Today is Donny Clark Osmond’s 67th birthday. Now, you may well be saying/thinking, “what?”
Many of us find it difficult to namecheck a person more antithetical to what we consider authentic rock and roll (whatever that is) than Donny Osmond. That’s despite the fact that Donny Osmond, along with his sister Marie, hosted a popular variety show on ABC from 1975 to 1979 where the opening theme song had Marie singing, “I’m a little bit country,” and Donny countering “I’m a little bit rock and roll.”
Was anyone buying that?
If anything, in my view, a very “little bit” indeed. Donny. If any.
A key moment in Mojo Nixon’s song “Elvis is Everywhere,” that serves as a sweeping testimony to the cosmic and spiritual omnipresence of Elvis Presley, is when Mojo tells us of the singular exception to this phenemonon. The instrumentation drops out after a build up and Mojo Nixon tells us, “Michael J. Fox has NO Elvis in him. Uowp!” I’m building to my point, but if you need a reminder of Professor Mojo Nixon’s treatise on this subject, here you go:
In the same way that it seems quite accurate the Michael J. Fox is devoid of the spirit of Elvis, it just doesn’t make sense to associate Donny Osmond with rock and roll. He was a far-too-clean teen idol type (with his brothers) and, I’ll admit, he has a serious set of pipes; the dude can definitely sing. But his hit songs like “Go Away Little Girl” and “Puppy Love,” in his teen idol phase, just never stood a chance of being considered, by any reasonable person, as rock and roll. And keep in mind I’m the guy who has an ongoing “big tent” theory of rock and roll. But Donny Osmond? Nah.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t at times try.
I won’t embed the actual video to Jeff Beck’s video of his song “Ambitious” from his Flash album in which Donny Osmond has a key cameo (especially in the video). But if you want to see it, it’s https: double forward slash youtu.be single forward slash JaGfW2Ifuts?si=gCCnn9bsv3lipml6. Figure out how to navigate this if you want. It’s not hard. But I can’t bring myself to blatantly share the song. Beck himself would later call the album a "record company goof" and characterize it as "a very sad sort of time" for him as a musical artist.
I will give Osmond a reluctant amount of cred for what, as a vocalist, he brought to Dweezil Zappa’s cover of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” His vocals rise to the occasion of Dweezil’s guitar work and the rest of the band work:
But if there’s an easter egg buried in a rock and roll song that has nada to do with Donny Osmond as a performer but is totally worth noting in that it captures his abject failure to fit within a rock and roll paradigm, it’s Alice Cooper’s “Department of Youth,” from his 1975 LP, Welcome to My Nightmare. On the song’s fadeout, we hear a call and response bit. The Coop says “Who’s got the power?” and a chorus of childlike voices responds “We do!” This occurs several times. But toward the very end, Alice asks “And who gave it to you?” The chorus of childlike voices responds “Donny Osmond!”
A barely audible Alice Cooper counters, quite understandably with vehemence, “What?!?”
Accurate. Clever. Delicious. Memorable.
Have a good week, Dosers.
#30#
Good stuff!