Woman's Touch

Hey there, Zoo Freaks! The Zoo Crew is spinning a deep cut from the vinyl crates here at THE ZOO, and right now it's "Woman's Touch" by John Waite off that 1987 album Rover's Return. This track has a driving pulse and a gritty guitar line that cuts through with Waite's voice full of that restless longing. It showed up in the 1987 Jim Belushi movie The Principal, which gave the album a little extra push into the world even if the film itself never quite caught fire at the box office. Goldmine Magazine later looked back at Rover's Return and called it one of Waite's strongest sets, packed with songs that leaned more into straight rock than the polished ballads that had defined him earlier. The album reached number 77 on the Billboard 200 and stuck around for twelve weeks, with singles like "These Times Are Hard for Lovers" (co-written with Desmond Child) and "Don't Lose Any Sleep" (penned by Diane Warren) getting some radio love. "Woman's Touch" itself is credited solely to Waite and runs about three minutes and fifty seconds of pure mid-eighties rock energy.

The whole record was put together with some heavy hitters in the room. Desmond Child, Diane Warren, Dan Hartman, and Charlie Midnight all had a hand in various tracks, the same crew writing hits for everyone from Bon Jovi to Cher around that time. Recordings happened mostly at Right Track Studios in New York, with extra work at the Hit Factory, the Power Station, and Carriage House Studios. Anton Fig, the drummer from David Letterman's house band, is on there (his name shows up as Figg in the liner notes), and Joe Lynn Turner from Rainbow and Deep Purple added backing vocals. During those sessions Waite also cut a version of "I Drove All Night," the Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly song, but decided not to put it out. Roy Orbison recorded it around the same time, though his version waited until 1992 to surface, by which point Cyndi Lauper had already taken it to the top ten in 1989. Timing is everything in this business, and Rover's Return arrived in a window where the big commercial wave from a few years earlier had already rolled on.

Waite has always talked about songwriting as something that just happens when he's living. On his official site he says songs and songwriting keep him inspired and moving forward, and he tends to scribble notes, lyrics, or random thoughts on pieces of paper, the backs of cigarette packs, or sometimes right on his shirt cuff. Rock n' roll, he says, is the closest thing he's got to a spiritual power—the higher voice in his life that has never let him down. You can hear that raw, unfiltered energy running through "Woman's Touch," that need for something real you can believe in and hold onto. It's not dressed up; it's the kind of track that feels like it was pulled straight from whatever was happening in the moment.

To get how Waite landed on a song like this, you have to go back to where he started. Born on July 4, 1952, in Lancaster, England, he grew up around blues, soul, country, and Celtic folk. He studied at Lancaster Art College, thinking he might illustrate children's books, but music kept pulling him in. His brother had a band called The Wild Cats, and when the regular singer didn't show, young John would jump on the mic and tear through early R&B numbers like Walking the Dog or Maybelline. It sounded rough, but he knew he could sing rock and roll. He played in local outfits like Graf Spee while still in art school. Then came a rough patch when the police accused him of a jewel robbery during a soundcheck—they were cracking down hard on the scene and he fit some description. It was enough to make him leave town.

He headed to London and joined a band called England for a while. Then a letter arrived from a singer in Ohio inviting him to Cleveland to play bass in a group that might be getting a deal. He spent four or five months out there, soaking up the radio and the underground press, living on spaghetti and trying to make it work. It fell through, so he came back to London with no real prospects. One night in a pub in the East End he met guitarist and keyboardist Mike Corby. They went on an all-night drinking binge and decided to start a band where they could really express themselves. That became The Babys. The name came from their manager, a dry, sarcastic character who once looked at them and said they were just a bunch of babies. Waite, dealing with dyslexia, spelled it with a "y" instead of "ies," and the name stuck. It took eighteen months of struggle before they got a contract. Labels kept turning down the demo, and their looks worked against them. The only way to prove it was actually them playing was to make a video presentation, an unusual move at the time. Some accounts say Ringo Starr believed in the band enough to help fund that video. Chrysalis signed them, and they became one of the first acts to land a major deal largely on the strength of that video demo.

With The Babys, Waite was the bassist and lead singer. Hits came with "Isn't It Time" from Broken Heart in 1977 and "Every Time I Think of You" from Head First in 1978, along with album rock staples like "Head First" and "Midnight Rendezvous." Jonathan Cain joined on keyboards later, and the two wrote together until Cain left for Journey. The band eventually broke up after Waite tore cartilage in his knee on stage the day after John Lennon was shot. He moved to New York with little more than a Telecaster and a bag of clothes, living in a one-room apartment and writing the songs that would become his first solo album, Ignition, in 1982. That record gave him "Change," which later turned up on the Vision Quest soundtrack. Then came No Brakes in 1984 and the number-one smash "Missing You," the song that defined his solo career and still gets played on classic rock radio. By the time Rover's Return rolled around in 1987, Waite was working with top-tier writers and producers, trying to keep the rock edge alive even as the charts moved on. That restless search for something real, something you can touch and believe, is right there in "Woman's Touch."

If you want more on the man and the music, head over to his official website at johnwaiteworldwide.com, where he keeps talking about how songwriting is a knee-jerk reaction to being alive and how rock has always been that higher voice. You can also follow the official Facebook page at John Waite on Facebook and the official X account at @John_Waite for tour dates, photos, and updates straight from the source. Fans swap stories and memories in the John Waite USA Fans group and the John Waite European Fans group on Facebook. Keep it spinning, Zoo Freaks—this is the sound of someone who has been chasing that honest place in the music for decades, and it still hits just as hard.