TOP 40 DEBUT: November 3, 1979
PEAK POSITION: #12 (January 19, 1980)
Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show were a ridiculous band. That's not an insult. Theirs was an intentional kind of ridiculousness, mining the same absurdist streak that drove both the Mothers of Invention and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. The kind of combo willing to turn all the songwriting for their first two albums over to a man best known for cartoons and children’s books. (Granted, that man was Shel Silverstein, and he’d already written “A Boy Named Sue” for Johnny Cash, and that’s a 10, so perhaps they were onto something.) The kind of combo to take the piss out of Rolling Stone with “The Cover Of ‘Rolling Stone,'” and then appear on the actual cover four months later. The kind of combo to name their flop third album Belly Up! Even in failure, they were in on the joke.
Dr. Hook, minus said Medicine Show, were an equally ridiculous band. But this time, it wasn’t on purpose. (So yes, "ridiculous" is now an insult.) The rechristened Dr. Hook surfaced in 1975, playing the exact kind of milquetoast soft-rock the Medicine Show incarnation once gleefully mocked. This incarnation, however, played it straight. And they had hits. Boy, did they have hits. They scored Top 10 singles in ‘75, and ’78, and ’79. And they nearly did it again at the dawn of 1980, when “Better Love Next Time” spent two weeks at #12. Dr. Hook were a genuine chart force for eight years, and I remain baffled how that happened.
Vocalists Ray Sawyer and Dennis Locorriere, along with keyboardist Billy Francis, dated back to the original Medicine Show lineup of 1968. They were the constants in a revolving lineup that swelled to as many as seven members, even before the name change. And once third vocalist George Cummings bailed in late ’75, Sawyer and Locorriere stepped forward as twin frontmen. With his distinctive cowboy hat and eye patch (the result of an earlier car accident), Sawyer was always going to be the obvious focal point. Plus, he’d taken lead on “The Cover Of ‘Rolling Stone’,” still their most distinctive hit. (And their best. It’s a 7.) To this day, I'm positive that 80% of the band's audience still thinks the one-eyed cowboy is the dude singing all the late Seventies hits.
Turns out Sawyer didn't sing any of them. Locorriere possessed the better voice, so it's his sweet—if bland—tenor anchoring every notable single released under the Dr. Hook name. But Sawyer wasn't exactly the kind of guy to fade into the background. In live clips from the era, Locorriere looks like a suburban dad stepping on stage for karaoke night, delivering every last vocal with the same goofy grin. Right by his side, Sawyer plays some non-essential percussion instrument and mugs shamelessly. The caption might as well read, “Can you believe we’re getting away with this shit?”
By 1979, it took a lot of extra manpower to keep Dr. Hook running. Sometimes You Win, the parent album of “Better Love Next Time,” featured all seven members of the group's current lineup, along with horns, and strings, and a trio of female backup vocalists called the Cherry Sisters. There’s also enough names in the “additional musicians” section (including some Muscle Shoals heavy hitters) to make you wonder what percentage of Dr. Hook actually participated in the making of their own record.
To everyone’s credit, “Better Love Next Time” sounds fantastic. It’s got that crisp-n-clean late-Seventies production kicking, with just a touch of disco bounce for emphasis. The horns crib a bit from "Peg." Locorriere cribs a lot from Boz Scaggs. The end result is worlds better than, say, “Only Sixteen.” (Dr. Hook’s first single peaked at #6. It’s a 1.)
And yet, at its core, “Better Love Next Time” is also deeply, deeply vapid. Every element amounts to nothing more than pure fluff, studio-engineered soft-rock dressed up in a polyester leisure suit. The kind of fluff that blends easily into the wallpaper. The kind of fluff that’s too pointless to anger anyone. Except me. I still hear this song and get a little angry.
I’m picturing Steely Dan, one of the seminal acts of the Seventies, holed up in some expensive studio in late ‘79, still struggling to finish Gaucho. I’m imagining Donald Fagen stepping away from the studio to grab some lunch (or possibly some cocaine). He jumps in his Chrysler convertible. He turns the radio on. And he hears Dr. Hook aping his distinctive style, stripping it for parts, and delivering the whole noxious shebang as one giant joke. Then the deejay announces the current chart position of this stupid-ass song. And Fagen gets so angry, he stomps back to the studio and deletes the master tapes for “The Second Arrangement.” (Steely Dan will show up on this site in about a year. I'll probably drop a few more Dan inside jokes before then.)
Dr. Hook should’ve been embarrassed with their career trajectory. They weren’t. Radio should’ve been embarrassed to keep supporting Dr. Hook well into the early ‘80s. They weren’t. And the record-buying public… Well, history has shown they have no capacity for embarrassment. So Dr. Hook is going to be showing up a few more times on this site. And incredibly, their next single is gonna be their biggest yet.
GRADE: 3/10
BONUS BITS: Dr. Hook weren’t the only ones tackling “Better Love Next Time” in 1979. Dutch singer Maggie MacNeal released her own slowed-down, vampy take as an album track in a handful of European countries. It’s obviously pretty obscure. It deserves better.