It’s a bittersweet Throwback Thursday with your very last chance to see a legendary act in the D.C. area.
Bill Medley brings The Righteous Brothers’ farewell tour to Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, on Aug. 15.
“I hate to call it a ‘farewell tour,’ I hate to feel that I’m leaving, I’ll still do some work and I’ll probably take a couple years to wind this thing down, but I’m 83 now and the traveling seems to be a problem,” Medley told WTOP. “I hate it because I actually love being on stage. We do a residency show in Vegas, so I’ll probably keep doing that because it’s close to home … but I hate that I won’t be able to go out on the road and see everybody.”
The legendary Medley will be joined by Bucky Heard, his crooning stage partner since 2017 when he took over for the late Bobby Hatfield, who died in 2003 — the same year that the duo entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“We’ve become best friends,” Medley said. “I had a lot of people asking me to keep The Righteous Brothers music alive. I really didn’t want to replace Bobby Hatfield or even try, but I went in to see Bucky doing a couple of Journey songs and I said, ‘Well, if you can do Steve Perry, you can probably do Bobby Hatfield,’ so we sat at the piano, sang a few songs and it was pretty magical — like working with Bobby the first time we sang together.”
Born in Santa Ana, California, in 1940, Medley spent his teenage years listening to Little Richard and Ray Charles. He began singing himself with a rock ‘n’ roll group called The Paramours, while Hatfield performed with a similar group called The Variations. The two eventually combined forces to form The Righteous Brothers in 1962.
“We had known each other for about a year before that,” Medley said. “My guitar player was also Bobby’s guitar player and he would say, ‘Boy, you’ve got to hear this kid sing,’ and he would tell Bobby the same thing. … It was just magical singing with Bobby Hatfield. We were two different guys, but it was like one voice.”
In 1964, the duo recorded its first No. 1 hit with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” an R&B classic that later reached a new generation when Tom Cruise sang it to Kelly McGillis at the bar in the movie “Top Gun” (1986).
“It was meant to be kind of like a Four Tops song like ‘I’ll Be There,’ but when they started teaching it to us, I couldn’t get up to the real high note in the key that they wanted to do it in,” Medley said. “Every time we lowered the key, Phil Spector would slow it down, and by the time we got to ‘you never close your eyes’ down where I belong, it was a lot slower. … Thank God that Phil slowed it down, and thank God I couldn’t hit that high note.”
The duo cracked the Top 10 again with “Just Once In My Life” (1965), penned by Carole King and Gerry Goffin during a friendly competition with rival songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who were struggling to finish writing what would become The Righteous Brothers’ second No. 1 hit “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration” (1966).
“They’re just the greatest songwriters in the world,” Medley said. “Barry and Cynthia obviously wrote “Lovin’ Feelin’ and we were sent to New York to work on the next single and started teaching us ‘Soul & Inspiration,’ but Phil and Barry got into a disagreement, so Phil sent us back to California to work with Carole King, who was just this young, sweet, little girl. We used to tell her, ‘Why don’t you sing these songs? You sound great!'”
Around that time, Medley began arranging and producing the duo’s records himself, including “Unchained Melody,” which peaked at No. 4 in 1965. The timeless tune gained steam over the years as the duo’s most eternal hit when it was featured in the romantic movie “Ghost” (1990) starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.
“Bobby Hatfield just killed it,” Medley said. “It was a very, very cool movie and that song was absolutely perfect for the movie. It was just a great combination, so I was very moved. I was very touched watching that movie and hearing our song in it. … A lot of kids were going home to their moms and dads going, ‘Boy, you’ve gotta hear this new group The Righteous Brothers,’ and they were like, ‘You’re here because of The Righteous Brothers!'”
Medley’s most acclaimed film soundtrack was “Dirty Dancing” (1987) as his Jennifer Warnes duet “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” won the Oscar for Best Original Song and the Grammy for Best Pop Duo Performance.
“Who knew that movie was gonna do what it did? Jennifer and I really sang the song mainly just to work together,” Medley said. “My wife and I went to the theater to see the movie and I told my wife, ‘I think they cut the song out of the movie,’ then finally at the end they played it. It was the perfect place in the movie for that song to be because the kids walked out of the movie and bought the single. It was a monster.”
The most important question remains: Has he ever attempted the “Dirty Dancing” lift?
“Yeah, my grandson, who’s 13 months old,” Medley said. “That’s as good as I could get.”
Who needs “Dirty Dancing” when you have dirty diapers?
Find ticket information to Strathmore here.
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