Fantastic Voyage

Celebrating Raquel Welch, 5th September 1940 to 15th February 2023.

Cliched I know but as a small boy I fell in love with Raquel Welch after watching Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C. on TV, although I thought Fathom was complete bobbins.

 

With the sad news of her passing, I immediately thought of Neon Neon, the late Noughties duo of Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) and Bryan Hollon (Boom Bip) and their titular tribute, Raquel, from 2008.

 

The song originally appeared on their debut album, Stainless Style, itself a concept piece about the life of John Delorean, who is best known for designing this car (time travel function not as standard).

 

Depending on which unreliable online source you Google search in 0.41 seconds, Raquel allegedly dated or at least had "an encounter" with Delorean circa 1972 and this was enough to inspire this admittedly great pop song into the album. I bought the promo CDS at the time with a radio edit and instrumental version but sadly no remixes.

 

There wasn't an official video for Raquel, but a montage clip was commissioned for projection at their live shows. There's a YouTube clip of a Neon Neon concert which demonstrates this, but shuffle76 has gone one better and posted the whole video for our viewing delight.

Raquel did commit some of her own recordings to vinyl in the early 1970s and - who knew? - a one-off single in 1987, predating by a couple of years Liza Minnelli's similar foray into Hi NRG ably assisted by Pet Shop Boys but with much less success. I've watched the video so that you don't have to.

Instead, here's Raquel performing at a USO (United Service Organisations) show in the late 1960s with a cover of Mike Nesmith's song Different Drum. The soldiers look suitably enraptured by Raquel's singular take on the song. All I'll say is...it's one minute forty seven seconds long.

Not my favourite actor by any stretch of the mark, but Raquel Welch held a special place in my heart when I was a wee lad and I continued to admire her empowered, 'can do' approach to her life and career choices, even if I didn't particularly follow her film, TV, music or fitness video work.

 

As Gruff Rhys sang back in 2008, "Oh Raquel, you really got the power".

 

Rest easy, Raquel.