THE VIDEO Ratt, "Round and Round," Out of the Cellar, 1984, Atlantic
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SAMPLE LYRIC "Round and round / with love we'll find a way just give it time / round and round / what comes around goes around / I'll tell you why"
EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION This video starts out with a butler carrying a silver tray entering a room where a group of six or so well-to-do people are having a candlelit dinner. At one head of the table sits a spooky young gal sporting some serious bling bling (a rather large necklace and a tiara), who has a man on her left and a woman in white on her right (who the butler offers the tray to first). As the man on the girls' right speaks, we see some shadows running past the window behind him, and the spooky girl notices. She's wearing a black strapless gown, fairly severe makeup, and has long, dark hair with very short, straight bangs (my candidate for weirdest looking video babe ever -- she looks more like a fashion model than a stripper, which could account somewhat for her out of place appearance). She's the only one who notices the shadows -- or no, the butler does too. He nods approval.
Next we see Ratt rocking out in a musty attic full of old junk (a bicycle's visible toward the front, plus a lot of trunks and stuff), with what I've always thought was a large clock but is probably a round window behind them. Stephen Pearcy is dressed like a cross between a pirate and a member of The Hart Foundation.
But before I can go any further into this, we're back downstairs again with the dinner crowd. At the head of the table opposite the spooky girl sits Milton Berle (who's in this video because he literally was Uncle Miltie to Ratt's manager at the time, Marshall Berle). He's got a woman in black on his left and then umm, himself in drag sitting on his right. He stops eating and looks up, annoyed and grabbing at his ear. Ratt are rocking out as an actual rat looks on.
Now I can't read lips so I can't guarantee the accuracy of what the people are saying in this video, but Milton Berle's gestures upward and says something like, "Do you hear that?" The spooky gal looks up and shakes her head no while Stephen executes a very David Lee Roth-like kick. Milton Berle mimes playing a guitar and says something I can't catch, then looks disgusted. He says, I think, "Do you hear that upstairs?" causing himself in drag (white sequined dress, heavy lipstick, weird red wig, long white gloves) to look over.
Drag Milton looks over, flattered, then looks up and makes an "ewww" face and says, "That's terrible." Regular Milton then gestures and says something to imply that the two of them should go upstairs, because Drag Milton says, "Should we go?" and then adjusts her boobs. Regular Milton gets up in disgust, grabs a cigar, and then both Miltons exit the room just in time for the chorus.
The lady in white talks to the spooky girl as the butler comes around to pour more wine, and the girl notices he's wearing a studded leather wristband. She looks up at him and smiles a little, and he very quickly snaps his arm away so his jacket cuff covers it again. As Stephen sings, "Lookin' at you / Lookin' at me" the girl looks up, and Stephen sort of crawls on the floor a little. Downstairs, the little lamps on the wall start shaking, and everyone looks up, then continues eating. We then see a white-gloved hand capture the rat that had been enjoying the show upstairs beneath a silver serving platter lid.
After a little cutting back and forth between Stephen and the girl, she exits the dinner table rather abruptly, though her fellow diners quickly shrug it off. She starts going up the stairs as the butler is coming down, and the guy at the dinner table sees something drop from the ceiling into his food. They notice that the ceiling is starting to crack as Robbin Crosby and Juan Croucier put their heads together and sing along, and a chunk of plaster falls into the woman in black's wine glass.
At the top of the stairs, the spooky girl makes eye contact with the butler, who nods, and the band kicks in to the second chorus. Downstairs, everyone grins as the butler brings in the big silver platter with the main course, but when he takes the lid off they're all shocked (but not too shocked -- this must have taken a few takes) to see that the platter is covered with fancy rats (they're pet store rats -- certainly not New York City rats).
The butler nods, and then Warren DeMartini jumps through the ceiling and crash lands on the dinner table for the guitar solo. The diners all protest, eventually leaving, and as he points at the ceiling Robbin continues the solo.
As they reprise the opening of the song, it turns out that there's a strobe light in the stairwell. Also, the spooky girl has lost her dress, tiara, and apparently, her wig, as well as changed her makeup. She's now got smoky eyes, silver lipstick, a black and gray Mia Farrow haircut, and appears to be molting silver latex. She also has on one giant earring. She sort of looks like a less attractive Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element (a movie I completely loathe but, whatever, that's what she looks like). Anyway, she's rolling around on the stairs struggling her way out of this weird second skin (sort of like a snake or a bug or something).
Ratt goes for the chorus one last time, and she crawls up the stairs and then kind of hops into the corner (like that weird little thing from The Lord of the Rings -- no, obviously I don't watch these things) stays hunched over and keeps hopping closer and closer to the band, and she's molted her way down to wearing a minidress. She dances around as the band rocks out, and then also see that the butler is watching too, and he's now wearing one of those awesome t-shirts that have like all the bones in the ribcage and spine printed on the front, a satin Ratt jacket, and black lipstick while pumping his fist in the air. He looks like Riff Raff, the butler in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. At the very end, we see that he's dancing on the ravaged dinner table, and our parting shot is one of the real rats again.
THE VERDICT Full disclosure: Until relatively recently, I didn't have the highest opinion of Ratt. Yeah, I liked this song and a couple others, yeah, I thought Warren DeMartini was hot, yeah, I had seen that picture of Stephen Pearcy with Drew Barrymore and knew he was all BFF with Vince Neil, but I just wasn't convinced they were an especially good band. I think this opinion can actually be blamed on two things: One, excessive viewing of the video for "Way Cool Jr." and two, a VH1 interview I saw with Bobby Blotzer where he kept going "Ratt N Roll forever, man" and it struck me as really, really depressing.
I am pleased to note however that I have managed to see beyond these two things, to the extent even that during an otherwise quiet Scrabble game against my dad and my bf the video for "I Want a Woman" came on and I yelled "RRRAAAAATTTTTTTTT!" in a voice neither they nor myself previously knew me to possess. I think a lot of it is my recent extensive perusal of back issues (from like 1986 and 1987) of Circus and Hit Parader, which made me really appreciate the insane popularity of Ratt at the time (in spite of everyone basically acknowledging that Robbin Crosby was a total tool) and made me think it was time to take a second look.
Hence, with Ratt, for whatever reason, I chose to start with their first video. Now obviously, it seems like they threw Milton Berle in there just as a gimmick and well, because they could. But the rest of this video is not so obvious. First, there's the very random choice of the really strange looking video chick. Considering Stephen was once called one of the "Bordello Brothers," this girl does not have the obvious appeal of say a Bobbie Brown or a Stephanie Seymour.
Then there's the whole plot of the video. Ratt, rats, and a rocker butler ruin a fancy dinner. Huh? Though Ratt seem oddly positioned to give a commentary on class in American society, the overall message seems to be that the proletariat will harness the power of rock to overpower polite society and get the chick, even if she's possibly an alien or an insect and even if your weapons used are vermin and the elderly. There will be punishment for trying to keep rock and the people down in the cellar (or up in the attic) and, as the song says, "what goes around comes around." Or am I digging too deep here, and should I simply say, "Wooooo, Ratt N Roll Forever"?