{"id":352187,"date":"2025-12-18T00:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T00:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/352187\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T00:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T00:24:07","slug":"the-magical-life-of-toni-basil-how-she-taught-elvis-enchanted-bowie-and-had-a-smash-hit-with-mickey-life-and-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/352187\/","title":{"rendered":"The magical life of Toni Basil: how she taught Elvis, enchanted Bowie \u2013 and had a smash hit with \u2018Mickey\u2019 | Life and style"},"content":{"rendered":"

If your knowledge of Toni Basil begins and ends with her cheerleader-chanting smash hit Mickey, that\u2019s just the tip of a very deep iceberg. By the time Mickey topped the US charts 43 years ago this week, in 1982, Basil had already spent four decades in the entertainment industry. The deeper you go, the more places you realise she was. When Elvis Presley<\/a> sings \u201cSee the girl with the red dress on\u201d in his 1964 movie Viva Las Vegas, and points across the dancefloor, the gyrating girl in the red dress is Basil. When Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper take LSD at the end of Easy Rider with two sex workers, one of them is Basil. When dance troupe the Lockers show\u200bcase their pre-hip-hop street dance moves on Soul Train in 1976, it\u2019s six guys and \u2026 Basil. By the time of Mickey she had already worked with everyone from David Bowie to Tina Turner to Talking Heads, with more to come.<\/p>\n

Basil has been-there-done-that in so many places, for so long, and over the course of our two-hour conversation she\u2019ll casually drop asides such as \u201c\u2026 so I went to see Devo with Iggy Pop and Dean Stockwell\u201d or \u201c\u2026 me and Bowie had just come from dinner with Bob Geldof, Paula Yates and Freddie Mercury\u201d or \u201cI was just at Bette Midler\u2019s 80th birthday party, what a bash!\u201d She\u2019s now 82 years old but on Zoom, from her dance studio in Los Angeles, she doesn\u2019t look much older than she did in the video for Mickey \u2013 and she looked like a teenager in that, even though she was 38 at the time. Her memory is perfectly sharp, too, and her energy levels are as high as ever, as she shares her packed life story with animated diction. If she has a secret to eternal youth, it\u2019s that she has danced her whole life, and she still does, she says. \u201cDance is my drug of choice. You get high from it, and it gives you community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basil during a visit to Britain to perform \u2018Mickey\u2019 on Top of the Pops. Photograph: PA Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Basil\u2019s brief pop career was, she explains, actually thanks to Manchester and the BBC. She signed to a British record label in 1979 to record her album Word of Mouth, which included a reworking of Kitty, an album track by forgotten British band Racey. Basil gave it a gender-switch, a new wave synth makeover and that unforgettable cheerleader chant \u2013 \u201cI had to beg my record company to let me record it,\u201d she remembers. \u201cThey thought it was a terrible idea; they didn\u2019t know what cheerleaders were.\u201d She made little films for a few of the songs, singing and dancing. \u201cThis was a year before MTV,\u201d she explains. By chance, a couple of BBC producers, Ken Stevenson and Alan Walsh, watched them playing in a record shop in Manchester, \u201cand they saw in the credits that I had choreographed and directed it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

They invited her to make a two-part special for the BBC, with more song-and-dance numbers and little comedy skits. The show plays like a lost time capsule of 80s kitsch: somewhere between punk, new wave and hip-hop; colourful, playful, subtly subversive, almost like an over-caffeinated kids\u2019 cartoon. It was this that launched Mickey as a hit single \u2013 first in the UK (in March), then in Australia (a No 1 that July), then, after a new American recording contract and a new video (Basil wore her original high school cheerleader outfit), a No 1 in the US that December. \u201cIt took Britain, land of Boy George and the Beatles, to go, \u2018Look at this. Let\u2019s put this on television,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIn the US, they were like: \u2018What is she thinking?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Basil really did have showbiz in her Italian American blood. \u201cIt never occurred to me that I would do anything else,\u201d she says. \u201cMy mother\u2019s side of the family were vaudevillian stars, kind of acrobatic comedians.\u201d Her father was an orchestra leader, first in Chicago, then at the Sahara hotel in Las Vegas. \u201cI stood on the side of the stage from 1947 to 1957 seeing a show every weekend; everybody from Josephine Baker to Nat King Cole to Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basil in the \u2018Mickey\u2019 video. Photograph: Sipa Press\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

She was their only child. \u201cThey thought I was the centre of the earth. I was extremely spoilt. And I was really a good dancer. They saw what I had going, and they really pushed it.\u201d Her teenage life was daily ballet classes and acting lessons, followed by go-go clubs every night, \u201cdancing the pony, the mashed potato, all of that\u201d. The tide was turning: the youth rebellion of the early 1960s was making older entertainers look stale and square. Basil was one of a handful of dancers who really knew what the kids were digging, so she soon picked up work dancing and choreographing. It sounds like a great time to be young, I suggest. \u201cI think it\u2019s always a great time to be young!\u201d she replies.<\/p>\n

