who did billy squier tour with in the 80s

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Billy Squier

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William Haislip Squier is an American rock musician. Squier had a string of arena rock hits in the 1980s. He is best known for the song "The Stroke" on his 1981 album release Don't Say No. Other hits include "In the Dark", "Rock Me Tonite", "Lonely Is the Night", "My Kinda Lover", "Everybody Wants You", "All Night Long" and "Emotions in Motion".

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Billy Squier Quit the Music Industry, But His Hits Haven’t Stopped

If you want to talk about ’80s arena rock, you have to talk about Billy Squier . The singer-songwriter’s bouncy, infectious anthems were an inescapable part of the first half of that decade, and a staple of the early years of MTV. But just as quickly as Squier burst on to the scene, he seemed to disappear, formally pulling the plug on his mainstream music career in 1993, and performing live only sporadically thereafter. How did his career go from multi-platinum to non-existent in less than a decade? The answer involves new trends, a changing music industry, and, depending on who you believe, one very cheesy music video.

Originally hailing from the Boston suburb of Wellesley, Massachusetts, Squier spent the ’70s in New York City, playing with the rock band Piper. Though the band was critically well-reviewed and even toured with Kiss , they failed to get any traction with listeners. Squier released his first solo album in 1980, The Tale of the Tape , but while the single “The Big Beat” got some radio airplay, the album didn’t make a big splash.

All of that changed with 1981’s Don’t Say No , a monster album which spawned four hits, spent over two years on the Billboard charts, and eventually went triple platinum. Squier’s videos, especially the live performance video for “The Stroke,” became staples on the then-new MTV, and soon, he was playing his arena rock in actual arenas. He quickly followed up with 1981’s double platinum Emotions in Motion , with cover art by Andy Warhol . The album hit the top five, and yielded Squier’s first #1 Billboard rock hit, “Everybody Wants You.”

Squier worked with Meatloaf collaborator Jim Steinman for 1984’s Signs of Life, which saw the singer embracing a poppier sound. The album was also a hit, with the single “Rock Me Tonite” reaching #1 on the rock chart, but it didn’t sell as well as his previous two. “I didn’t have the support from my management” or label, Squier observed at the time .

Soon after, Squier’s career seemed to precipitously drop off. His 1986 album, Enough Is Enough , saw a significant dip in sales, as did his next, 1989’s Hear & Now . 1993’s To Tell the Truth was his last major label album with Capitol Records; it sold only 37,000 copies. Squier then officially “walked away” from the music business.

Why did Billy Squier disappear?

One explanation is that times simply changed. The 1992 charts were dominated by country artists like Billy Ray Cyrus and grunge rockers Pearl Jam and Nirvana ; Squire’s sounds were out of fashion. In 1993, Squier’s label got a new president, and because of that, according to Squier , “this [album] was dead in the water from the start.” Feeling that Squier’s sounds were unfashionable, Capitol didn’t give the album any promotional support. A frustrated Squier decided to put his music career in the rearview mirror. Though he self-produced a stripped down acoustic album, Happy Blue , in 1998, it was more a blip than a comeback, and Squier continued to step back from the music industry.

But according to another explanation, Squier’s downfall began in 1986, when his career was at its peak. Billy Squier was one of the most prominent performers on MTV, so Signs of Life ‘s first single, “Rock Me Tonite,” required a great video. However, according to Squier, his preferred video directors weren’t available, and MTV didn’t want to move the premiere date they had committed to. Running low on options, Squier decided to work with director Kenny Ortega . Ortega, who went on to direct Hocus Pocus and the High School Musical films, was already an acclaimed choreographer — after a long run designing stage shows for the Tubes, he c0-choreographed Xanadu and Madonna ‘s “Material Girl” video. The clip Ortega shot for Squier was supposed to be inspired by American Gigolo .

But the video, which featured Squier writhing around on satin sheets and dancing awkwardly around an apartment in a pink tank top, seemed to challenge his previous image as a virile, macho rock star. Joe Elliott of Def Leppard recalled, “We were watching it through our fingers. I remember saying at the time, ‘ Mick Jagger can get away with that … Billy Squier can’t.'”  Squier claimed the video wasn’t what he had agreed to, and it had an immediate impact on his career. Shortly after its release, he said, “I was playing to half-houses. I went from 15,000 and 20,000 people a night to 10,000 people. Everything I’d worked for my whole life was crumbling, and I couldn’t stop it. How can a four-minute video do that?” Though he released multiple albums after that, his career seemed to be yielding diminishing returns, until eventually sputtering out.

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Where is billy squier now.

