Here's the recipe: a pair of deep blue eyes, a wholesome but inviting pair of lips, strands of sun-drenched hair, swiveling hips, a satin jacket subtly revealing a smooth, hairless chest, and finally a pinch - just a pinch - of androgyny. As long as what you've created isn't too overwhelming in the talent department, you've got it. A teen dream, that is.
After Dark Magazine May 1979
Teen Idols: Packaging The Boy Next Door by Michael MustoEvery generation has its own. In the 1950s, there were Fabian and Pat Boone and Frankie Avalon and Sal Mineo and Rick Nelson and, of course, Elvis. The rebellious 1960s brought David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, the Fab Four (The Beatles), and the Prefab Four (The Monkees, who were arbitrarily handpicked for teen stardom). With the blasé 1970s, teen dreams are still with us. The current crop, led by Shaun Cassidy, Andy Gibb, Leif Garrett, The Bay City Rollers, and a slew of other flaxen-haired, meringue-faced, bland but thoroughly likable boys-next-door, are more expert at capitalizing on the teen market than anyone before them. Teen dreams don't necessarily make it because of their overwhelming voices or acting ability. More often, they make it because their uni-dementional talents and personalities are suited to the fleeting, pre-sexual whims of the clamoring, adolescent girls who buy their records, go to their concerts, watch their TV shows buy their magazines, memorize what they eat for breakfast, and fantasize about holding their hands and drifting off into the dawn. Every few years, a new set of thirteen-year-olds emerges, chooses new pretty boy icons, and devours them mercilessly, just like their older sisters before them. The old teen dreams, meanwhile, having been easily digested, are painlessly spit out and easily replaced.
Today's teen dreams are perhaps a little wiser about the syndrome, and a little hipper in their lifestyles and their musical roots than those of the past, but basically it's a case of "the name's been changed." Shaun Cassidy obviously has some career smarts and a genuine affinity for rock-n-roll, but how different an experience would a Shaun concert be if the body pulsating under the satin jacket was Bobby Vee or Bobby Sherman or even David Cassidy, Shaun's half- brother and ex-teen dream, who gave Shaun an instant "in" into teen stardom after he abdicated his throne when a fan was killed in a stampede at one of his concerts.
Andy Gibb, one of Shaun's current rivals, was also bequeathed his key to teen stardom by family - his older brothers, the Bee Gees, who were sizzling when Andy made his breakthrough. Andy is now considered one of the hottest recording stars in the world, in addition to being a top teen idol. He has all the requisite characteristics for teen dream-dom: slender hips, sensitive eyes, an ingratiating manner, a vibrating pelvis, and influential siblings. He also has chest hair but has somehow managed to rise above that handicap.
The Alessis are still awaiting their first Top Forty US hit, along with which they hope will come their chance to transcend the teen genre. "We'd like to get old right down to young." The same applies to Virgin. "We'd like to grow," says Dirk Etienne, "and not leave the teens behind. There's a big Middle America out there, and we don't want to scare them." The same goes for Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, the Bay City Rollers, and every other teen dream, who, intimidated by their all-female audiences, crave peer pressure and wider acceptance. "Teen Idol," says Randi Reisfeld, "can be a dirty expression. They want to be taken seriously. Shaun feels he has the potential to attract a large audience. The Beatles and Elvis did. John Travolta." And Andy Gibb? "Well, I think Andy has potential," she whimpers, with a mock swoon. "But I have a crush on him, so I can't be objective."
In person, the Alessis' looks have incited stampedes around the world, and while Billy was a bit put off by a mob scene that ensued upon their arrival in London, both brothers love the response they get from their fans. Naturally, though, they prefer it via the mail. "We love it." Says Billy and Bobby, who are into T-Birds and art nouveau antiques. "We're affected by it. We got a letter from a guy who broke up with his girlfriend , and our music explained everything to him. It helped him get through it a lot easier. That really affected me. To know that our music gets across like that means we're doing something right." The other Alessi nods, but he looks a little perturbed, he is still thinking about their look and the reaction it gets. "Tell you the truth," he says, "I don't think we're so great looking. I think we have horrible noses. We see a picture of us and go, 'Oh, God!"
Still, they're positively stunning compared to those other teen idols - the grotesquely made-up, larger-than-life quartet called Kiss, actually, aren't teen heartthrobs or teen dreams - they're teen heroes, fire-spitting cartoon characters that teenage boys find spectacularly amusing, the way their older brothers thrilled to Alice Cooper's demonics a few years ago. Danny Filed explains their appeal: "There's nothing overtly sexual or menacing about them. It's a good act. It has flash and fire. You don't have to be able to analyze the situation to respond to it emotionally, as a child would."
Incredibly, the disco group the Village People has been creating similar teen hysteria lately, with their cartoonish characterizations and pseudo-macho poses, which are not all that different from Kiss'. Originally a gay 0riented group, they're now another frenzied phenomenon of Middle America. They can't be classified as a teen group, though, because their audience spans several age groups.