Given all this, Basil wasn\u2019t particularly fazed to find herself standing in for Ann-Margret and teaching Elvis Presley dance steps when she was just 20. \u201cBeing nervous around Elvis? He was part of the show-business family. I mean, I appreciated it was Elvis Presley, but not in that crazy fan way.\u201d Or hanging backstage during the 1964 concert movie T.A.M.I Show, which she also choreographed. \u201cWe were in the green room with the Rolling Stones and Smokey Robinson watching James Brown, and the Stones realised, \u2018Oh shit, we gotta follow him?\u2019\u201d Likewise the Rat Pack movie Robin and the Seven Hoods, where she played a chorus girl. \u201cI started out in the back line, and the next day I was in the centre line. By the third day, I was front and centre.\u201d Basil even features in a promotional featurette<\/a> for the movie, chatting on set with Sinatra, Dean Martin and the gang. They were mostly gentlemen, she says. \u201cMaybe Bing Crosby made a pass at me, but I don\u2019t think I was so interested.\u201d That seems to be another thing she was unfazed by: \u201cI had directors making a pass at me, but it was never a pass that, if I was not reciprocal, I didn\u2019t get the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the late 60s the tide had turned again, and Basil was part of the counterculture. Her boyfriend at the time was the actor Dean Stockwell, which brought her into the orbit of Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda and artists such as Wallace Berman and Bruce Conner. Conner\u2019s 1966 art film Breakaway<\/a> consists of Basil dancing and singing the title song, which went on to become a sought-after northern soul track \u2013 Mickey was not her first rodeo.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how she came to be in Easy Rider, plus other counterculture classics such as the Monkees\u2019 Head, Five Easy Pieces (with Nicholson), and Hopper\u2019s infamously erratic The Last Movie. Hopper was usually the overbearing presence in this gang, it seems. His intensity filled the room, she says. \u201cHe either hated something or loved it, there was no in between, which was quite entertaining, but he could be mad as a hatter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Performing in the Monkees\u2019 Head (1968). Photograph: Moviestore Collection Ltd\/Alamy<\/p>\n

As for the drugs associated with this scene, Basil never really took to them. \u201cPot made me paranoid, to the point of passing [the joint] around and really not taking a toke out of it,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd at one point I was able to get some cocaine, which was pretty fabulous. I made a film in a week on cocaine! But it broke my skin out. So me with my vanity? Oh no!\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time this scene fizzled out in the early 70s, Basil was already on to the next thing. Dance had moved on since go-go, so she asked a girlfriend: \u201cFind me the best dancer and have him call me. I need some classes.\u201d The best dancer turned out to be a kid called Lamont Peterson, who put her on to the straight Black club scene in south Los Angeles, and Don \u201cCampbellock\u201d Campbell, who was inventing a new style of dance that became known as \u201clocking\u201d. \u201cIt was the most spectacular dancing I had seen since James Brown,\u201d says Basil. \u201cHe did a lot \u200bof arms,\u201d she goes through the moves on camera: \u201cwrist-roll, point, five, slap. There was something of communication; the dancer could have a conversation with the audience.\u201d There were also athletic leaps, down on to the knees or into splits, even somersaults. This was an individual, club-based style but, drawing on her vaudevillian instincts, Basil formed a stage troupe with Campbell and four other dancers called The Lockers. This was still pre-hip-hop, in the mid-70s, but you can see it prefiguring later street dance styles \u2013 like body\u200b popping, \u201cwaacking<\/a>\u201d and breakdancing. The Lockers toured with everyone from Sinatra to Funkadelic. \u201cWe changed the face of dance,\u201d she says. \u201cWe showed audiences that street dance was an art form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basil and Dennis Hopper attend the 1976 Cannes film festival. Photograph: WWD\/Penske Media\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Basil was also building a career as a choreographer. Bowie invited her to London out of the blue in 1973 to choreograph his forthcoming Diamond Dogs tour. His vision for it was more like rock opera: complex moving sets, costume changes, theatre lighting, dance numbers. It was intense\u200b; 13-hour days of rehearsals. \u201cThere was a lot of homework with Bowie.\u201d She marvelled at his stamina. \u201cDavid could do anything; as an actor, as a mover, he wasn\u2019t a normal dancer \u2013 I mean, the guy didn\u2019t even look normal, he just looked like this strange alien god. I always thought he should have been James Bond.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is what connects all the most impressive people she\u2019s worked with, says Basil: \u201cTheir work ethic is just obsessive: pre\u200b-production, planning, rehearsals.\u201d Turner was another. She approached Basil in the late 70s, when she was seeking to go solo. It was a vulnerable time for her, having effectively been in hiding since ending her infamously abusive marriage to Ike a few years earlier. After her high-energy moves with the Ikettes, Turner was after something more elegant, says Basil. But she certainly knew her stuff. In their first run-through Basil sat poised, ready to write down her feedback. \u201cI watched the whole thing, and I realised I\u2019d never put the pencil to the paper. It was just shocking to be in the same room with her, singing and dancing with the band. It was startling. And she does it all in high heels, and then, \u200bas soon as it\u2019s over, she can hardly walk in the heels. But you\u2019d never know it.\u201d Basil worked with Turner right until her final 50th anniversary tour, in 2009. \u201cShe was an elegant queen, and yet she\u2019s up in the girls\u2019 dressing room, working on their weaves, fixing their hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basil\u2019s pre-MTV videos also caught the attention of David Byrne, of Talking Heads, who asked her to direct a promo for their song Crosseyed and Painless<\/a> \u2013 which featured her street dancer friends and none of the band \u2013 then, a year later, their classic Once in a Lifetime<\/a>, for which she and Byrne researched films of people in trances and religious ecstasy to come up with his jerky, idiosyncratic dance style. \u201cAs a matter of fact, he was very hesitant about that,\u201d she recalls. Before that, \u201cI don\u2019t think he really danced at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

