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Fountains of Wayne 'Stacy's Mom'

added 20 February 2004 at 17.22

Rachel Hunter struts her stuff in a variety of delectable outfits, teasing a group of small boys to bursting point in our 'American Pie'-esque video of the week. Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger talks us through the, um, compelling promo for the track that looks set to finally catapult the NYC power-pop quartet into the big time - 'Stacy's Mom'.

Fountains of Wayne 'Stacy's Mom' [Dial-Up] [Broadband]

"The video was directed by a close friend of ours, Mark Appleblaum. We've known him for many years - he actually did a video for us back in 1997 for a song called 'Sink To The Bottom' - but he's gone on to do things like Britney Spears videos so he kind of did us a favour. But we just talked to him and said we wanted to make something that felt like a teen movie, and obviously because of the nature of the song it had to follow the lyrics pretty closely and couldn't be too abstract. So he came up with this idea of doing a very '80s style narrative video that referenced a bunch of things that he thought were referenced by the song. So it has that sort of eighties teen movie feel.

"We kicked around ideas about who we might get to play the role of Stacy's Mom and top of the list was Rachel Hunter, because she 's around the right age, and... and so forth. So we approached her about it and miraculously she said yes. She was great to work with too - she had a really good sense of humour about it, she got the song and she already knew the band somewhat. It was also great for us 'cos we didn't really have to do anything apart from watch her for two days! At the end of the shoot we played the song two or three times and that was our role. They actually told us we weren't needed on the set and we said 'Yeah, right!' We were there both days. With our home video cameras.

"There's a shot where she's getting a massage from a vaguely creepy pool guy/masseuse type character. He didn't make a whole lot of friends on that shoot - we heard some story that he met Rachel Hunter at a party a couple of weeks previously and had said, suggestively, 'Hey you know I'm going to be giving you a massage pretty soon.' . I think she was kind of freaked out but she had to do it anyway. There's also a fantasy scene where she's wearing a sort of leather S&M outfit and dancing round a pole - that whole segment was kind of inspired by videos like 'Hot For Teacher' by Van Halen and that sort of thing.

"It's always a risk making these things 'cos they cost so much money and in most cases no one ever sees them. I think the video, even though it was on the cheaper end of these things, ended up costing more than it cost to make the entire album!

"We actually saw Rachel at the EMI party after the Grammies and said hello, but unfortunately she was hanging out with Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray. I wouldn't say we're all close friends but I think it was mutually beneficial."

Fountains of Wayne 'Stacy's Mom' [Dial-Up] [Broadband]

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