Herb's nephew, Randy Badazz Alpert, wrote "Rise" with Andy Armer. When the 3M Company lent a 32-track digital recorder to A&M Records (then co-owned by Alpert), they had some time to experiment. Randy told Songfacts: "It was Herb's idea to record The Lonely Bull and several other of his old hit records in a dance format, and though I did not particularly like the idea I did go ahead and work up some new dance arrangements for those old songs. I had played 'Rise' and several other new songs for Herb several weeks before the recording session and he loved two out of the three songs. We had always intended to record Rise during the session. That song was never an after thought. We did try recording The Lonely Bull and one other song before we switched to Rise. The room seemed to light up when we started to record that tune. It was a magical moment for both Herb and me."
On the Armer/Badazz audition tape, this was a stomper, going 128 beats per minute. Alpert slowed it to about 100 BPM so "People could dance and hug each other at the end of the night."
After this was released, the song got an unexpected boost when it was used in a critical scene in the TV series General Hospital - the rape of Laura by Luke (Anthony Geary, who plays Luke, suggested the song to the series' music director). The song was repeated several times a week for a short period afterward, until the storyline changed to make Luke and Laura a romantic couple. It wouldn't be the last time General Hospital bumped a song up the charts: In 1983, "Think Of Laura" by Christopher Cross was used as Luke and Laura's love theme, and exposure on the show pushed it to #9 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
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