With musician David Byrne, of Talking Heads, photographed in 1987. Photograph: Jack Mitchell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Basil would go on to choreograph other acts, especially Midler, and films and TV shows, from American Graffiti to Sesame Street to Legally Blonde, right up to Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Once Upon a Time \u2026 in Hollywood, for which she taught Margot Robbie and Leonardo DiCaprio their 60s moves. \u201cShe was the goddess of go-go,\u201d Tarantino said of Basil, \u201cShe knows the era perfectly.\u201d Perhaps better than he realised: Tarantino\u2019s film harked back to the Manson family\u2019s murder of Sharon Tate and her friends in 1969. \u201cI knew Sharon and Roman [Polanski, her husband], we used to hang out,\u201d she says. \u201cI dated Jay Sebring!\u201d Sebring, the celebrity hairstylist, was Tate\u2019s friend and ex-partner, and was murdered alongside her that night. Basil dated him years before. \u201cHe and Gene Shacove were the two straight hairdressers in Hollywood. Straight hairdressers get laid as much as straight male dancers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basil never married but seemingly had quite a few celebrity liaisons over the years, not least with her collaborators. \u201cI worked with them through it all.\u201d She remains cryptic on the details. \u201cI worked with Bowie through it all. I worked with Jerry Casale [of Devo, who contributed tracks to Basil\u2019s Word of Mouth album] through it all. I worked with Byrne through it all. Our relationships have always remained, no matter what, creative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stage troupe The Lockers in concert in 1973. Photograph: ABC Photo Archives\/Disney General Entertainment Content\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Is she saying these were purely creative relationships? \u201cNo.\u201d She\u2019s not minded to go into detail, though. \u201cYou\u2019re the Guardian and I\u2019m not talking about my sex life!\u201d she says mockingly, then adds: \u201cIt\u2019s extremely erotic when it\u2019s creative and it\u2019s sexual. Oh my God, there is nothing more spectacular. And if you deliver work that is also spectacular, you don\u2019t mind losing the sex, but you don\u2019t want to lose the creative connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now she lives alone in \u201ca wonderful house in Los Angeles\u201d with her five cats and her dance studio next door. She still teaches students, judges street dance competitions globally and is regarded as a legend in the field. And she still hears Mickey echoing through the culture: in movies (most recently Die My Love), and in songs by the likes of Run DMC<\/a> (It\u2019s Tricky), Gwen Stefani (Hollaback Girl), Taylor Swift (Shake It Off), Charli <\/a>xcx (Speed Drive) and, most recently, Blackpink singer Ros\u00e9\u2019s hit single with Bruno Mars, Apt<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of an anthem now. Here in America, if you\u2019re a little cheerleader, you\u2019re dancing to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her own taste of pop stardom might have been fleeting \u2013 follow-up singles to Mickey and a second album barely troubled the charts \u2013 but she doesn\u2019t seem too bothered: \u201cI never thought of it as anything but a time period. It was just a train ride. I was able to earn a living, I had fabulous, talented friends that were all doing something similar, but like Bowie, we all evolved. Dance<\/a> styles change, music changes, so if you keep up with the trend, you change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If your knowledge of Toni Basil begins and ends with her cheerleader-chanting smash hit Mickey, that\u2019s just the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-352187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}