You Don’t Want Me Anymore

Hey there, Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew is spinning a deep cut that still hits like a cool breeze off the Pacific, that being "You Don't Want Me Anymore" by Steel Breeze right off their self-titled debut album from back in 1982. This one climbed all the way to number sixteen on the Billboard Hot 100, hung around the charts for a solid twenty weeks, and even hit number nine on the Mainstream Rock Tracks. It was pure early MTV fuel, one of those videos that got heavy rotation when the channel was still figuring itself out, and the band laid it down live on American Bandstand with Dick Clark himself telling the wild discovery tale. The song was written by guitarist Ken Goorabian, and it carries that perfect mix of guitar crunch and synth sheen that felt like the early eighties in a bottle, equal parts power pop and new wave edge.

The story behind how this track even got heard is pure rock and roll legend, the kind the Zoo Crew loves digging up from old interviews and airchecks. Producer Kim Fowley and attorney David Chatfield were sifting through a trash bag full of something like twelve hundred discarded demo tapes that a Hollywood nightclub called Madam Wong's was about to toss out. Somewhere in that pile was the rough version of "You Don't Want Me Anymore." Fowley and Chatfield knew they had a hit on their hands the second they heard it. Casey Kasem even recounted the whole thing on American Top 40, how Chatfield had just left a meeting with a Chrysalis Records guy looking for a band that sounded like Journey, then walked over to Fowley's place where the demo was waiting. They flew up to Sacramento, signed the six-piece outfit, and cut the album at Rusk Studios in Hollywood. The band itself took its name straight from a line in Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," that bit about being "blown on the steel breeze." It was a perfect fit for a Sacramento crew that had been grinding the Northern California club circuit for years before the big break.

On American Bandstand the guys talked about paying their dues up in Sacramento, Reno, and Tahoe, where the altitude left them breathless between sets. Keyboardist Rod Toner showed off a modified Moog Liberation, and the whole lineup—Ric Jacobs on vocals, Ken Goorabian and Waylin Carpenter on guitars, Vinnie Pantaleoni on bass, Barry Lowenthal on drums—looked like they'd been through the wringer but were finally catching a break. Fans still swap stories about catching them live in places like Yuba City or The Club, where the song would blast twice an hour on the radio and the crowd would lose it. One listener recalled the original lead guitarist sporting a flying V, and another noted how the band later covered "Temptation Eyes" and made it their own. The video became an early MTV staple, and the song proved to be the last chart single Kim Fowley ever produced. Lineup shifts happened after the debut, but keyboardist Rod Toner stuck around the longest from that classic crew.

Steel Breeze got rolling years earlier in the Sacramento area with a shifting cast of players, starting out around the University of California at Davis campus doing parties and covering the pop-rock of the day like Fleetwood Mac and Linda Ronstadt. Core members Rod Toner and Ken Goorabian held it together while the group cycled through twenty-five or thirty different musicians, morphing from straight pop-rock to heavy metal to new wave and back again. They were a bar band forced to play party tunes for the crowd, then slipping off to rehearse original material after hours. Manager John Wiseman helped them score some local success with an earlier version of "You Don't Want Me Anymore," and when singer Ric Jacobs answered an ad in Bay Area Music magazine he became the voice that locked the classic lineup in place. They kept woodshedding, cut demos, and built that cohesive unit until the right ears found the tape in the trash. After the RCA debut they kept going with later albums like Heart on the Line, which featured Clarence Clemons on saxophone, and kept the name alive on the West Coast club scene. Ric Jacobs himself had started singing as a teenager in coffee houses around Chicago before heading west to chase the dream.

You can dig deeper into the band and their live shows over at their site Steel Breeze, catch updates from the related Instagram at @steelbreeze2022, and join the conversation in the Steel Breeze Band Facebook group at Steel Breeze Band. The Zoo Crew keeps the freeform album rock flowing for all the Zoo Freaks out there, so crank it up and ride that steel breeze with us over at THE ZOO.