“‘Runaway Boys’ being a little more of a song, song, not just a turnarond song, that took us a while to put together. Jim Phantom helped with the lyrics and it took a while to get right. I came up with bass going chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, and wrote the song around that. I mean there’s no set rules, I’ll have an idea in the shower, I’ll come up with the riff or something, I’ll have it floating around in my head, I’ll get an idea and I’ll get inspired to write some lyrics, I’ll get a real catchy phrase that I like. I’ll hear someone saying something and I think, oh that’s great and he actually said something else. I don’t know, there’s no way of putting any, it doesn’t make any sense, it just comes to you.”
— Brian Setzer on Runaway Boys
Since today is Brian Setzer’s birthday, it just seems right that today’s music video of the day should come from Stray Cats. Runaway Boys was the band’s first big hit in the UK, though it would take the U.S. a little longer to get with the program and embrace the genius that is Setzer.
This video was directed by Derek Burbidge, who directed a number of videos in the 80s. In fact, most of the videos for The Police were done by Burbidge. He also did the famous video for Gary Numan’s Cars.
Enjoy!