Just like Saturday Night Fever helped to fuel the disco fever of the ’70s, another John Travolta movie influenced the country crossover craze of the early ’80s: Urban Cowboy. In fact, one song from the soundtrack, “Lookin’ for Love,” became an instant classic…and turned its singer, Johnny Lee, into a chart-topping star.
Lee was a largely unknown musician leading the house band at the Houston bar Gilley’s in the late ’70s when Irving Azoff, manager of the Eagles, approached him. Azoff was the music coordinator for Urban Cowboy (which used Gilley’s as a filming location) and asked Lee if he would consider singing in the movie, according to Rolling Stone. Initially, Lee was skeptical.
“Well, people were bullshitting me all the time,” he told Texas Monthly. “So I said, ‘Yeah, sure, just as soon as I finish this watermelon. You bet.’”
Of course, the offer was legit. Before long, Lee was sorting through piles of demo tapes in search of the song he would sing in Urban Cowboy.
“Becky [Mancuso-Winding, producer] put me up in this hotel room with a million cassette tapes of songs people had submitted,” Lee recalled. “Within the first fifteen songs, I pulled out ‘Lookin’ for Love.’ I couldn’t believe I hadn’t written it myself, it was the story of my life up till then. I changed the rhythm on it, turned it into a two-step, and they put it in the movie.”
“Irving Azoff had seen the massive acceptance of the California sound — the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt — which was rooted in country,” Mancuso-Winding said. “And you could already hear the Eagles’ influence on Nashville. Irving knew it was time for a crossover, and not just musically. He’d looked at the disco movement and Saturday Night Fever. He knew Urban Cowboy could impact the way people dressed, ate, danced, listened.”
Travolta agreed, saying, “Urban Cowboy was three-dimensional. You could watch it, and then you could go experience it. You could buy a cowboy hat, get on a mechanical bull, go country dancing. You could live this movie.”
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Azoff’s instincts proved to be right on the money, literally. The romantic drama, complete with mechanical bull, was a box office success, and “Lookin’ for Love” went to both #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The soundtrack spawned a number of other hits, too, including “Stand by Me” by Mickey Gilley and “Could I Have This Dance” by Anne Murray, but “Lookin’ for Love” was the film’s standout tune.
“When that movie was hot, I was sh—ing in high cotton,” Lee said. “I ended up doing a Dick Clark special. He’d formed his all-American band. Stevie Wonder was our piano player, and I played rhythm guitar, up there with all of these big shots. Man, I didn’t know whether to scratch my watch or wind my ass.”
In 1981, the pop culture legacy of “Lookin’ for Love” was further cemented when Eddie Murphy sang a version of the song, “Wookin’ Pa Nub,” in the classic Saturday Night Live sketch “Buh-Weet Sings.” Years later, Rolling Stone ranked Lee’s original at #186 on a list of the “100 Greatest Country Music Songs of All Time.”
Related: 1964 No. 1 Hit, Featured in ‘Goodfellas,’ Ranked Among ‘Greatest Songs of All Time’
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