Success Tags a Rock Band That Wasn’t Meant to Be

Remember those pain-reliever commercials with the soap opera actor reminding viewers he wasn’t really a doctor, he just played one on TV?

The dozen Irish musicians and actors who make up the title group in the Alan Parker film “The Commitments” find themselves constantly offering adoring fans much the same sort of disclaimer: They aren’t really a rock band, they just play one in the movies.

“We haven’t performed, apart from the premieres, because we’re not actually a real band, which a lot of people are shocked to hear,” pointed out backup singer Bronagh Gallagher, in town this week for a charity gig that was to be the makeshift group’s final live U.S. appearance.

The mistake that some moviegoers are making may have as much to do with wishful thinking as viewer naivete.

Clearly, many just don’t want the experience of the film to end. After playing to sold-out houses in a limited run, the movie proved a moderate hit in wider national release last weekend. More surprisingly, the soundtrack album, which includes the Commitments’ versions of 14 soul oldies, is becoming its own phenomenon. (See review, F4.)

According to MCA Records, the album went gold (sales of more than 500,000 copies) this week after being in stores barely a month. On next week’s Billboard magazine best-seller chart, it takes a leap from No. 40 to No. 21 in only its third week listed. Most of those sales came while the picture was playing in only a few cities.

Prior to the release this week of the even more phenomenal Guns N’ Roses albums, “The Commitments” was the No. 1 seller for two or three weeks running at a number of local retailers, including prominent Tower outlets in West Hollywood and Sherman Oaks.

As if on cue, while Gallagher was sipping a beer with fellow cast members on the outdoor patio of a Sunset Boulevard hotel, four Japanese businessmen sat down at an adjoining table, tell-tale yellow Tower bags in hand. Gallagher, perhaps the most outgoing and thickly accented of all the Commitments, couldn’t help but take a peek. Sure enough, each of the four sacks had a “Commitments” CD inside.

At first they looked skeptical when Gallagher proudly pointed to her picture on the longbox. Within moments, they were ecstatic. “All sign! All sign!” they exclaimed.

MCA President Al Teller takes pride in the fact that his label won the bidding war for a soundtrack album to a low-budget, foreign-made film no one had any certainty would attract star-hungry American audiences.

‘If you go see the film and you like it, you have to like the music too, because so much of the film is music,” says Teller. “And people just immediately head to the record store from the theater and get it.”

Any soundtrack is a risk, given the short window of a film’s theatrical exposure. But the gamble was modified in this case, Teller says, by the chance to sign two of the lead players in the film, Andrew Strong and Robert Arkin, to solo deals and build careers for them after the movie runs its course.

“So it had the standard kind of soundtrack one-shot aspect to it, but also a long-term component,” Teller said.

Strong (who plays the Joe Cocker-ish lead singer) plans to record a pop-R&B; album. On the other hand, Arkin (who has a non-musical role in the film as the manager, but enjoys two lead vocals on the soundtrack) describes his band, Housebroken, as being “slightly techno, with some rap involved and guitars, leaning toward the indie scene.”

These two aren’t the only ones looking to parlay their acting roles into musical success. Singer Maria Doyle is a member of the Black Velvet Band, which already has one album out on Elektra. Guitarist Glen Hansard has a band signed to Island. Most of the others spent part of their time in America meeting with agents or trying to shop deals for the respective groups they left waiting in Dublin.

Still, there’s a marked groundswell of support for more of the Commitments. Teller says MCA is thinking about putting out a second album of leftover material sometime next year. But despite the enthusiastic response of the few audiences that have seen the Commitments live, such as during their brief appearance at an AIDS benefit Sunday at the Universal Amphitheatre, there seems to be little chance of further exploiting Commitments-mania with a tour.

Angeline Ball, whose Virginia Madsen-like good looks give her at least as good a shot as a movie star as a singer, remains slightly optimistic. “Who knows? The last gigs (private shows following the L.A. and New York premieres) were really rockin’. People continue to ask if we’re still in the Commitments band and when are we gonna perform and why don’t we go on the road? It’s sad, really, that it’s only on celluloid, that it’s not really happening as a band, it doesn’t exist.”

Strong, living up to his name at age 17, is clearer about not stretching out the experience with a tour.

“I wouldn’t do it,” he says flatly. “For instance, the guitar player is signed to a record contract with a Waterboys-type of traditional band, nothing like the music in the film. He worked his ass off to get a deal. Why should he jeopardize all that and throw it away for this?

“We don’t know if we can write big soul classics. They’re not our songs (in the movie). If I did it, then I’m just gonna get this tag as this singer who sings other people’s songs. And I’m not. I want to sing my songs and share my feelings with people so they’ll buy my albums.”