Songfacts®:

• Jack Wagner is best known as Frisco Jones from the daytime soap opera General Hospital, which he joined in 1983. On July 4, 1984, he performed the song on the show in character as Frisco with his fictional band, Riff Raff. The show was very popular, and Wagner's performance got a lot of attention from the predominately female audience that watched it. The song was released as a single and climbed all the way to #2 in January 1985, where it spent two weeks behind Madonna's "Like A Virgin."
• Wagner wasn't the first General Hospital actor with a hit song; Rick Springfield played Dr. Noah Drake on the show from 1981-1983 while he had a run of hits, most famously "Jessie's Girl."
  
  But Springfield didn't sing on the show - his character was a doctor, not a musician, so those streams didn't cross. Wagner was an actor whose character was a singer, and it crossed over to real life with "All I Need." He grew up playing guitar but never had aspirations of being a professional musician - he wanted to be a pro golfer, and when that didn't pan out, he studied acting at the University of Arizona, and after graduating in 1982, moved to Los Angeles and landed the role on General Hospital in 1983.
• Wagner's transition to real-life musician happened when a musical consultant on General Hospital saw his potential and connected him with Quincy Jones, who signed him to his Qwest label and connected him with the songwriters and producers he needed to make an album. "All I Need" was the album's title track; he also sang several other songs from the album in character as Frisco Jones, including "Lady of My Heart," which was the love theme for Frisco and Felicia and was released as a single in 1985, reaching #76. (Felicia was played by Kristina Malandro, who became his real-life wife.)
  
  He released two more albums before being dropped by both Qwest and General Hospital in 1987, but he went on to land roles on Santa Barbara and Melrose Place.
• "All I Need" was written by some heavy hitters: Glen Ballard, Clif Magness and David Pack.
  
  Ballard, who also produced the album, went on to write and produce for Alanis Morissette and Dave Matthews Band; Magness went on to co-write "Impulsive" for Wilson Phillips and various songs for Avril Lavigne. David Pack is the lead singer of the band Ambrosia, known for their hit "Biggest Part Of Me."
• "All I Need" was one of the few big hits from 1984 that didn't have a music video. Making one would have been pointless: VH1 wasn't around back then, and MTV wouldn't have aired it.
• Jack Wagner returned to General Hospital in 2013 to reprise his role as Frisco Jones and sing "All I Need" on the April 5 episode. His love interest on the show, Felicia, was part of scene. By this time Wagner and the woman who played Felicia, Kristina Wagner, were divorced.
• There's a Mötley Crüe connection to this song (bet you didn't see that coming). Crüe member Nikki Sixx was dating the actress Kimberly Foster in 1985 when he became convinced she was cheating on him with Wagner. In retaliation he wrote a song called "You're All I Need," about a guy who murders his girlfriend. The song was released in 1987 on Mötley Crüe's Girls, Girls, Girls album.