’83.
”People
think, ‘Well, she’s not around because she’s not in front of the
camera.’ You’re not going to be that naïve, are you?” she complained to Entertainment Weekly in 1996, taking umbrage at the one-hit wonder slur.
It
was hardly as if she could financially coast on the success of
“Mickey,” which continues to be the DJ’s choice any time some ‘80s tunes
are called for on the dance floor. “I don’t think my story is an
unusual story for a lot of music performers,” she told an English TV
interviewer recently. “But I think that since 1982, worldwide, I have
probably seen less than 3,000 American dollars in royalties.”
Unknown
to most pop fans who know her mostly for her work with pompons, Basil
has been a virtual Zelig of pop culture — working alongside David Bowie,
Elvis Presley, Talking Heads, the Monkees, Devo, Frank Sinatra, George
Lucas, Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, Bette Midler, the Muppets, Matchbox
Twenty, and even Suite Life-era Zack and Cody. One of her
latest credits on IMDB had her choreographing an episode of RuPaul’s TV
show… which is a long way from dancing next to Annette Funicello all the
way back in 1964’s Pajama Party.
Basil
really did go to Las Vegas High, per the uniform, thanks to her
father/s longtime gig as the orchestra leader at the Sands. She soon
came to L.A. to dance in an early-/60s theatrical revival of West Side Story, the cast of which included fellow dancer and BFF Teri Garr, who boogied along with her in Pajama Party, Viva Las Vegas, and The T.A.M.I. Show.
“Boy, did I envy her!” Garr wrote in her memoir. “Toni grew up in a show
business family in Las Vegas…At her apartment she had false eyelashes,
hairpieces, and a waist-cincher. This level of accessorizing impressed
me. As far as I was concerned, it made Toni a real show-business dancer.
I was in awe of her.” Their adventures included being invited to sit in
on the recording of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” then going out for
a full night of drinking and dancing with all four Fabs afterward.
Basil also hoofed it up for Bob Fosse in Sweet Charity and partnered with Davy Jones for a memorable production number in the Monkees’ Head. But her allure was enough to land her non-dancing roles in Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider; in the latter, she played a hooker Peter Fonda took a shine to in New Orleans.
Hollywood
suddenly had a thirst for the counterculture, but its elders didn’t
know how to service these crazy kids. As someone who knew how to keep
dancing from looking musty on the big screen, Basil was uniquely
positioned to start getting her own choreographing gigs.
She was well known enough by 1974 to land a cover story in New York’s After Dark magazine, and, in 1976, to be praised as “the Pavlova of the Sunset Strip” in a feature in Ms. magazine.
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