He aped his way through cheesy front-man poses during "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" and openly questioned his own ability to still hit the high notes in "An Innocent Man." The Seger will-he-or-won't-he was was indicative of the show's loose vibe and Joel's relaxed demeanor, as the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer never took anything too seriously, least of all himself. But as soon as you play it in front of an audience who are into it, it makes all the difference.There were several shout-outs to Detroit across the evening, including shortened versions of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" and Martha and the Vandella's "Dancing in the Street" (sung by Joel's longtime multi-instrumentalist Crystal Taliefero) along with a tease of the piano intro to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll," which acted as a lead-in to "Only the Good Die Young." Pour Some Sugar On Me is like anything if you’re rehearsing it in the rehearsal room, it’s really fucking boring. “For some bizarre reason, in America women seem to feel compelled to take their shirts off when we play it. “I still get a buzz from it,” Collen adds. It’s really funny how it suddenly became cool because it was a stripping song. Hysteria was all over bar the shouting, and then all of a sudden this song just got popular, and then the album went to Number One. “The song became a hit because strippers in Florida started requesting it on the local radio station,” Collen recalls. The result was nothing short of a phenomenon, with the popularity of Pour Some Sugar… on MTV pushing the single to No.2 in the US and helping Hysteria to the top of the album chart. It wasn’t until the following year, with sales of Hysteria stalling at three million, that the US record company finally released Pour Some Sugar On Me as a last ditch attempt to claw back some of the album’s huge production costs. In the US, meanwhile, Women had been chosen as the lead-off (it ultimately limped to No.80), followed by Animal and Hysteria. “When we first released it in Europe it was ignored,” Collen confirms.
The song wasn’t deemed good enough to be released as the first single from Hysteria instead it followed Animal into the UK chart in October 1987, reaching an unspectacular No.18. While it’s tempting to assume that Pour Some Sugar On Me was an instant smash hit, hard evidence shows otherwise.
It was really based on rap stuff not your standard rock song. “I can’t actually do that, so Mutt had said: ‘Just make it very gappy.’ So I put this main riff in the gaps. “Mutt Lange saw the intro as this kinda country guitar lick, played with his fingers,” Collen recalls. So although everyone went: ‘Oh, fucking hell, not more studio time,’ it was obvious that we had to do it.”Īs work on the new song began, Elliott’s hook started to evolve. Once Mutt got involved it went pretty quick. “The main problem with Hysteria was us dicking around with people like Jim Steinman.