Al Pereira/Getty Images

So with his guitar gathering dust, what did Squier do with himself? He wrote a screenplay in 1994 that was honored at the Sundance Film Festival, and since 2000, he has been a very active volunteer for the Central Park Conservancy , a group which maintains plant life in New York City’s Central Park. “I much prefer the company of nature to the poison of the business community,” he said.

In 2006 and again in 2008, Squier played with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, alongside Edgar Winter, Sheila E., Richard Marx, Dr. Hook, and Ronnie Spector, among others. “I thought, ‘Yeah, why not? It could be fun.’ You know, they take care of you, you play with some great musicians, you play with a Beatle – how bad can it be?” Squier said in a 2023 interview on “ The Eddie Trunk Podcast .” “It was great – I had a great time. I did a couple of years with him and that sorta got me going again.”

Squier still plays the odd live gig, and in 2023, he released his first new song since 1998: “Harder on a Woman.” But he’s generally eschewed the reunion tour circuit. Some of that might be due to his distaste for the music industry, but it might also be because he doesn’t need the cash — he’s one of the most-sampled artists in musical history. Remember “The Big Beat,” Squier’s 1980 song that never quite charted? It’s been sampled over 200 times, including in Jay-Z ‘s “99 Problems” and Alicia Keys ’ “Girl on Fire.” “That has been totally unexpected — and mind-blowing,” Squier said in 2006 . “It has taken on its own cult of personality, and I’m kind of like the Robert Johnson of hip-hop! It’s very cool.”

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I had the pleasure of running a brief radio interview tour last week with Billy Squier .  During the course of the morning’s slate of interviews, the interview that my friend Mark Zander (host of the syndicated rock radio program The Rockin’ 80’s ) did with Billy stuck out as one of the really good ones.  I asked Mark if I could use part of his interview here and he happily agreed, so I’m pleased to share with you the following discussion regarding  the new Shout Factory! 30th anniversary reissue of Don’t Say No .

Spring of 1981, finishing freshman year in high school. Girls on the radar, big time. Then all of the sudden, two of the biggest albums to shape my rock n’ roll life came out in the same month of April?? No way!

Along with Van Halen’s Fair Warning , Billy Squier’s Don’t Say No is a hard rock soundtrack to a life lived by me in that very important year of growth and change. Lead off unassumingly by “In The Dark,” the record tracks (even today!) right through to the finish as a carefree time capsule of rock fashion and attitude. It was my pleasure to talk with Billy about his (ours!) masterpiece…

I have to ask you this regarding the process heading into Don’t Say No when you were recording it, which came after Tale of the Tape was released the previous year in 1980. After spending time with Piper in the ’70s, Tale of the Tape was no doubt a respectable solo debut, but I’d say that it probably didn’t make the impact that you were looking for initially. Once Don’t Say No was written, recorded, released and it became a smash, can you honestly say you were ready and were you expecting it?

Actually I think I was pretty well prepared. Going back to Tale of the Tape for a second, I actually was quite happy with Tale of the Tape . It moved me up a notch on the ladder and it got a lot of airplay. “You Should Be High, Love” was the number one top requested song for almost two months in the country on rock radio. It really increased industry awareness a lot. I had a real good tour in support of that record with Alice Cooper. So I felt when I went to do Don’t Say No that Tale of the Tape had really positioned me very well for what I was going to do next, if I could deliver – but I really felt good. That was my initial solo album and I felt real good about where I was after that.

So I went into Don’t Say No with a lot of confidence and I did feel that it was in a sense, my time. It was my time if I chose to seize it. You know, that I did have people paying attention, that people would be looking for my next record to some degree and that if I delivered, I really had a chance of making a big impact. You know, that being said, what do you do? I decided to more than ever, hone my material and get a body of songs that really hung together [and] not try to do too much. I have a lot of musical influences and I tried to eliminate some of the influences that were on the extremes of the spectrum, so to speak. Try to think about who is Billy Squier – what do you want people to hear of you and where do you really sit in the musical sort of pantheon. I was kind of fine tuning it that way and obviously if you listen to Piper or things like that, there’s a lot of times more of a pop influence – you’re hearing me go back and forth between my influences.

Don’t Say No , although it still has pop sensibilities, I was aligning myself more in the hard rock camp. I said, “that’s really who I am.” The bands I grew up with that I really liked the most, what do I want to play when I strap on a guitar – I’m playing rock music. I’m not playing Herman’s Hermits, I’m playing the Rolling Stones [laughs]. Those factors contributed to how I approached doing the record and I had confidence to go out and do what I felt good about doing. I think there’s always a tendency when you’re trying to make it and even when you have made it sometimes, you might be aware of what’s going on around you and you wonder what you should be doing. If something else is successful, should you be doing that? You’re sort of, if not imitating, you’re being affected by what’s going on around you.

