This was a HUGE single my junior year of high school -- yet when some younger colleagues broke into the (incredible) bridge at work yesterday and asked me who sang it, I kinda hesitated -- the video featured an R&B group singing it, yet I had no recollection of their name -- but I eventually said, "Wasn't it some fictional band in the movie 'Streets of Fire?'" Turns out I was right -- and the version in the film was actually performed by yet another artist -- but Dan is the blue-eyed soulman who took it to the Top 10. What I didn't know was that he was friends with Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and died at age 43 of an AIDS-related brain tumor way back in 1994, a deeply dark time when it seemed there was no hope at all. (Everyone I know who died did so right before the cocktail came along, making their passing especially sad somehow.) His New York Times obituary made no reference to AIDS.