Andy Gibb was bequeathed his teen dream-dom by his brothers, who happen to be the Bee Gees. Still, he's managed to have four big hits and conquer the stigma of chest hair all on his own. John Travolta has transcended the teen genre and launched a successful adult movie career; Henry Winkler of"Happy Days" and Willie Aames of "Eight Is Enough" typify easily disposable TV heroes; while blond-haired Leif Garret aspires to rock stardom a la Rod Stewart, sans the voice. Teen Dream Ratings: John Travolta - 5; Henry Winkler - 7; Willie Aames - 8; Leif Garrett - 9.
Kiss IS a teen group, but it's managed to attract enough older young people to already account for more longevity than ninety percent of the other teen faves. No one is more flitty or unstable than a thirteen-year-old girl who chooses idols the way she chooses lipstick colors - which is why the teen dreams aspire to older, more loyal audiences. Every teen idol wants two things - longevity and a broader audience - but only a handful of them achieve either one.
Only the Paley Brothers - Jonathan and Andy - two blond pretty boys who are up-and-coming on the teen scene, seem to invite the orgiastic fervor of the teen response. "Teens are a great audience," they remarked. "Kids are more critical because they watch TV. Everything they see is professional, slick, and perfect." Otherwise, the general attitude is that the teen audience- which has incredible buying potential, as well as the ability to launch mass media superstars - is desirable, but not enough. "If they're there, let them be there," says Billy or Bobby Alessi. "Let them buy records."
Most of the teen dreams are without girlfriends, which gives the mags the chance to ask repeatedly, "Are YOU the Girl To Mend Andy's Heart?" or 'Can YOU Be Shaun's Best Girl?" or "Are YOU Good Enough for Leif?" The first-person writing style is the key, as the magazines reach out to touch the ventricles and auricles of each and every reader with inspirational words of wisdom. Judging from the amount and intensity of the mail we received, we were quite successful at it.
Occasionally, we'd introduce someone new - a rock group or movie actor who'd just burst upon the scene - but for the most part, the dreams had to be familiar to be appreciated. Records, concerts, and, best of all, a regular TV series contribute to exposure, which contributes to familiarity, which with the right ingredients, adds up to teen dream-dom.
Very rarely, a group or performer will break the rules and win instant teen celebrity without any exposure outside of the magazines. Such an exception is Virgin, five sun-bleached pretty boys who got tremendous coverage in the magazines before their Gene Simmons-produced album was even in the studio. It's a strange phenomenon, but they were created as a strange phenomenon - a teen band designed to conquer the teen audience. Says Kenny Kerner,one of Virgin's founders, who's also partly responsible, along with Bill Aucoin, for Kiss: "I used to look at the charts every week, and it dawned on me that every year there'd be another teen phenomenon, but never a legitimate, self-contained teen band that would record their own songs, play them in concerts, and play their own instruments. I saw these guys rehearsing at Cherokee Studios, and they looked incredible." In no time at all, a teen phenom was born, photographed in shorts on the beach, and slotted into a tour with Shaun Cassidy. The kids have responded enthusiastically. "Once, two hundred girls were banging on the windows of a restaurant we were in," says lead singer Dirk Etienne. "The hanging plants were falling from the ceiling. We had to be snuck out through the security exit." Does he ever mind the stampede of screaming females? "No. We love that. That's half the fun. They're there for us, and we're there for them." As to the group's music, Etienne insists, "It's not trash. It's not punk rock. And it's teen rock as opposed to teenybopper. It's young music with young lyrics. It's very up - nothing depressing." Even Etienne admitted that at this point the group's appeal has more to do with their look than theirmusic. "It's sexual. The teens live on a sexual level some of the older people don't want to recognize. But what we have is something very, very special. It's there musically as well as visually."
All of which opinions are echoed by Alessi, the twin brothers who sing of lost love found love and love-hate, and who prove that two teen dreams are better than one, Alessi, at least, do not compromise musical values forteen stardom. They write catchy, romantic music that's destined to take them beyond the "pube" arena and into the [pop market. Their success with teens, says Billy or Bobby Alessi, is simply a matter of chance. "It just happened. In fact, A&M Records said at the beginning, 'Look, it'll be our guess that the teen magazines will just slop you right up.' They said, 'If you want, we'll keep everything away from it.' We said, 'Why?' The first album,they didn't want to put our picture on the cover. They said, 'They'll think you're a teenybopper act.' Aptly enough, they compromised - the brothers appeared on the cover in half-face.
Brothers make good teen-dreams because two heartthrobs are always better than one, especially if they look like they've been cloned off of the same fabulous mold. Hence, the popularity of Alessi (Billy and Bobby), Long Island-born twins who graduated from the group Barnaby Bye into a mellow twosome that has conquered Europe but has yet to approach the American battlefront. In a similar vein are the Paley Brothers, Johathan and Andy, who split their time between hanging out with the Patti Smiths and Andy Warhols,and cultivating a teen dream image while touring with the Shaun Cassidys. Teen Dream Ratings: Alessi - 7 (3 1/2 each); Paleys - 6 (4 each, minus two points for integrity).