With Don’t Say No , I didn’t do that. Don’t Say No , I really felt like “nope, I’m going to trust myself and I’m going to write the way I want and structure my lyrics the way I want.” I’m not going to worry about what else is going on around me. When it was done, before it came out, I felt that this was the record that I had been spending my whole career to this point getting ready to make. I was totally happy with it. I remember saying to people before it came out – I didn’t say “if it doesn’t sell five million copies,” I said “if this record isn’t successful, I’m out.”

Yeah, because there’s nothing more I can do. I’m not making it up – I remember clear as day, this is the best I can do. If this doesn’t cut it, I’m gone. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that [laughs].

A lot of people don’t know this, but you approached Brian May [of Queen] about producing Don’t Say No .

Brian was going to produce Tale of the Tape and then they got drawn out – that was around the time that they were doing The Game and “Flash” and stuff like that. He got a little bogged down and couldn’t do it, but he said, “I think you should use Mack, if you can get Mack to do it. I think that Mack would be great for you.” Because [Reinhold] Mack was working with Queen as well [as co-producer of The Game ]. So although Brian didn’t work on the record, he was pretty instrumental in forming that union between Mack and I – Mack was a big part of the success of that record – the sound of that record and the way he put it together, it was definitely important. I could not have done that record without him.

Let’s talk about the reissue – there are a couple of live bonus tracks on this 30th anniversary edition that were recorded last year. Were there any initial discussions about going back in the archives to get something that was done around that time, maybe on the initial tour for the album ?

We talked about it, but it was my choice to put on the tracks from last year because I felt that to me, I get some artistic prerogative, you know? I felt like that a lot of the stuff that was recorded back then had come out one way or another, either on radio shows or King Biscuit releases, or we had used stuff. I thought that I approached the songs from Don’t Say No that I did last year quite a bit differently than I did back then and I thought that it was more interesting. I thought, let me put something on it that’s a current reflection of what I did back then. So that was purely a decision that I made and Shout Factory! was magnanimous enough to let me do it.

I really got involved in the process kind of late. They had licensed the album from Capitol and they were going ahead and doing it. They actually contacted me to see if they could get a couple of bonus tracks and that’s how I found out about it. When I found out it was Don’t Say No , I thought, well this is such an important record to me, I’d like to try to get involved as much as I can. So I sort of jumped in at the end and got the remastering engineer who had done such a great job on the Tale of the Tape remaster. Then I got a friend of mine [former Creem editor Ben Edmonds] who’s a great rock writer to do the liner notes, the guy who knows me better than probably anybody. So we were able to at the last minute, put together a pretty good package with those tracks and the liner notes. We got some pictures out of the archives that hadn’t been seen before, so that’s new. I think as far as reissues go, it’s worthwhile. Because by now, everyone should have worn out Don’t Say No and you should get a new one. That’s a cheap plug [laughs].

What’s the story behind “My Kinda Lover?”

Actually when I was writing that one, I was thinking about Tom Jones. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea – Tom Jones is not that big of an influence on me, although we certainly would see him on Ed Sullivan and stuff like that. I got the beginning of the song and I don’t know why, I had that melody and I was thinking, “God, if Tom Jones did this, it would be like,” [imitating Tom Jones singing voice] “You’ve got me running bay-bay.” [laughs] I had this image of him in my head, thinking this would be a great song.

Wow, that really gives it a different spin for me.

But yeah, when I did it, of course I wasn’t trying to be Tom Jones, I wasn’t trying to do it as a Tom Jones song, but I just remember thinking, “man, this would be great.” I remember meeting his manager a couple of years later, I think we were in Tahiti or some place like that, in a bar. I cut this song and he knew who I was and he actually knew the song. At that point unfortunately, Tom had made his foray into country music, so he never did it. That was a strangely Tom Jones influenced track, which you would obviously never hear! [Laughs].

The 30th anniversary edition of Billy Squier’s Don’t Say No is available now .  Click here for more information about the reissue and Billy’s upcoming activities.

One Comment on “ 30 Years of Don’t Say No: An ATV Interview with Billy Squier ”

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The Last Rock Star: When Billy Squier Blew Up

40 years ago, America said yes to Don’t Say No

In the midst of New Wave’s mainstream takeover in the U.S., Don’t Say No informed the world that America still had one last old-school rock star left to offer up. 

Billy Squier didn’t have a stylish haircut, a drum machine, or a futuristic jumpsuit. But with some help from Queen’s producer, his merger of hard rock guitar crunch and power pop hooks still put him on the shortlist of 1981’s most resplendent rockers. 

