Tim Curry, the actor and singer who became an icon as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, died August 25 at age 80. But outside his film and television work, Curry left behind one particularly strange piece of musical history: “I Do the Rock,” his 1979 one-hit wonder that turned a rapid-fire catalog of celebrities, politicians and cultural figures into a gloriously theatrical rock song.
“I do the rock — it’s stimulating,” Curry said in the original press material for Fearless, the album that contained the song.
The line was more than a joke. Curry was serious about his music career, even as his success in Rocky Horror threatened to make him permanently associated with Frank-N-Furter. The Fearless press material described Curry as an artist who had entered rock without being weighed down by its traditions, instead bringing his own “wit, intelligence and panache” to the form.
For Fearless, Curry reunited with two musicians he had worked with on his 1978 debut album, Read My Lips: composer and keyboardist Michael Kamen and guitarist Dick Wagner. This time, Wagner and Kamen produced the record together, with Wagner also playing guitar and contributing to several of its songs.
Tim and I got along really well. He’s an intellectual actor really who wanted to have a singing career too.”
— Dick Wagner
Wagner was hardly an anonymous studio player. His résumé included extensive work with Alice Cooper as well as Lou Reed and Kiss, frequently working alongside session ace Steve Hunter. Wagner brought a formidable rock pedigree to Curry's deliberately theatrical music.
“Tim and I got along really well,” Wagner recalled in a 2013 interview with AntiMusic. “We wrote a lot of songs together for his album.” Wagner said Curry had asked him and Kamen to produce Fearless, and that they produced it, played on it and wrote songs with Curry.
Wagner also offered a particularly revealing assessment of Curry's musical ambitions: “He’s an intellectual actor really who wanted to have a singing career too.” He acknowledged that the career did not ultimately work out as Curry had hoped, but added, “we did make some good music together.”
One of those pieces of “good music” was “I Do the Rock,” the album's gloriously eccentric centerpiece. Written by Curry, the song turns a rapid-fire catalogue of celebrities, politicians, intellectuals and pop-culture figures into a declaration of purpose. Its lyrics name-check everyone from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Albert Einstein and Friedrich Nietzsche to Liza Minnelli, Farrah Fawcett, John Travolta, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
The musicians surrounding Curry were every bit as serious. Wagner played lead and acoustic guitar, Kamen supplied keyboards, oboe and synthesizer, and the rhythm section included Motown bassist Bob Babbitt and drummer Charles Collins. David Sanborn contributed alto saxophone, while Bob Kulick also played guitar.
The result was an unusual collision of Curry's theatrical instincts and a genuine late-'70s rock band. A contemporary HiFi/Stereo Review called “I Do the Rock” a “tour de force,” describing it as Noel Coward–style patter about the political, social and jet-set personalities of the day, backed by a riff.
“I Do the Rock” became Curry's only U.S. Billboard Hot 100 entry, peaking at number 91 in late 1979. Fearless itself reached 53 on the Billboard 200, making it the most commercially successful album of Curry's recording career.
The album was recorded at the Hit Factory in New York and Long View Farm Recording Studio in Massachusetts, with a formidable cast of musicians including Motown bassist Bob Babbitt, drummer Charles Collins, guitarist Bob Kulick, keyboardist Bette Sussman and saxophonist David Sanborn.
For Curry, though, the point was never simply to prove that he could make a rock record. He wanted to step outside the safety of his most famous character and connect with an audience as himself.
His music career ultimately didn't become the second act he had envisioned. But Fearless remains a fascinating record of Curry trying to make that transition — backed by musicians of serious rock pedigree and determined to be taken seriously as more than Frank-N-Furter.
For an actor who spent his career inhabiting unforgettable characters, it was one of the rare occasions when Tim Curry was determined to let audiences hear the artist underneath them.
