I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams
Success is often a dual edged sword, where the price of success can sometimes make people avoid it. But the biggest questions of all is: What is success? Your definition of success can and often will be much different than others. And when you want your idea, your innovation to be successful, you really need to understand what it means to be successful.
This story will start at Harvard, more specifically at the Harvard humor magazine The Harvard Lampoon. Started in 1876, the Lampoon has always been a place where comedians and comedy writers got their start. Authors George Plimpton and John Updike were members, as was Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne) himself. One of the highest points in Lampoon history was when they published a satirical take on The Lord of the Rings called Bored of the Rings. The two authors of Bored of the Rings, Doug Kenney and Henry Beard, decided that they never wanted to grow up and, after graduation, decided to license the Lampoon name and make a new national magazine, The National Lampoon.
Just saying The National Lampoon was understates how influential it was. Not only was the magazine a best selling magazine, but they also created a radio show and stage shows including, Lemmings and The National Lampoon Show. The cast of actors on the radio and in the stage shows included: John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. This group not only helped found Saturday Night Live, but influenced comedy on TV and in the movies for the next decade.
With Belushi starring in the stage show, he was able to get a good friend of his, Meat Loaf on as his understudy. Marvin Lee “Meat Loaf” Aday was a high school football player who also had a love of singing. He made a name for himself on the LA scene and got a recording contact with Motown. Meat Loaf was part of a duo that released one album, which went nowhere and Meat Loaf left the label after his vocals were replaced on a song.
After starring in several regional versions of the musical Hair, Meat Loaf was brought onto the Broadway version. He was in a couple other Broadway plays and along the way he met his future collaborator Jim Steinman. While working with Steinman on songs for an album, Meat Loaf went on tour with The National Lampoon Show. Meat Loaf was able to bring Steinman along on tour as a musical director and they made friends with a woman who was in the show, Ellen Foley.
Foley was born in St Louis and after college, left to go to New York to follow her musical drama dreams. Foley had a huge voice and knew how to use it. Steinman and Meat Loaf brought her in to sing on several of their songs, including their duet, “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”, which became a career defining hit, not only for Meat Loaf, but for Foley as well. Foley was then cast, along with Debbie Allen and Mimi Kennedy, to star on a network variety show, 3 Girls 3. The show was designed to showcase 3 unknown stars (Foley, Allen and Kennedy) and show their overnight stardom. The show was pretty much cancelled by the first commercial break. Later that year, she made it onto Broadway in the revival of Hair. With her career on the way up, she not only signed a record contract of the strength of “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”, but decided against going on tour with Meat Loaf after the album became a surprise hit. If you watch the video, filmed on tour, that’s Ellen Foley’s voice, but someone else was brought in to lip sync.
Foley was so memorable on, that she was able to get Mick Ronson, from David Bowie’s band, and Ian Hunter, from Mott the Hoople, to produce and write songs for her debut album, Night Out. The album sold decently and had a couple small hits in Europe with “We Belong To The Night” and “What's a Matter Baby”. She also had one song in Milos Forman’s movie adaptation of Hair.
While touring Europe to support her album, Foley met Mick Jones of The Clash and started a relationship with him. Her second album, The Spirit of St. Louis, was written and recorded with The Clash immediately after their album Sandinista!. The album was much more experimental, in line with what The Clash were doing, and didn’t really showcase Foley’s talents. It didn’t sell well and her record label pretty much gave up on her. Martin Scorsese cast Foley and The Clash in a small role in his movie The King of Comedy. And she also had a small role in Tootsie.
After breaking up with Jones, The Clash song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” was rumored to be about their relationship, Foley came back the US and recorded her third album with Desmond Child, who later had hits with Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and Ricky Martin, and Glen Ballard, who wrote and produced for Alanis Morrisette. The album had no label support and went nowhere.
With her recording career stalled, Ellen Foley went back to TV and became the public defender/love interest in the second season of Night Court. Foley was hired when the producers were unable to get Markie Post and then fired after the season when Post became available. Foley then moved down to San Diego where she originate the role of the Witch in Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods. She was replaced by Broadway legend Bernadette Peters when the show went to Broadway, although she was able to play the role for the last month of its Broadway run.
Pivoting to movies, Foley had small roles in Fatal Attraction, Married to the Mob and Cocktail. Her old friend Jim Steinman then decided to include Foley in a new girl group he was forming named Pandora’s Box. They had one album which went nowhere, but it did include “It's All Coming Back to Me Now”, which later became hits for Celine Dion and Meat Loaf.
Soon after Pandora’s Box broke up, Foley married writer Doug Bernstein and started teaching at The School of Rock. Yes, that School of Rock.
The real life school which was the inspiration for the Jack Black movie.
Now we can look at the success the people we talked about.
Henry Beard and Doug Kenney were bought out of National Lampoon. Beard went on to writing humorous novels and spending time with his wife. Kenney moved National Lampoon into the movies when he wrote and produced Animal House. He then started Caddyshack until the studio took the movie away from him. Depressed and on drugs, he went to Hawaii with Chevy Chase to sober up and was found dead at the bottom of a cliff.
National Lampoon magazine slowly lost readers after Beard and Kenney left. Several other writer had already jumped to Saturday Night Live. Former staff writer John Hughes created a couple more National Lampoon movies, Class Reunion and Vacation, which spawned several sequels, before he left to make every other1980s comedy you can name. The National Lampoon brand came to represent straight to video sex comedies and is still around in various incarnations.
Meat Loaf went from his huge 1970s Bat Out of Hell success to a lost decade of the 1980s due to personal and professional setbacks. He made an amazing comeback in the 1990s when he and Jim Steinman reunited for Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell. The album and it’s first single, “I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)”, both reached number one, Meat Loaf has continued recording with some success and has received accolades for his acting as well.
Ellen Foley has released a best of collection and couple more albums since she stepped away from the spotlight. And it is her success, or lack thereof, which interested me. On one hand, she barely lasted one season in her two chances on network TV. Her Broadway roles were limited, her movie roles were small and her albums barely made any impact.
So, on one hand, you can say that Ellen Foley wasn’t very successful. On the other hand, she had starring roles in two network TV shows. She originated a role in a Stephen Sondheim play. She was on Broadway twice. She’s released six albums and a best of collection. And Foley’s has worked on movies directed by Milos Forman, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack and Jonathan Demme. Plus she was able to teach music, have a long lasting marriage while raising two children. It would be hard for anyone to look at that and not consider her career and her life a success.
So when you’re judging whether you or your idea is successful. Don’t be fooled by only looking at the numbers. Look at what you accomplished and realize that success doesn’t mean being the most successful. Success is whether or not you accomplished what you set out to do.