Don’t Say No was most people’s first exposure to Squier, but it was far from his first rodeo. The 31-year-old singer/guitarist had been in a boatload of bands, and most recently grabbed for the brass ring as frontman for Piper, with two albums on A&M. Squier’s 1980 solo debut, The Tale of the Tape, scarcely troubled the charts. But when he hooked up with German producer Reinhold Mack — who’d just become pals with posterity by overseeing Queen’s career peak The Game — the Boston rocker set himself up for a little immortality of his own.

AUDIO: Piper Can’t Wait LP 1977 

Squier was a hard-rock tenor in the classic mode, with a tone somewhere between Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant, minus the former’s theatricality and the latter’s fire-engine whine. His songs had the pop concision of a kid who’d grown up with The Beatles, likely flattening his ear against a transistor radio on school nights to soak up as much of that Merseyside mojo as possible, and the classic-rock heft of a starry-eyed Telecaster addict who’d started making his bid for stardom right when rock began moving into arenas. 

As early as Piper’s 1977 debut LP, it was clear that Squier had the Right Stuff. But it took Mack’s studio savvy to help him harness those raw materials and give them enough juice to jolt the kids who’d been losing their minds over “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites the Dust.” 

Don’t Say No had enough AOR girth to make hormone-addled teens hoist their girlfriends up on their shoulders in exultation at the local Enormodome. But it also brought a soupcon of up-to-the-moment tech to the table — enough to make Squier sound more like a man of the moment than a throwback, and enough to finally put his name on the top of those Enormodome bills after years of being rock stardom’s perennial bridesmaid. 

It was “The Stroke” that sealed the deal for Squier. Though it only went to 17 on the pop charts, it was as inescapable on rock radio as monster truck rally commercials. Squier’s last single, from his previous album, was “The Big Beat” (which actually ended up becoming sample fodder for countless hip-hop records), but it was “The Stroke” that boasted the most gargantuan beat of the era, triangulated somewhere between glam, AOR, and the dance rock of the day. Mack employed some studio sorcery and sprinkled a little fairy dust on drummer Bobby Chouinard’s pachyderm stomp, giving it the impact of an anvil dropped from the ceiling of an aluminum-walled warehouse. 

Given the “stroke me, stroke me” refrain, fans could be forgiven for assuming that the song’s lyrical theme was as prurient as 99 percent of the era’s other rock radio staples. Even decades later, that misconception still lingers, but in fact the song is about Squier’s experiences with music-biz BS artists giving him “the stroke” instead of a fair shake. Presumably neither Squier nor his label were shocked when the song’s less-than-subtle metaphor earned it a spot on the list of rock’s great digital-stimulation songs.

VIDEO: Billy Squier “The Stroke”

The album’s next single, “In the Dark,” was powered by a New Wave-informed synth hook in tune with the times, and a dynamic that shifted between simmering verses and a balls-out “B” section. It upped Squier’s profile even further by allowing him to tap into the Top 40 a second time. 

Don’t Say No’s other two singles didn’t become pop hits, but they were all over rock radio (and they remain classic-rock staples to this day). “Lonely Is the Night” shows off Squier’s knack for the killer riff, as Chouinard leans into the track with a Bonham-like wallop and the whole things ends up in an old-school double-time rave-up. 

The riff that runs “My Kinda Lover” comes dangerously close to reggae-rock, usually a bad idea for any band whose name doesn’t rhyme with “the slow geese.” But between Alan St. John’s colorful keyboard orchestrations and Mack’s electronic enhancements of the beat, it comes off as a sleek, slinky earworm.

VIDEO: Billy Squier Live in Santa Monica 1981

The surging “You Know What I Like,” bluesy “Too Daze Gone,” and slide guitar-slathered “Whadda You Want From Me” all shore up Squier’s credentials as a straight-up rocker. “Nobody Knows” is the album’s only pause for breath. Singing in a gentle falsetto, Squier comes across as a convincing balladeer on a tune dedicated to John Lennon. It was written while Lennon was alive, but Billy was in the studio putting the finishing touches on it the night the ex-Beatle was assassinated, and the sadness-behind-success theme seemed to fit.

Squier went on to score a couple of other indelible ‘80s hits like “Everybody Wants You” and “Rock Me Tonite,” but he never equaled the monster success of Don’t Say No. Who could? The remarkable thing is that he got there to begin with.

When Don’t Say No was released in April of ‘81, the wild-tressed, Telecaster-wielding arena rockers of the ‘70s were enjoying their last hurrah while the New Wave was rushing in. But Squier had what it took to make the old ways work with a new twist. And Don’t Say No still stands up after four decades of service.

