The 80s were a decade filled with hits. But did you know that many of them were reworks of songs from the 50s, 60s, and 70s? One of those tunes that I could swear it was an 80s product is “I Scare Myself,” which was a huge hit for Thomas Dolby. I was very much surprised when I heard the original tune, written and recorded by a bit of a forgotten but otherwise excellent artist from the seventies. His name is Don Hicks, and he first recorded the song in 1972 with his band “Don Hicks & His Hot Licks.” On how he wrote the song, Hicks said:
“I’m not exactly sure when I wrote ‘I Scare Myself,’” he continues, “but I have a story in my mind of how I started the whole idea of it. I was living in the Haight and I went over to Sausalito to visit Nick and Joan Reynolds—Joan had a club in North Beach I used to play [in the late ’60s] called the F.W. Kuh Memorial Auditorium. I wasn’t much of a doper or a drinker at that time; that came later. During this period I mostly drank coffee and wrote songs and played gigs. But [the Reynolds] had some kind of hash or marijuana cookie, and I had a bite of that and I remember getting in the car and driving back to the city over the Golden Gate Bridge, and the phrase came to me: ‘I scare myself,’ because that’s how I was feeling—a little paranoid and uncomfortable. I don’t know if I saved that idea, or as soon as I got home started playing guitar. I used to carry around a little notebook and I’d write down titles or things that came to me. I think the whole love song part of it probably came pretty quickly, and I don’t have any recollection of it going in any other direction.”
Thomas Dolby covered the song on his second album “The Flat Earth” released in February 1984. It reached number 46 on the UK singles charts and the video for the song received heavy airplay.
