Music Video Review - You're a Friend of Mine by Clarence Clemmons and Jackson Browne

Mick Jagger and David Bowie's horrific cover version of Dancing in the Street by Martha and the Vandellas gets a lot of flak for supposedly being one of the worst songs of the 1980's with one of the most uncomfortably homoerotic music videos ever. Don't take my word for it - click that link and see for yourself. That probably won't be the last you'll see of that video on this blog - I almost have to take a shot at it at some point.

Oh God, where's the Mars Bar? I apologize if you got that joke.

It is a horrible video for an equally horrible song, but the weird sexual chemistry between Bowie and Jagger at least has the potential to make the video amusing, I guess. But there's another eighties duet that's much, much worse. Clarence Clemmons and Jackson Browne's You're a Friend of Mine.

Now, I love Clarence Clemmons. He was just a big, goofy guy with a saxophone and he seemed like one of the most genuinely nice guys in music. He was also one hell of a sax player. But there's a reason that he isn't known as a singer. It's because he's not good at it.  I'm a fan of Jackson Browne as well. Running on Empty is one of my favorite albums ever and The Pretender is one of my favorite songs. He also produced another one of my favorite albums, Warren Zevon's self titled 1976 release. I have to clarify all this because I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SONG.

The video concerns Clarence Clemmons in an ugly blue shirt failing to dance. Understandable, I guess. I know that he's a sax player and a black guy, so going by stereotypes surrounding sax playing African American men, he should be able to dance. But he was like, 6'6", so I can understand how he wouldn't be the most graceful guy. But it's still funny seeing him try to dance in most cases. This is not one of them.

There's also Jackson Browne going around the apartment they're in playing his guitar and singing directly The Big Man's face. That's awkward. Then there's the Dave Coulier looking guy on piano and the Al Jurreau looking guy on drums. To the Dave Coulier lookalike's credit, he doesn't look like he's having much fun.

The part that I think is the closest to being amusing is Darryl Hannah who was apparently an item with Jackson Browne at the time or something. She's painting them at first and later videotaping them. Because apparently they wanted this to be recorded for people to see. Why would they think that? Because in the eighties, people did a lot of cocaine, and if Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories taught me anything, it's that...

 

Things to listen for - towards the end, Jackson Browne's voice cracks. They didn't go back to re-record that line, because... why would they? It's Jackson Browne and he had better things to do in the eighties, like trying to convince people that Lawyers in Love wasn't a horrible album.

Overall, this song is probably the worst thing either of these guys ever did. But you want to know something depressing? Look up Clarence Clemmons's name on Google.

With everything this guy ever did with Springsteen and the E-Street Band, this is what people care most about.