And yet, the appeal of the teen idol is largely, if not purely, sexual. When Shaun's hips swivel and thousands of girls release orgiastic gasps, it's not out of fear that he'll rupture himself - it's out of some kind of subliminal sexual delirium compounded by the thrill of group reaction. And yet most of these girls are too young to even know what they're screaming about. Danny Fields puts it bluntly: "It's PRE-sexual," he says. "Once the girls become actually sexual, they stop fantasizing - at least I would hope so, for their own health's sake. But what they want is just to hold hands and kiss. I don't think they think of giving head or anything like that."
The teen fan magazines naturally play up the beefcake element, like pre-pubescent Playgirls, with semi-nude shots of the dreams on the beach, in the bathroom, or, best of all, lying eductively on their beds. Reisfeld insists she's underplayed flesh shots in "16," but a quick flip through a recent issue brings one upon three pages of a semi-nude Leif Garrett,and a six-page section entitled "16's Adonis Gallery - A Dozen Plus Macho Men For You To Drool Over!" in which everybody from Harry "K.C." Casey to Richard Hatch appears shirtless, or less. "Once we ran a shot of John Travolta by the pool," Danny Fields recalls. "You could see practically every vein of his crotch outlined in his briefs, but there was not a word of protest. Awhile later, we ran a shot of a Bay City Roller who was naked except for a scarf that was draped around his neck and between his legs. It was less revealing, really, than the Travolta shot, but we got incredible protest." The reason? "It showed too much flesh. Girls are scared of the real thing."
I have also worked as an editor of a teen magazine, so I know firsthand all the quirky likes and dislikes of the eight to fifteen-year-old girls who read nothing but these teen fanzines. Most of the girls, it seems,want enough to fantasize and drool over, but not more. Carrying the fan mentality to a dangerous extreme, they want to know everything imaginable about their "fave hunks" - especially their addresses and phone numbers-and most of them assumed I had more contact with the stars than they did. "My girls," as I affectionately called them, also wanted to know the answers to their innumerable love problems, which I attempted to resolve as well as my limited experience would allow, telling them what Leif or Kristy would do in the same situation. Indeed, a favorite approach of the teen magazines is to use the stars as mouthpieces for constructive life advice, as in"Cheryl Ladd Reveals: How To Cope When Your Friends Hurt You." A lot of the advice is quite fanciful, shall we say, but it's all rather harmless, and gives the teen mags a chance to transcend the fan genre by being educational, at least peripherally.
Andy is a typical teen idol in that he never intended to become one,but since he did, he hasn't tried too hard to fight it. Like the other idols, Andy sings of lovey-dovey things while keeping his image pure and viceless. He might seem a bit shallow to more mature audiences, but ex-16 magazine editor Danny Fields doesn't think so. "All these people are talented,"hesays. "David Cassidy, for example, is a good actor and a great comedian, which not many people have gotten to see. These people are no more plastic than a Robert Redford or Ali MacGraw." True, perhaps, but then again,can you imagine Parker Stevenson in "All the President's Men" or Marie Osmond in "Goodbye, Columbus?"
Other teen dreams range from blond teen Willie Aames of TV's "Eight Is Enough" to the gangly but cute, perpetual adolescent Robby Benson to Kristy's cocky, skateboarding brother Jimmy McNichol to boyish rockstar Peter Frampton - which, as Dorothy Parker would say, runs the gamut from A to B. A few female stars are admired by the teens, but they are only ADMIRED, not idolized. Kristy McNichol and Debby Boone have the appealof older sisters, but as they blossom into womanhood, they are losing their chummy quality. Valerie Bertinelli of "One Day at a Time" is still a fun, hip best friend type who's full of wonderful advice. And Olivia Newton-John, while too old to be sisterly, will be reaping the benefits of her film association with John Travolta for months to come. Still,none of these women can inspire the kind of wild effusion caused by the Bay City Rollers or even Scott Baio, the Italian street kid on "Happy Days." Requisite number one is that teen dreams have to be male, and a certain kind of male at that.
Danny Fields, who now manages the Ramones and Steve Forbert, put his finger on the appeal of the teen dreams: "Most of the boys are cute. They're boy-next-door types. Also, they are so famous and popular that if you were to become their girlfriend, you'd be special. A lot of these girls can only recognize their identity through a male. As backwards as we might find that, it is the prevalent attitude."
The current editor of 16, the oldest teen magazine which now circulates almost half-a-million copies, is Randi Reisfeld, who claims to be "no psychologist," but happens to be full of her own theories. "I've said this a thousand times," she says. "The girls that are 16 are too old to sit on daddy's knee and too young to date the boy-next-door. They get their heroes not from football, like their brothers, but from TV. They fantasize,not sexually, but romantically. It's mostly I-want-to-hold-your-hand and dreaming and going off into the sunset."
