She's A Beauty

In this song, lead singer Fee Waybill plays the role of a carnival barker touting his latest attraction: a beautiful girl who will even talk to you. For a dollar, you can see her for yourself, just don't fall in love.

San Francisco wasn't always an overpriced tech metropolis: in the '80s, it had a sleazy side that inspired this song. In a Songfacts interview with Fee Waybill, he explained: "'She's A Beauty' did actually come from a real experience. I lived in San Francisco, and there was a red-light district downtown. It was called the Tenderloin, and it was where there were seedy clubs, bars, prostitutes... it was the underbelly of San Francisco. I can't remember why I was there - I wasn't going to a massage parlor or anything. Maybe I was going downtown to Macy's or something like that. But in front of massage parlors and houses of prostitution, they used to have these little kiosks. Out in front of this one massage parlor there was a kiosk that was like a phone booth. It was enclosed, and the sign said, 'PAY A DOLLAR, TALK TO A NAKED GIRL.' It was supposed to arouse you so you would go into the 'happy ending' type of massage parlor. It had been there for years, and I'd never done anything like that before, but for some reason, I went up to it and put a dollar in the thing because I was curious. You put a dollar in, the wall slides down, and there is a girl in there who is scantily clad. She starts disrobing, at the same time talking about, 'Hey baby, come on in. We'll take care of you.' I was such a rube and so naïve. It was this gorgeous girl, and I'm going, 'What are you doing this for? You're so gorgeous, why are you doing this? You could be a model.' She completely ignored whatever I said and kept giving her speech, her spiel. 'Yeah, come on honey, come in.' Before she would actually take anything off, the thing would come down again, and it was, 'Pay another dollar.' So, I put in another dollar! We were looking for new Tubes dancers because we had lost our dancers between the last album and this one, so I kept saying, 'You can be a dancer in The Tubes. Can you dance? Can you sing?' And she just completely ignored me."

This is by far the biggest hit for The Tubes, propelled by a high-quality video that got lots of airplay on MTV, which launched just two years earlier. The Tubes started at A&M Records in 1975, where they created some rather intriguing conceptual albums (including Remote Control in 1979, with a theme of television-induced idiocy) that never met sales expectations. When A&M dropped them in 1981, Capitol welcomed them with open arms. The label teamed them with producer David Foster, who helped them craft the hit ballad "Don't Want To Wait Anymore" and brought in Steve Lukather of Toto for "Talk To Ya Later," their first song to make an impact on MTV. For their second Capitol album, Outside Inside, Foster and Lukather teamed with Fee Waybill to write "She's A Beauty." Lukather, who played guitar on the track, is a good guy to have on your team. He did session work for a number of artists and often came up with distinctive sections, but was rarely credited as a songwriter.