Key Tracks: Book of Love’s “Boy”

“I want to be where the boys are / But I’m not allowed / I wait outside of the boy’s bar / I wait for them to all come out.”

“I’m not a boy.”

That’s the first verse and chorus of “Boy,” the 1985 debut single from New York City quartet Book of Love. For many, the song is essentially a synth pop footnote, but “Boy” was far more interesting than its peers.

“It’s not my fault / That I’m not a boy / It’s not my fault / I don’t have those toys.”

“I’m not a boy.”

With lyrics like these, it’s easy to imagine “Boy” as some sort of subversive anthem, a song in which Book of Love frontwoman Susan Ottaviano lashed out against gender norms and the patriarchy. The real story is far less grandiose. “Boy” was actually penned by Ted Ottaviano (who, oddly enough, is not related to Susan), and Ted set out to document something a lot closer to home.

“There was a new gay bar called Boy Bar,” he says. “It was really a hot place to go… [but] in the post-punk clubs that we went to, it didn’t really matter what your sexuality was, what your background was. Now, all of the sudden, there were these new places that were coming up that were identifying their clubgoers by their sexual politics… In our world, that was a big deal. We basically lived the life of art students and at night, we would go out to our favorite clubs. Now, all of the sudden, if you were a girl, you couldn’t go to this place.”

“And now it’s alright / Without those boys / I stay at home at night / And I play with my toys.”

“Boy / I’m not a boy.”

At first glance, the song’s third verse could be construed as a masturbation reference, and though that wasn’t Ottaviano’s explicit intention, he knew the lines might raise an eyebrow or two. “I will always love ’60s music and the art of the double entendre sort of came from that era… Our music was pretty much literally made with toys – Casios – and so it was really at a place where we were disciplining ourselves to take our music seriously. We were staying at home and we were practicing and writing [with our ‘toys’].”

The demo for “Boy” was recorded in 1984 at a studio called Noise New York, and it was there that the group, which also included Lauren Roselli and Jade Lee, stumbled across the song’s other key element. “There happened to be a set of tubular bells sitting there,” says Ottaviano. “I was like, ‘We are using these.’“ He adds with a laugh, “It was a message from God. I put them on the demo and obviously it was the thing that set off the whole track.” (In the years that followed, tubular bells would become one of Book of Love’s signature sounds.)

Once the “Boy” demo was completed, Roselli slipped a copy to Ivan Ivan, a DJ who played regularly at The Pyramid Club – one of the band’s regular haunts – and the co-producer of leftfield 1984 dance hit “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight.” “He basically had the ears of Seymour Stein at Sire and was bringing him some new things he found interesting,” says Ottaviano.

Sire liked “Boy,” and signed Book of Love following the band’s second-ever show. (The band’s first show had been a few months prior at CBGB, which Ottaviano says “sounds really fantastical and romantic, but… this was way over the tenure of CBGB. It was almost just a hole in the wall that was left over from this previous golden era.”) Shortly thereafter, the label sent the band to Unique Recording Studios to polish up “Boy” and another track, “Book of Love,” for the group’s debut single. Ivan Ivan served as producer, while Steve Peck, who Ottaviano describes as “a real aficionado of all this new digital sampling,” engineered the sessions.

“Boy” was given a bigger, bolder sound at Unique, but it remained a fairly simple song. “It’s really Juno, a set of tubular bells, orchestral charms, and then 808 drum machine, which was basically triggered to play kick and snare samples,” says Ottaviano. “Those are pretty much digital drum samples [and] I’m not going to say where they’re from. They’re not the native 808 sounds. You couldn’t even get that sound of an 808.”

The single was released in early 1985 and, although “Boy” wasn’t technically a huge hit at the time, it did peak at number seven on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart, and earned Book of Love an opening slot for Depeche Mode. “With under a half dozen shows under our belt,” says Ottaviano, “we were opening for Depeche Mode for their Some Great Reward tour… [Back at home,] we were thrilled to get more than ten of our friends to come to see us and then, all of a sudden, we were on that level.”

Strangely, an official music video for “Boy” was never commissioned, although another clip wound up filling that void by default. “The record was making some noise [in Australia],” explains Ottaviano. “There was a TV show that really wanted us on there, and it was cheaper for them to come to New York and film us doing it than to fly us out there to do that.” Featuring the band in some gloriously ‘80s attire – and Roselli bizarrely wearing what seems to be a matador outfit – the video isn’t something the band ever promoted heavily or was particularly thrilled about, but much to their chagrin, YouTube has brought it back to life.

“Boy” was never a big hit on the radio, either. “There weren’t a lot of instruments on it and at that time… it was almost courageously minimal,” says Ottaviano. “So if radio stations wanted to find a reason to be a little scared of it, there was enough for them to find.” He adds, “It’s always the previous [single] that sets the tone for the next one… when we went back out the next time and ‘You Make Me Feel So Good’ was the radio record, we were hearing that more on the radio, just because that was the current record that was being worked. The radio stations were finally willing to take a chance.”

Still, there was no denying that “Boy” put Book of the Love on the map, and ultimately set the tone for their career. The track appeared on the band’s self-titled debut album in 1986, and the group went on to release three additional LPs. Even after Book of Love went on hiatus in 1993 following the release of the Lovebubble album, it was clear that the band – and “Boy” in particular – had achieved a sort of cult status, especially amongst the LGBT community.

Both Susan and Ted Ottaviano are gay, but Book of Love never sought to overtly identify the band as such. Although 1988 single “Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls” did address the AIDS epidemic and 1993’s “Boy Pop” is a clear nod to gay club culture, Ottaviano says that “we always downplayed that aspect to the band.”

By the time 2000 rolled around, Book of Love was essentially still on hiatus, yet the rise of electroclash and a renewed interest in electronic music in the United States prompted Reprise Records to put together a compilation called I Touch Roses: The Best of Book of Love. The record included a few new songs, but the only single released was “Boy,” which came backed with a full slate of new remixes.

“I always thought that ‘Boy’ was not going to be easy to remix,” says Ottaviano. “It’s built on a beat. All the parts of it need to happen together. It’s not like one of these vocal hooks you can just put on top of anything and it keeps working.” Apparently, the package’s headlining remixer, Peter Rauhofer – an Austrian DJ/producer who was a big fan of the original song – felt the same. “Peter called me,” recalls Ottaviano. “He said, ‘It’s not easy to make this into a peak record. The chords are so sad.’“

Despite these difficulties, Rauhofer found a way to make it work, and his remix – a version of which was also included on the full I Touch Roses compilation – was a club smash. The track reached number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in February 2001, and was arguably a bigger hit than the original had ever been.

These days, Book of Love still plays occasional shows around the US. After more than 30 years, the group has an extensive catalog to pull from, but it’s hard to ignore just how important “Boy” was – and is – to the band and its fans. “I think ‘I Touch Roses’ is our masterpiece,” says Ottaviano, “but having said that, yes, [‘Boy’] is what they’re waiting for.”