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Jim Allen has contributed to print and online outlets including Billboard, NPR Music, MOJO, Uncut, RollingStone.com, MTV.com, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb.com, and many more. He's written liner notes for reissues by everyone from Bob Seger to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and is a singer/songwriter in the bands Lazy Lions and The Ramblin' Kind as well as a solo artist.

2 thoughts on “ The Last Rock Star: When Billy Squier Blew Up ”

Really good commemoration, Jim. I practically wore out my cassette of “Don’t Say No”, which got more plays on my Walkman than even “The Game”. And the album holds up!

Bobby Chouinard was indeed key to the Squier sound – a very able Bonham protege.

Fun fact I just learned from Wikipedia (wondered what Squier has been up to the last 30 years; turns out he stayed fairly active):

“Squier had been, as of 2016, an active volunteer for the Central Park Conservancy for more than 17 years, physically maintaining 20 acres (81,000 m2) of the park, as well as promoting the Conservancy in articles and interviews.”

I would so love to run into Billy Squier in the park. And yes, I would 100% break into a rendition of Everybody Wants You (to pick up your trash) or a tune to get everyone bicycling on the path: “Spoke Me, Spoke Me.” I’ll be here all week. His career was completely derailed by the insane Rock Me Tonite video. But if prancing around on satin sheets in a pink unitard is so wrong, I don’t wanna be right. Great tune, even if it’s largely borrowed from Cold As Ice.

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Revisiting Billy Squier’s Breakthrough Album, ‘Don’t Say No’

Everyone loves an overnight success story, but fame and fortune far more often follow years of hard work — as they did for Billy Squier after the release of his second solo album, Don't Say No .

Released on April 13, 1981, Don't Say No arrived at a moment when few people had ever heard of Squier, but served as the culmination of years spent discovering and refining his sound. He'd released his solo debut, The Tale of the Tape , less than a year before. The record failed to catch hold on the pop charts, but it made inroads at rock radio with a handful of tracks.

Not content to take a slow ride to the top, Squier kept his ear to the airwaves while working on the material that made up Don't Say No . He'd never admit to making outright concessions in pursuit of a hit — and his records were already pretty radio-friendly to begin with. Still, he set about moving any inessential parts from his arrangements, further honing a sound whose big guitars and bigger beats were perfectly in tune with the AOR of the early '80s.

To help with this streamlining, Squier hooked up with Reinhold Mack, a veteran engineer and producer whose credits included records for Electric Light Orchestra , Deep Purple  and Queen . It was the latter band that connected the two, as Squier had originally sought out Queen guitarist Brian May to produce The Tale of the Tape .

Kept from the project by a scheduling conflict, May recommended Mack, and he and Squier hit it off. Aside from the right combination of people behind the scenes, Squier also brought some of his best material to the Don't Say No sessions.

Watch Billy Squier's 'The Stroke' Video

The 10-track record, entirely self-penned, boasted a slew of radio-ready cuts — including "In the Dark," "Lonely Is the Night," "My Kinda Lover" and "The Stroke," all of which broke the Top 40 at rock radio. On pop stations, meanwhile, Squier rocketed to household-name status before the year was out, largely on the strength of "The Stroke" (which hit No. 17) and "In the Dark" (No. 35). Before it was through, Don't Say No would go on to sell more than three million copies.

For Billy Squier, the record's success marked an important victory in a war he'd been fighting for a long time.

"I went into Don't Say No with a lot of confidence and I did feel that it was in a sense, my time," he told Addicted to Vinyl . "It was my time if I chose to seize it. You know, that I did have people paying attention, that people would be looking for my next record to some degree and that if I delivered, I really had a chance of making a big impact. When it was done, before it came out, I felt that this was the record that I had been spending my whole career to this point getting ready to make. I was totally happy with it."

Don't Say No launched Squier's solo career into the stratosphere, and for a brief period, it looked like he had a long line of multi-platinum records in his future. Things didn't work out that way , and by the end of the '90s, he'd pretty much turned his back on the music industry. But with this album, he took his best shot at the dream he'd worked hard to achieve — and it worked.

"I remember saying to people before it came out ... I said 'If this record isn't successful, I'm out,' Squier said with a laugh in his Addicted to Vinyl interview. "Fortunately, I didn't have to do that."

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*FREE DOWNLOAD* Remix of “Harder On A Woman”, the song I wrote and recorded back in 2022. My intent was to re-imagine the track in the context of the recordings I was making back in the 80’s. With the help of my friend, Mitch Davis, we set the Wayback Machine at Pull to NYC circa…

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