In the old days, when the WWF released an album, it didn’t necessarily contain wrestler theme songs. No, they usually contained tracks sung by the WWF superstars themselves. You can only imagine the musical train wrecks caused by such an idea. One such abomination was Piledriver: The Wrestling Album II.
It wasn’t all terrible, so let’s get the good stuff out of the way first. Well, “good” may be an overstatement; perhaps we should say “less bad”. Anyway, the album contains what I believe is the first mass available track by Wayne Ferris, aka the Honky Tonk Man, in a song named after himself. There’s also the Demolition theme, and while I never really understood why people loved them so much, their theme song kicked fanny. Of course, it holds a place in my heart because we always used to call people “Ass Smack”, so we would change “Ax” to “Ass” in the song and “Smash” to “Smack”. Go ahead, try it. It’s fun.
Even Slick’s song, Jive Soul Bro, isn’t too bad, although I am sure many would argue that it is somewhat racist, a theory that isn’t helped by the fact that the video shows Slick eating fried chicken and has a lot of closeups of his lips. Thankfully, though, he is run out of the ghetto by a gang and a kid on a Big Wheel at the end of the video.
After that, though, things start to really go downhill. There’s the Strike Force inspired Girls in Cars, sung by a poor man’s Kenny Loggins by the name of Robbie Dupree. The song is so wimpy that even Tito Santana and Rick Martel couldn’t use it for their entrance. Think about that one.
Next up on the block is Vince McMahon bellowing out Stand Back, in which he goes off on how people tried to tell him what to do and how to live. Better sense prevailed when it came to the video, as it was shot with Andre the Giant as subject.
The fun continues as Mean Gene Okerlund dons a goofy blue wig and runs around in fast motion (did Homer Simpson direct this video?) in a remake of Rick Derringer’s Rock n Roll Hoochie Koo. In a very classy move, the WWF preserved the song and left in the drug and sex references. I’m sure moms all over the country loved it when their kids asked why Mean Gene was singing about “pussy”.
Another “highlight” is Koko B. Ware’s title track, in which he explains that love is sometimes like an arg-u-ment, like a piledriver. The video for Piledriver has a bunch of wrestlers working on a construction site, gawking at women passing by. You really haven’t lived until you’ve seen Vince McMahon as the world’s nerdiest construction worker. And in the middle of all this zany fun, Koko goes about giving wrestlers brainbusters, which are actually not piledrivers.
The crem de la crap, though, was when all the WWF Superstars got together for the ear achingly bad If You Only Knew. Fortunately, the WWF was able to preserve kayfabe in the video, as the heels and the faces were shown singing in different groups. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to see Outback Jack and Killer Khan sing a duet. Sadly, it was not meant to be.
Amazingly, even as bad as it sounds, this didn’t deter the WWF from releasing even MORE crap on the unsuspecting public. Check out more musical madness below.