Day After Day #139: Never Say Never

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Never Say Never (1981)

The other day I wrote about the Fixx and how MTV in the early days helped a lot of unknown bands succeed. The downside of essentially turning radio into a visual medium is it can put too much emphasis on the superficial. There are countless examples of artists who were pressured to dress a certain way or lose weight or just stay hidden while someone else pretends to be the singer (see Milli Vanilli, Technotronic, etc.).

San Francisco-based new wave act Romeo Void dealt with that fleeting MTV fame, which was gone as quickly as it arrived. Led by singer Debora Iyall, the group released its debut album It's a Condition in 1981 to enthusiastic reviews for their post-punk sound, which was augmented by the creative sax work of Benjamin Bossi. The band ended up doing several national tours and ended up at Synchro Sound studio in Boston with Ric Ocasek, who produced the Never Say Never EP released in December 1981.

The title track quickly became a hit thanks to steady airplay on MTV of its video, which was a black-and-white takeoff on Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. The song starts off with jagged Gang of Four-style guitar and Bossi's sax and a pulsating bass line, but the real key is Iyall, whose IDGAF delivery and sexual frankness was eye-opening for 1982.

"If time itself was his demeanor/There'd be no sunlight or a glimmer/Of sunlight landin' on the street/Sunsuit girls must be discreet/Sunsuit girls must be discreet/Nursing their fathers locked inside/They masqueraded as his bride/I might like you better if we slept together/I might like you better if we slept together/I might like you better if we slept together/But there's something in your eyes that says maybe/ That's never/Never say never."

A shorter version of the song appears on Romeo Void's major label debut Benefactor, cutting out a lot of the skronky sax bits and taking out the swear words.

"They slump by the courthouse with windburned skin/That man could give a fuck about the grin on your face/As you walk by, randy as a goat he's sleepin' on papers/But he'd be warm in your coat."

The song wasn't a huge hit, going to #17 on the Billboard Dance/Disco chart, but it definitely made an impression as one of the more unique songs of the new wave era. It was featured in the 1984 movie Reckless and has shown up in Dodgeball, The Wolf of Wall Street and in the game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It was also covered by Queens of the Stone Age for a B-side in 2000, and that version was in the 2004 movie The Punisher.

Romeo Void followed up Benefactor (which charted as high as #119 on the Billboard 200 chart) with 1984's Instincts, which featured a top 40 single in "A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)." The album got good reviews and made it to #68 on the Billboard 200.

But despite that success, Columbia pulled the band's promo support in the middle of Romeo Void's nationwide tour. The band returned to San Francisco and broke up; at first, the band said it was the constant touring that caused the split. But years later on VH-1's Bands Reunited show, Iyall said the label dropped the band because of her weight. She released a solo album in 1986 but later became an art teacher. 

The band got back together for a live performance in 1993, and then did the VH-1 show in 2004, but Bossi was unable to perform because of hearing damage. Drummer Larry Carter died in 2021 and Bossi died the following year.

Romeo Void's career was short-lived, but the sexual openness of "Never Say Never" was ahead of its time, predating artists like PJ Harvey, Liz Phair and Elastica a decade later.