The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
A 1987 album changed the way Christmas sounds
Jimmy Iovine was sitting on the floor of his sister’s house in Staten Island, on the phone with Bruce Springsteen, when he made the decision. It was 1985, and Iovine’s father, Vincent, had died suddenly on what the music producer says is “still the worst day of my life.”
“I had an extraordinary relationship with my father,” Iovine says. “It was very devastating because he, his mother and his father all died within eight weeks from natural causes.”
Springsteen had called to offer his condolences, Iovine recalls, and “at that moment, I just said, ‘I’m going to make a Christmas album for my dad.’”
He asked Springsteen whether he could help out. He could.
“And I got off the phone, and I put all the energy that I’ve ever put into anything, and I said, ‘I’m gonna make this album,’” Iovine says.
“A Very Special Christmas” came out 35 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1987. Some of the biggest names of the MTV era accepted Iovine’s invitation, all for a deserving charity. Madonna, Sting, Stevie Nicks, the Pretenders, Whitney Houston, U2, Bob Seger, the Pointer Sisters and Run-DMC are among those who contributed, as did Springsteen and his E Street Band.
By the ‘80s, Christmas and pop music were certainly well acquainted: “White Christmas,” Bing Crosby’s perennial 1940s hit, still reigned as one of the most popular recordings of all time. Motown artists, Paul McCartney, Elton John and others made significant contributions to the seasonal canon in the 1960s and ‘70s. But “A Very Special Christmas” arguably altered the
recording industry’s relationship to holiday music, and the way Christmas sounds in the present day.
“This is such a huge album in terms of its impact, just because there hadn’t been anything like it. It changed the place of Christmas in pop culture,” says music critic and author Rob Sheffield, who believes “A Very Special Christmas” represents “a before-andafter moment in the history of Christmas in pop culture. It’s a thing that had never existed before, and afterwards was never going to not exist again. Pop stars now all want to do Christmas albums.”
Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Destiny’s Child, Bob Dylan, Kacey Musgraves, John Legend, Kelly Clarkson: Name a popular artist today, and there’s good money they have a holiday record. Or think of it this way: Without “A Very Special Christmas,” the path to Mariah Carey’s 1994 permahit “All I Want for Christmas” becomes far less clear.
To understand the album’s influence, it helps to bask in the seeming simplicity of its lineup, the matching of artist to song in a multigenre journey through the religious and the secular, the solemn and the goofy, beginning with Santa’s journey to town and ending with the Nativity. Hark, the original track list:
— The Pointer Sisters “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
— Eurythmics - “Winter Wonderland”
— Whitney Houston - “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
— Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - “Merry Christmas, Baby”
— Pretenders - “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
— John Mellencamp - “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
— Sting - “Gabriel’s Message”
— Run-DMC - “Christmas in Hollis”
— U2 - “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
— Madonna - “Santa Baby”
— Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band - “The Little Drummer Boy”
— Bryan Adams - “Run Rudolph Run”
— Bon Jovi - “Back Door Santa”
— Alison Moyet - “The Coventry Carol”
— Stevie Nicks - “Silent Night”
Iovine initially found inspiration in “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector,” the producer’s 1963 holiday album, which timelessly featured Darlene Love, the Ronettes and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans. He was drawn “not so much to the sound, but the idea of it — a lot of contemporary people singing great songs.”
“What makes great albums great albums is someone’s vision,” Iovine says. “There’s a cohesiveness about the album that was absolutely there in the spirit of recording.”
But first, he needed to find something to do with the potential proceeds. He didn’t care where the profits went, not originally, but he knew he didn’t want to see a dime from the record. So he turned to the soon-to-be Vicki Iovine, to whom he would be married for more than 20 years, and asked for help finding a charity, telling her: “I gotta get money out of the equation, so I can make it pure. I want this to be the purest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Vicki was friendly with Bobby Shriver, son of Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and the pair invited Iovine to a Special Olympics wrestling event in New Jersey. He was immediately struck by the actors playing famous wrestlers — a fake Hulk Hogan, a fake Randy “Macho Man” Savage and so on — and asked Shriver, “Why aren’t the real ones here?” Shriver explained that, at the time, the charity wasn’t considered “cool” among the celebrity class.
“I said, ‘What? OK, now I got another reason,’” Iovine says. “I’m gonna try to help make this cool. It’s already cool. I want people to know it’s cool.”
Bobby’s father, Sargent, then the president of the Special Olympics, agreed, and a cause was found. From there, Iovine and Bobby Shriver went to Jerry Moss, the “M” in A&M Records, and secured project funding. Next, they had to rustle up artists and start recording.
“I took a year off from work and flew all over the world to make that record, to get it right,” Iovine says. He flew across the Atlantic to record a live version of U2 playing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” He enlisted Bob Seger, one of his father’s favorite singers, to play a traditional take on “The Little Drummer Boy,” one of his father’s favorite songs. He remembers Madonna recording “Santa Baby” in July: “It was 100 degrees, and we’re cutting a Christmas song!”
And, while some argued he should play it safe and get a Kenny Rogers song in there, Iovine remembers going to downtown New York to meet with RunDMC, who were responsible for what would become the album’s centerpiece, “Christmas in Hollis.”
“Ten years later, I was sitting with Tupac, and he saw the (”A Very Special Christmas”) album cover and he goes, ‘I bought that album!’” Iovine remembers. Tupac, who was 16 when it came out, told Iovine that he bought it specifically for the sole hip-hop track.
That centerpiece, now so familiar after decades of blasting out of tinsel-covered subwoofers and over the heads of shopping mall Santa Clauses, almost didn’t happen. “Christmas in Hollis” miraculously fused the emerging hip-hop sound and the birth of Jesus, even if the group (Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell) was hesitant to record a themed song.
“We didn’t want hip-hop to be considered a novelty,” McDaniels says. “We were already at the point where everybody said rap’s a fad, it won’t be here long. So we thought they were trying to make us go out like the Frisbee and the hula hoop a little too early. Give us some more time. We’ve got more rhymes. Leave Christmas to Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole!”
Plus, a Christmas rap song already existed: Kurtis Blow’s 1979 festive feat of lyrical dexterity, “Christmas Rappin’.” “Kurt did it, it’s done. Let’s not go there,” McDaniels recalls thinking.
Then they heard the jolly beat — all sleigh bells and synths, with samples of “Frosty the Snowman,” “Jingle Bells,” “Joy to the World” and Clarence Carter’s “Back Door Santa” — and everything changed. Out came the lyrics celebrating a family Christmas in Hollis, Queens, served up with Mom’s chicken and collard greens.
While the album endures as a cultural phenom, it continues to serve a greater cause: helping fund Special Olympics programs, particularly those most in need around the world. The first album spawned 10 more, plus a 30th anniversary rerelease, and, collectively, the program has raised $145 million and helped more than 110 local Special Olympics programs, primarily in Africa and Asia.