"Round And Round" is Ratt's biggest hit, landing in 1984 as hair metal was starting to make headway. It's a rocker with a huge, unforgettable chorus. What's it about? In a Songfacts
interview with lead singer Stephen Pearcy, he said: "'Round And Round' is pretty much just stating our claim: 'Out on the streets, it's where we'll meet.' It's about the group, getting ready to do our thing. This is what we do."
One of Ratt's distinguishing features was the two-guitar attack of Warren DeMartini and Robbin Crosby, who could trade off lead parts and do some simultaneous shredding (Judas Priest could also pull this off). You'll hear a great example on this song, as DeMartini dives into the solo and then Crosby joins in.
A girl mutates from human to rodent form in the video, which was directed by Don Letts and features an unlikely cameo: Milton Berle, who plays both the head of a dinner party and a female guest. Berle is a comedy legend who was one of the first entertainers to make a mark in television. He often wore drag as part of his comedy, so it wasn't too surprising that he played a woman in the video.
More surprising is that Berle ended up in the video at all. He was in his 70s and little known to the MTV generation. But his nephew was Ratt's manager (Marshall Berle), who got Milton to appear in the video free of charge.
In the book MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, Warren DeMartini talked about the thrill of making the video: "Milton Berle was the first icon I think any of us had ever met. It was a really cool thing. He was really the first guy to ever have a variety show on TV, and he was a cool person to listen to, because he made his career the same way that he knew that we were going to, which is to get on the road. Because prior to TV, it was just Vaudeville. He was telling us stories and talking about those days, when him and other comedians of the period would get on a train, travel all night, you know, middle America. Raining, cold, get into a hotel, get up in the morning, set it all up, do the show, and then move on. What he described was great, but it was tough."
Ratt's first release came in 1983 with an EP called
Ratt that they put out independently. They also issued a song from the EP called "You Think You're Tough" as a single.
With help from their buddies in Mötley Crüe they landed a deal with Atlantic Records, which released "Round And Round" as the first single from their debut album,
Out Of The Cellar. MTV jumped on the video and the song became a huge hit.
They followed with a video for "
Back For More" that also featured Milton Berle, but didn't release the song as a single. This helped encourage album sales - it ended up selling over 3 million copies just in America.
Ratt's next three albums each sold at least a million but they never landed another big radio hit. Other popular songs include "Lay It Down" and "Body Talk." The band did a lot of infighting, which broke them up in 1992. They got back together in 1996 but Pearcy bailed in 2000 and Crosby was too ill to return to the group - he was stricken with HIV in the mid-'90s and died in 2002 at 42. Pearcy returned to the group in 2007 and they released their last album,
Infestation, in 2010.
The band started playing the song live in 1982. They didn't think it was anything special, so they left it off their debut EP in 1983. When they recorded the Out Of The Cellar album, they started by putting every song in their repertoire to tape. Their producer, Beau Hill, pegged "Round And Round" as a hit and had them focus on the song.
Early versions of the song didn't include the "you'd put an arrow through my heart" line, ending the pre-chorus with "I knew right from the start..."
The song was written by Stephen Pearcy, Warren DeMartini and Robbin Crosby. DeMartini wasn't a member of the band when he started working out the guitar part in 1981, but his roommate, Jake E. Lee, was Ratt's guitarist. When Lee left the band later that year (he eventually became Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist), Pearcy and Crosby asked DeMartini to join, and he accepted, bringing the seed of "Round And Round" with him.
The three of them recorded the demo at an apartment they shared in Hollywood they dubbed "The Ratt Mansion" - an ironic name because it was small and crowded. Pearcy told Songfacts how it came together: "We used to bounce tracks back and forth on cassette. Warren would put down, say, a guitar part here, he would play it, and then the other recording would be Robbin. Then, we'd bounce that and play again with the other cassette, so we were constantly bouncing back and forth. That's how 'Round And Round' was written. And it was written pretty quick."
The vixen in the video is Lisa Dean, who a few years later played the title-girl in Michael Jackson's
Dirty Diana clip.
The song soundtracks Geico Insurance's 2020
Ratt problem commercial, which shows a married couple praising their new home. However, they do have a small Ratt issue...
Ratt recorded the album at two famous studios in Los Angeles: Village Recorders and Sound City. In 2013, Dave Grohl released a documentary about Sound City that features a snippet of "Round And Round" and includes sound bites from Stephen Pearcy and Warren DeMartini.
"Round And Round" was used on Stranger Things in the season 2 episode "The Spy." Billy plays the tune on full blast while he's working out.
It also appears in these shows:
Family Guy ("Farmer Guy" - 2013)
Cold Case ("One Fall" - 2010)
My Name Is Earl ("Sweet Johnny" - 2008)
Supernatural ("Dead in the Water" - 2005)
King of the Hill ("Of Mice and Little Green Men" - 2002)
And these movies:
Super Troopers 2 (2018)
Back in the Day (2014)
That's My Boy (2012)
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009)
The Wrestler (2008)
The Lather Effect (2006)
