The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
That endless ‘Feelin’
Fans won’t let The Righteous Brothers — or that decades-old mega-hit — get lost
Nearly six decades later, music fans have yet to lose that lovin’ feeling for The Righteous Brothers.
Not only is the duo’s 1964 No. 1 hit “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ ” listed as the most played song in radio history, but it also received a second life in Tom Cruise’s 1986 film “Top Gun.”
As for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee act, the blue-eyed soul pioneers — featuring Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield — also scored hits such as “Soul & Inspiration,” “Unchained Melody” and “Rock and Roll Heaven.”
For more than a decade, the duo was silenced due to Hatfield’s 2003 death. However, Medley, who in 1988 won a Grammy Award for “Dirty Dancing” song “The Time of My Life” with Jennifer Warnes, in 2016 joined up with popular tribute singer Bucky Heard to restart The Righteous Brothers.
The act returns to Northeast Ohio with a show June 26 at MGM Northfield Park Center Stage.
We caught up with Medley recently during a call to his home in Newport Beach, California.
Q
During the late ’80s and early ’90s, The Righteous Brothers often performed at Cleveland’s old Front Row Theater. What are your memories of the in-the-round venue?
THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS
When: 8 p.m. June 26.
Where: MGM Northfield Park Center Stage, 10777 Northfield Road, Northfield.
Tickets: $35 to $67.
Info: Ticketmaster.com.
AOf course, it was truly one of our favorite places to perform. It was a great theater. With theaters in the round, people are pretty close to you, so you really feel the energy and what’s going on. The energy in a lot of theaters is probably from the first three or four rows. At the Front Row, everybody was pretty much in the front of the theater.
Q
Your other connection to Cleveland is, naturally, the Rock Hall induction in 2003. What did that mean to your career?
A
It was incredible because one of the criteria going into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is that you, over your career, had done something to enhance rock ’n’ roll or bring something new to rock ’n’ roll. The Righteous Brothers kind of brought in blue-eyed soul, which was white guys singing rhythm & blues. It was an incredible feeling to know that what you did counted and that everybody in the industry knew that, appreciated that and voted us in.
QAs with The Rolling Stones, this year marks the 60th anniversary
of The Righteous Brothers getting its start. Did you ever think the group would last this long?
A
Are you kidding? When we first started, we were always talking about what we were going to do when the fad was over. That’s the truth.
Q
So what was the plan for you after the fad was going to end?
A
(Laughs) That’s a good question, I don’t know. I started out as a songwriter, and I probably
would have kept writing songs and maybe worked my way into producing, which I ended up doing anyway. I can’t believe that I’m on stage singing songs that I recorded 60 years ago, but it’s a blessing. And audiences just have been phenomenal. It’s so cool to sing (starts singing) “You never close your eyes” and see the crowd light up. People say, “How can you keep singing those songs over and over?” It’s totally the audience reaction and their love and the memories that they’re reliving that make it feel brand new to you.
QAs far as “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” that’s a song that just keeps on going for The Righteous Brothers.
AIt’s amazing a song that we did almost 60 years ago still is alive and well. Even the song I did for “Dirty Dancing” — that won’t die either. My agents get a call once a week about somebody wanting to put it in a movie or a commercial. And “Unchained Melody,” ever since “Ghost,” has become a monster song. To have two or three of those songs in your catalog is a blessing. It’s just incredible.
Q
Finally, what is The Righteous Brothers’ legacy?
A
Music is made to touch people and to make them think and feel. I would hope they would think that The Righteous Brothers did a few songs that really touched them. We always get the people telling us how “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” or “Unchained Melody” touched and changed their lives.
Hopefully, they would just think The Righteous Brothers did some songs that maybe helped them in life.