Worst Top 40 Hit By Otherwise Cool Rock Band: The Tubes Edition!

Quick, can you name The Tubes first Top 40 hit?

To arrive at the correct answer, one must trace The Tubes' musical past back to the precise crossroads (Hollywood and Vine) where, in 1981, the band sold their "collective soul" for a single desperate stab at Top 40 fame and fortune.

See, the Tubes had just been dropped by A&M Records and were admittedly wondering what the future held when an offer from Capitol Records caught them quite by surprise. The only catch was that the label wanted to pair them with a relatively unknown producer by the name of David Foster.

The Tubes were a veteran S.F. cult band who'd spent the '70s making controversial headlines for live shows that included some quite daring theatrics, but had still somehow managed to get kicked off of a label that catered to weird acts. Staring headlong at a futuristic new decade, the band must have thought they might never get another major label offer so, when the Capitol deal arrived, they'd already stared into the abyss of their own demise.

Co-write a schmaltzy ballad that won't even feature our lead singer?

Sure, where do we sign?

Now, as much as I adored "Talk To Ya Later" the first time I heard it on the radio and screamed "Now, THAT is a hit", this masterful blast of radio rock didn't even chart when released as the follow-up single to a song called "Don't Want To Wait Anymore", which had been released two months earlier and, amazingly, rocketed into the Top 40.

Now, I don't know where I was in 1981 that I missed ever hearing this song at a dance or at the mall or on the radio or MTV, but I can sure as hell tell you that if I had heard it before I bought the album, it would have given me serious pause.

Add to this the fact that I haven't heard this song on the radio once since it was a hit, which is quite remarkable when you consider the countless "80's flashback lunches" I've listened to on many a lunch break over the years.

Revisiting the song now, I am flummoxed by its utter contempt for innocent human ears and livid that David Foster would use The Tubes as his soft-pap guinea pigs, tweaking the very formula that he would later force upon Chicago when they sold their souls to The Bunny for power ballad infamy.

The real irony is that, had the Tubes not had an even bigger hit on their next album, Fee Waybill would have gone down in history as one of the few iconic lead singers who gets to take a pee break during the performance of his band's biggest hit.