When You Close Your Eyes

The follow-up single to "Sister Christian," Night Ranger scored again with "When You Close Your Eyes," which is about a guy who misses the woman he unwisely walked out on. He looks back on the good times and wonders if she still thinks about him and remembers him kindly. In a Songfacts interview with lead singer Jack Blades, he told the story: "We were doing the second album, we had a bunch of songs done, and I was sitting in the back room of the recording studio, Image Recording, and I started playing this chorus on the piano, which is an instrument I don't usually play - I usually write songs on guitar or something. But I was just sitting in the back room on the piano and I was playing this chord. And I'm not really a good piano player, I play more like ghetto piano – I stretch my fingers out really long and just play the chords. I started singing, 'When you close your eyes, do you dream about me?' It's the chorus, I'm like, that's kind of a good chorus. And I was just banging it out. And the co-owner of the studio, a guy named Harry Maslin, who produced all the Air Supply records back in the early '80s, came walking in, and I'm like, 'Hey, Harry, listen to this.' And I started playing it and singing it, and he goes, 'Man, that's a great chorus, you should finish that song.' So I started playing some of the chords and showed it to our keyboard player, Fitz (Alan Fitzgerald), and he started banging around with some stuff. And I showed it to Brad (Gillis), and we kind of worked it up with the band, but we didn't have the lyrics. We were in Hollywood and there was a lot of distractions going on when we were cutting the record; the guys from Motley Crüe were down all the time at our studio, and we were always up at the Rainbow, and always running around. There was a lot going on, a lot of partying, everything like that. So I got on a plane and flew to my parents' house in Scottsdale, Arizona. I flew there late Thursday evening, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday I just sat around a pool. It was beautiful sunny days, and I sat around a pool where I could just focus with nobody around me, and no chatter going on, no parties. And I ended up writing, finishing up the lyrics to three songs, one of which was 'When You Close Your Eyes.' And I felt really good about the lyrics on that. It all kind of came to me, just about how you move on in your life. I thought about my old girlfriend, where we split up, and I wonder if she ever thinks about the past, and all these things you went through when you were growing up, and all these things you did when you were together, and your first love, and the first woman that I made love to. And then everybody moves on in their lives, and you just go in separate ways. And I always wondered, 'When you close your eyes, do you think about me?' So I finished the lyrics, flew back on Monday, and sang all the words."

When we asked Blades if his ex-girlfriend, who provided inspiration for this song knew it was about her, he replied: "Probably not. Probably better that way."

The music video features Macha Bennet-Shephard, who also starred in the "Sister Christian" video. MTV was good to Night Ranger, which was one of the few popular American rock bands making high-quality videos in the early '80s.