Was (Not Was) Gave Us the Thinking Person’s Dance Craze With “Walk The Dinosaur” in 1987

Was (Not Was) came on like a band destined for cult status if ever there were one. They played wild funk jams containing elements of freeform jazz with anarchic lyrics that alternated between manifestos and silliness. That’s not exactly the recipe for mainstream success.

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And yet, there they were in 1989 with a Top 10 hit. “Walk The Dinosaur” became the go-to apocalyptic dance craze of the times, and it livened up the speakers of every radio and boom box that played it.

Two Was, No Waiting

Don and David Was (real surnames Fagenson and Weiss, respectively) grew up together in suburban Detroit, finding ways to make each other laugh while hanging out together. They both gravitated to careers in music. Don as a musician and producer, taking whatever gigs he could in the Motor City, and David as a jazz critic in Los Angeles.

As the 70s drew to a close, Don was finding music work harder and harder to come by. He begged David to make his return so that they could form a band and stave off his encroaching destitution. Finding a studio that would let them mess around, the pair began assembling other like-minded musicians.

They named the band after a habit Don’s young son had of purposely calling things by the wrong name, only to immediately correct himself. Don wrote the music, and David wrote the words. Was (Not Was) released a pair of well-regarded albums in the early 80s that sold very little. They prepared a single in 1987 to preview their upcoming album. That’s how “Walk The Dinosaur” first came to light.

Taking the “Walk”

Don and Dave wrote “Walk The Dinosaur” with guitarist Randy Jacobs. The trio had nuclear Armageddon on their minds when they wrote it. Most fans missed that part since they were too busy grooving along to the horn-fueled rhythms and mimicking the dance steps they saw in the video.

Interestingly enough, “Spy In The House Of Love”, which was also included on the band’s 1988 album What Up, Dog?, became a hit first in both the UK and US. But “Walk The Dinosaur” really revved up in the US in 1989, peaking at No. 7.

The song also helped hasten the premature end of Was (Not Was). Buoyed by the song’s success, Don Was earned some major gigs as a producer for artists like Bonnie Raitt and The Rolling Stones. Was (Not Was) also lost patience with their record company, looking for songs similar to “Walk The Dinosaur”. They went on an 18-year recording hiatus from 1990 to 2008.

Behind the Lyrics of “Walk The Dinosaur”

“Walk The Dinosaur” has a blast juxtaposing images taken from different time periods. The narrator in the first verse has a smoke before getting “a monkey skull to go.” As fire and ice rain upon him, he does what anyone circa 1987 might do: “I felt a little tired, so I watched Miami Vice.”

The subsequent verses continue in an anachronistic vein, leaving the listener wondering if they’re in the present, past, or future. Elvis shows up in the middle eight as a Messiah-like figure. And then the end comes in the final verse: “It looked like two big silver trees had somehow learned to soar/Suddenly a summer breeze and a mighty lion’s roar.”

The two lead vocalists, Sweet Pea Atkinson and Sir Harry Bowens, sing of all this calamity with a funky ferocity. And the “boom boom acka lacka lacka boom” refrain holds just as much weight as any of the more poetic lyrics. Such is the wild wonder of “Walk The Dinosaur”, a dance craze that only Was (Not Was) could initiate.

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