In 1985, an infectious, hard rocking single called “Talk to Me” hit radio and MTV. The track traded smoldering verses with tortured choruses as singer Fiona Flanagan (known just as Fiona) expressed frustration over an emotionally withdrawn partner. Her slightly raspy voice swelled from frail singing to anguished wails. Keyboards and bass dominated the verses, and a singular, piercing guitar note cut through the choruses.
The song had something that was missing from a lot of big hard rock anthems of the time: space. Everyone had their place, and that allowed her raw emotion to shine.
Oh baby, talk to me
How can I understand if you don’t talk to me
And tell me what you’re feeling?
Talk to me
Just give it to me straight, baby, now
Before it gets too late
Written by Beau Hill, who was then a hot producer through his work with Ratt, the song fit Fiona’s voice well. Her entire self-titled album had that kind of no-frills hard rock vibe that was more popular earlier in the decade, and “Talk to Me” and the song “James” invoked more of a late ‘70s/early ’80s vibe, yet still felt fresh and immediate. She sold it. The “Talk to Me” video featured Fiona, an actor portraying her lover, and her bandmates all photographed against white backdrops. It didn’t play at being slick, which was a good thing.
Fiona the album was produced by Good Rats frontman Peppi Marchello, who also wrote four of the eight tracks on the album. He enlistened his old bandmates, drummer Joe Franco and, for the song “Love Makes You Blind,” George Tebbitt on rhythm guitar. Other musicians included guitarist Bobby Messano (of Starz fame), bassist Donnie Kisselbach (who played with Rick Derringer), and keyboardists Benjy King, Aaron Hurwitz, and Peter Zale. Sax player Rick Bell, who played with the Michael Stanley Band, provided the sizzling solo on “Talk to Me” and also contributed to “James.”
Franco recalled to American Songwriter how Fiona’s debut album developed. “Initially, we recorded the song ‘Love Makes You Blind’ in ’84, which became part of the soundtrack to the Demi Moore movie No Small Affair,” Franco says. “The label, Atlantic [Records], was really happy with the track and gave us the green light to record an LP, which we did in ’85. We recorded at Wizard Studio in Briarcliff Manor, close to New York City. Mike Scott was the engineer, and I was happy with the drum sounds. I tracked mainly with Donnie and Bobby, and the late Benjy King joined us on keyboards for some of the songs.”
“One of the Guys”
Given that Franco and Marchello went back to the early ‘70s with the Good Rats, they had a fluid and natural working relationship. “Fiona was one of the guys,” Franco adds, “and along with Donnie, Bobby, and Benjy, we enjoyed working with each other as we came from the same place, musically.”
The drummer also liked the way “Talk to Me” built up. “The verses were really light with a hi-hat accent on beat 2 and a snare hit on beat 4,” Franco explains. “Then in the choruses, there was a heavy guitar accent on the ‘+ of 2’ and by the end of the song, we all played over the bar line, catching that accent. I loved the way Fiona sang the song and Rick Bell was brought in for the sax solo. I felt the whole album had a great vibe to it. The songs rocked even harder when the band hit the road.”
Franco said that she and the band were “rocking out every night in arenas, opening for Bryan Adams in the summer of ‘85. Then Atlantic pulled us off the tour because Beau was free [to produce her next album]. We were hoping to stay on the road and release another song/video from the first album to follow up on all the radio and MTV play that ‘Talk to Me’ received. But that wasn’t our call.”
The Impact of “Talk to Me”
“Talk to Me” hit No. 64 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart and No. 12 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart, while Fiona reached No. 71 on the Top 200 albums chart. Also of note: In 1985 Fiona sang backing vocals on three songs from Aldo Nova’s third album Twitch, and in early 1986 she played a homicidal sex worker in the Miami Vice episode “Little Miss Dangerous.” In late 1987, she co-starred with Bob Dylan in Hearts of Fire, the final film by Return of the Jedi director Richard Marquand. The movie did not fare well at the box office, but she recorded five non-album songs for the soundtrack.
By late 1985, Fiona’s star was rising. Beau Hill produced Fiona’s next two albums, Beyond the Pale (1986) and Heart Like a Gun (1989), and co-wrote three of the songs. (He also wound up dating her for nine years, then marrying her for one.) A legion of songwriting collaborators were brought in and her sound slanted more poppy.
According to Franco, Atlantic wanted to change her musical direction and thus teamed her up with Hill. “I thought Beau was a good call as I liked how the Ratt albums sounded, but he took her in a more modern direction at the time, which in my opinion was a bad call,” he says. “I felt Fiona should have stayed on the path she was on as she rocked.”
He’s right. The earthy, organic quality to her voice and first album was sanitized by overly slick, digital sounding production on Beyond the Pale. The 1989 album Heart Like a Gun fell somewhere between those first two albums, with nine of the 10 tracks co-written by Fiona. The record featured Winger drummer Rod Morgenstein and bassist/singer Kip Winger, with whom she dueted on “Everything You Do (You’re Sexing Me),” and Night Ranger guitarist Brad Gillis.
Less poppy than Beyond the Pale, her third album stalled at No. 150 on the Top 200. After the hard-rocking Squeeze in 1992, her lone album for Geffen Records produced by Marc Tanner, Fiona later married and divorced Hill, remarried, and had two children. She returned in 2011 with a new album Unbroken, which recaptured many of the raw vibes of her debut and is worth checking out if you missed it.
Fiona has good vocal performances on her other albums, but there is a special magic to “Talk to Me” and Fiona that endures to this day.
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