4. Eddie and the Cruisers
Eddie and The Cruisers was a 1983 film directed by Martin Donaldson about a 1960's rock and roll heartthrob who goes Missing In Action and is presumed dead, but for the dogged determination of a young reporter played by Ellen Barkin who is determined to find Elv- I mean, Eddie (played by a young Michael Pare), and ask him why he left the music biz. The film follows her search for Eddie's old bandmates and through flashbacks we learn of how a guy from New Jersey turned out to be one of the most forward musical geniuses of his time. Think Bruce Springsteen meets Jim Morrison meets Sgt. Pepper. The music is composed of predominantly two 'albums' that Eddie worked on, the first one that won him the fans and the second one that was deemed 'too dark' for release and subsequently buried by his fictional record company. The music-loving movie audience didn't really flock to the theaters to see this but Eddie and the Cruisers was given a new lease on life by upstart HBO in 1984 and the soundtrack album started to climb the charts, going quadruple platinum. Nine months after the film was released, "On the Dark Side" made it to Number 1 on Billboard's Rock charts and #7 on it's Hot 100 chart. The second single from the film, the ballad "Tender Years" peaked at #31. Unfortunately for reality, Eddie's songs were actually composed and sung by the relatively unknown John Cafferty who fronted the awesomely named Beaver Brown Band. Often compared to the 'other Bruce Springsteen band' from New Jersey, they were never able to shed that comparison to Bruce. They did two more albums before going back under the Eddie and The Cruiser pseudonym for the Eddie and the Cruisers sequel. Nobody cared.