You have to remember, it was the ’80s. THERE WERE NO RULES. So if you were a ridiculously handsome homosexual man, of course you’d migrate from Ireland to Italy. And if you met a music producer with a passing resemblance to Alan Partridge who said he’d make you a star, you’d believe him, right? And it would come true. At least in continental Europe, where only the most ridiculous dreams ever make it to the production line.
Jimmy McShane was working as an emergency medical technician for the Red Cross when he met Maurizio Bassi, a producer looking to assemble a group to work in the then-popular italo-disco sound. He knew McShane was the answer the moment he clapped eyes upon him, and considered it a positive that the Derry native couldn’t sing too well. He could dance, and Bassi himself could sing fine. He needed someone who looked and
moved right, and McShane was it.
After bringing together the rest of the project – Giorgio Cocilovo, Claudio Bazzari, Pier Michelatti and Gabriele Melotti – the group, christened Baltimora (it doesn’t mean anything in Italian, either) entered the studio and began work on their debut album. They recorded a clutch of songs that, by italo standards, qualify as hard rock, with sophisticated titles like Woodie Boogie, Jukebox Boy and Tarzan Boy.
The latter escaped the ghetto of nonsensical euro-pop to become an enormous international success, going top five in the UK, Norway and Sweden and top 20 in countries with worse taste in pop music like the US and Australia. The parent album was called Living in
the Background and went gold in Canada, which should tell  you something.



Its success was mostly down to timing. If you were ever going to put out a record as absurd as Tarzan Boy, you had to do it in 1985. It was the year the world lost its mind. Michael Jackson outbid Paul McCartney (with whom he’d dueted a couple of years before) for the rights to The Beatles’ publishing. Madonna married Sean Penn for less than a month. Hootie and the Blowfish and Cutting Crew formed, while Devo and Split Enz broke­ up. Pretty much the whole world was out of their mind on coke. And then a song came on
the radio...
“Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh,” it went, in a neutered approximation of Tarzan’s cry, over the top of some of the weediest power chords ever played. Maurizio Bassi sang the words with the accent of a man who had learnt English from Frankie Goes to Hollywood LPs, while Jimmy McShane mimed with a whole lot less enthusiasm than he danced. No one cared. Because Tarzan Boy was and is incredible.
A two-note bass line drives us forward, rocking back-and-forth with steely determination while everything around it falls into pieces. The most farcical fake horns ever commercially released presage the chorus, and every drum machine fill sounds like it’s the first preset key the operator could find. And the lyrics!
“Jungle life/ I’m far away from nowhere/ On my own/ Like Tarzan Boy/ Hide and seek/ I play along while rushing ’cross the forest/ Monkey business/ On a sunny afternoon.”
All sung in very earnest tones, like some fantastic narrative is being imparted. It’s quite simply one of the silliest songs ever committed to tape. Yet it resonated across the world, in all its fantastically fruity, infinitely bastardised glory. Tarzan Boy remains the biggest hit of the fetishised italo genre, and while to many people it’s just another ’80s novelty, the closer you listen the more breathtakingly bizarre it becomes.
Maybe the best part is that it refused to sink into obscurity like so many of its contemporaries. The soundtracks to the motion picture events Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III and Beverly Hills Ninja each featured it prominently and, even after ‘singer’ Jimmy McShane died of complications from AIDS in 1995, it remained
in mind through covers which charted in France and Sweden.
Tarzan Boy stands as a warning and promise, released in the middle of summer in the middle year of the most wonderfully
crazy decade the world has ever known. Hear it, and be transported back to those fecund times.

Find It: Living in the Background has never been reissued.
There is a secondhand copy on Amazon for NZ$200,
though, if you’re as crazy as the song.