Benny Mardones - Into the Night
A Yacht Rock Classic comes with one of the creepiest videos ever
There is a cornucopia of songs in the rock pantheon about having sex or wanting to have sex with underage girls. I wrote about several of them in my last post.
Into the Night — The Video
Most of them are far more lyrically explicit than Benny Mardones’ 1980 Adult Contemporary hit single, “Into the Night.” But those songs don’t have one of the most unintentionally creepy, awful music videos ever made to elevate it to the pinnacle of inappropriate.
It’s bad enough that Benny — who looks like the long-lost older brother of Aldo Nova (bonus points for those who get this reference without the internet; image below) — starts the song off with the line: “She’s just 16 years old…leave her alone, they say.”
The video begins with 30-something Benny (who looks 40-something) approaching his teenage love interest’s father at the front door, attempting to smooth-talk him into letting his daughter join him for a night on the town. "Separated by fools, who don’t know what love is yet,” he sings to the camera when the bearded father shuts the door in his face. Does this mean that Benny believes the father is the fool who doesn’t know what love is yet? It doesn’t make much sense, but not much does, so let’s keep going.
After his more traditional attempt at underage romance fails miserably, Benny, not easily thwarted, slinks around to the side of the house, where he spies on his young obsession through her bedroom window. Taking off his jacket (which, it would appear, he wore only to impress her father) Benny smirks confidently, certain that his pale, muscle-free arms will be the aphrodisiac that convinces her to climb out her window and join him “into the night.”
Holding a boombox over his head that plays Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” this approach is not.
Benny doesn’t get even a faint whiff of a reaction from his young love (she seems unnervingly expressionless throughout the video); she never even looks up at him as he cries out, mere inches from her downturned face, these indelible words:
If I could fly, I'd pick you up
I'd take you into the night
And show you a love
Like you've never seen, ever seen
If it were me in that bedroom, I’d slide open the window, wrap my arms around his scrawny shoulders, and whisper, “You had me at ‘leave her alone.’” This girl’s house must have triple-paned windows.
Not giving up, Benny struts down the street to a pay phone. Inserting a dime, he calls the unnamed blonde teen. (I want to give her a name — yes, to humanize her, but also to make writing this easier for me….let’s go with Dolores.)
Into the receiver, Benny sings, with all the passion he can muster (and boy does he have a lot of passion):
It's like having a dream
Where nobody has a heart
It's like having it all
And watching it fall apart
“That’s called life, buddy — stop being so dramatic,” I want her to say to him, but he’s such a blabbermouth and never gives her a chance to respond to his poetic overtures. Plus, she seems pre-verbal, or maybe so stoned that words have disappeared.
Dolores’ face suddenly appears in the lower left part of the screen where we see she’s holding the phone to her ear. As Benny sings “watching it fall apart” his hand reaches forward, caressing the side of her ghostly face.
This shot goes on for several more lines of the song. It’s like one of those art films where you expect it to cut to a new scene any second but it never happens. Maybe it’s just me, but by the 10th line of Mardones singing into the phone, I begin to wonder if the director forgot to storyboard this section.
I’m also imagining Dolores’ father on the other line in the kitchen, cupping his hand over the receiver as he finds himself falling in love with Benny. Such gorgeous pipes! he must be thinking. Maybe that’s the follow-up video.
Finally, the camera cuts to a close-up of Benny singing the chorus into the phone receiver, only now he’s floating in an unnaturally blue night sky. This is foreshadowing not just the next scene, but also the wireless, cellular technology that won’t become a reality for several years. That Benny Mardones was a friggin’ visionary! (Or whoever thought of this shot.)
As they say, the third time is the charm. After Benny sings the chorus yet again, promising “a love like you’ve never seen,” replete with a bevy of extended “oohs” and “ohs,” he returns to Dolores’ window, only this time he’s better prepared.
He climbs in, rolls out a magic carpet (resembling a cheapo Persian rug), asks for Dolores’ hand, she takes it, and then they sit down side by side, like in a car, never once looking at each other. Soon, via the magic of 1980 green-screen technology (it was probably blue-screen at the time), the room melts away and the two lovebirds are flying high above New York City.
Smartly, the director did think to add fans to the budget to blow their feathered hair around, making it all much more “realistic.”
As they near the Statue of Liberty, Benny adjusts his body to face young Dolores. It seems quite windy outdoors, as Mrs. Liberty’s crown sways to and fro in the frame. Yet neither Benny nor Dolores are wearing a jacket or seems concerned about falling off the fairly small carpet. That’s how love can be sometimes. Reckless!
As Benny’s histrionic impassioned crooning fills the soundtrack, along with a chorus of backing vocalists singing “into the night,” drawing out each word, Dolores lays down next to Benny. Moments later they are making out — only now they seem to be hovering above multiple layers of freeway traffic (he’s so romantic!). Did they suddenly end up in downtown Los Angeles? I’ve heard magic carpets are pretty speedy, but 2500 miles in a single make-out session?
Clearly, there’s no denying the power of Mardones’ striped black and white, sleeveless shirt and toneless muscles. The exact qualities all teenage girls found hard to resist back in the early 80s. And, I imagine, today too!
The video fades as Benny and Dolores fly through the skies, probably heading off to Disneyland. A couple of seconds before that (4:07), though, it appears that Mardones is yawning. Is this meant to imply that he needs a nap? That he is bored? That Dolores isn’t a good kisser? We will never know.
The video (and song) is a little under four and a half minutes but feels like 24 and a half. I mean this as a compliment. It feels interminable yet at the same time I never want it to end. Does that make sense?
I don’t think it should be categorized as a Yacht Rock song, though. There are no nautical themes, no bodies of water (other than, I suppose, the Hudson River), and no saxophone solos. I’m betting that magic carpets count as a thematic exception to the ocean/sea/bay/lake/river rules of yachtyness.
The Truth Behind the Song
As much as I tease and make fun of the video for “Into the Night,” I think it’s a great song that unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), has a skeevy video attached. Mardones is a fantastic vocalist, with tons of texture and rasp that adds incredible emotional depth. In the context of the video it seems a bit much, but separating the song from the video, it’s perfect.
“Into the Night,” despite the video, is not about an older man trying to get with a teenage girl. In the above video clip, Benny Mardones explains the origins and meaning of “Into the Night,” but I will try to summarize.
While living in an apartment building in New York’s Spanish Harlem in 1979, Benny became friendly with a family that lived next door. The three teen kids came knocking one evening, crying, saying that their father had run off with a chorus line girl and left them no money for food or rent. Benny offered to help them and their mother by paying the kids to run errands and clean his apartment. For the middle child, a 16-year-old girl named Heidi, he offered her $50 a week to walk his Basset Hound named Zanky.
One morning, after an all-night recording session at his home studio, Heidi came over to walk Zanky before school, dressed in her uniform, which included a short plaid skirt. After they left for the walk, one of Benny’s musician friends made a lewd comment about her body, to which Benny replied, “She’s just sixteen years old, leave her alone.”
Thus a legendary song, one of only a few to have reached the top 20 on more than one occasion, was born.
One of my favorite YouTube song analyzers, Fil of Wings of Pegasus, breaks down a live performance of “Into the Night” in the above video. It was illuminating to hear Fil explain the ins and outs of Benny’s vocals. I gained even more appreciation for Mardones, for his unique gifts, and for how seasoned a musician he was.
A Quick History
Mardones began his career (after joining the U.S. Navy after high school and serving in Vietnam) by writing songs for such artists as Chubby Checker and Brenda Lee. Tommy Mottola (whose credits in the music sphere are far too numerous to mention — I’ll just call him Mariah Carey’s ex; he’s in the trailer above) heard him and suggested he record his songs himself.
He did just that and released his debut album, Thank God For Girls, in 1978. Two years later came his sophomore album, Never Run Never Hide, which featured “Into the Night.”
Benny Mardones released 12 studio albums and 5 live albums during his career, spanning from 1978 to 2015. Most people think of him as a one-hit wonder. In a sense, he was, as “Into the Night” was his only Billboard 100 charting song. But unlike many other one-hit wonders, Mardones had a long and successful career and never regretted his lack of repeat chart success.
Mardones died at age 73 from complications from Parkinson’s disease.
I have attended many karaoke bar excursions in my day but I’ve never heard anyone attempt this song. , have you ever sung “Into the Night?” What about anyone else? Yes, in the shower counts.
I’m sure I’d heard this song back in the ‘80s, but I don’t remember it at all. I became a fan of the song after hearing it played repeatedly on the Yacht Rock channel on SiriusXM satellite radio. How did you discover this song?
Can you think of another music video that ups the creepiness factor more than this one?
As always, thanks for reading!
You made me laugh, Steve! Thanks!
Never knew there were so many details behind this song and video! I always liked it.