When I first heard this song in the late seventies, it was as part of a jingle Duncan Johnson used to play on his Saturday afternoon Capital Radio show which he called Afternoon Delight and never realised it was part of a song. When I delved deeper, it riled me because of what I thought was a grammatical error and I hate those. The line that follows the bridge is, ‘Thinking of you’s working up my appetite’ and I thought they were singing, ‘Thinking of you’s working up a appetite’ and it only took me about 30 years to realise. Not long after learning that, I also found out what it was about and, even more bizarrely, what it inspired it.
Afternoon Delight is sung by the Starland Vocal Band who were one-hit wonders really although in their native States, they did have three very minor hits on the Billboard Hot 100, but nothing anyone would remember. The band comprised two couples, Bill and Taffy Danoff who were already married and Jon Carroll (spelt John in Billboard Publications) and Margot Chapman who were soon to be married and were formed in Washington D.C. The Danoff’s already had some experience as they were both in a folk group called Fat City. In 1971, they wrote a song called Take Me Home Country Roads which was covered by John Denver with the Danoff’s backing him and it became Denver’s first US hit reaching number two. In the UK, it was only a hit for Olivia Newton-John where it reached number 15 and again in 2001 for the Hermes House Band under the title Country Roads and went to number seven. Fat City became a regular support act for John Denver and have the accolade of knowing their song, years later, would be adopted as the official state anthem of West Virginia.
Now, you hear of songwriters suddenly having a burst of inspiration and they start making notes on whatever comes to hand, Freddie Mercury began scribbling some words to what would become Bohemian Rhapsody on the back of a fag packet, and Squeeze’s Chris Difford sketched the lyrics to Tempted on a cigarette box in a cab on the way to Heathrow Airport, but how many do you know that have been inspired by a menu? That’s how Afternoon Delight came about.
One afternoon, Danoff was sitting in a bar called Clyde’s of Georgetown in Washington DC and they offered half price drinks in their happy hour which they called afternoon delight. He began attending the venue regularly, usually on Sunday afternoons, mainly to watch his home team, the NFL Redskins, play their home games and over the course of the next six months the song came together. In an interview with People magazine, he said, “All that energy coming out of the tube gets my creative juices flowing.”
That venue’s happy hour and the context of the song have nothing more in common. It’s not difficult to work out what was probably going on in Danoff’s mind when he wrote the song which opens with, ‘Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight, gonna grab some afternoon delight. My motto’s always been, When it’s right, it’s right, Why wait until the middle of a cold, dark night?’ Yep, daytime sex.
Danoff confirmed it in an interview with Dennis Hunt at the L.A Times, “I didn’t want to write an all-out sex song. I just wanted to write something that was fun and hinted at sex. It was one of those songs that you could really have a good time writing. If the song had been banned, it would have been a real injustice. The lyrics are subtle and sophisticated and not at all raunchy. It might have been banned years ago, but not today.”
Although it’s Bill’s song, Jon wasn’t too happy with it at the time explaining to Songfacts, “Afternoon Delight is not the kind of record for someone who wants to be perceived as a bad-ass rock and roller. It’s not cool to like that record, right? I was 18 when we recorded it, and it came out and I couldn’t believe that they chose it as a single. Of course, I’m an idiot, because I was 18.” He has since taken a different view.
The song barely made the top 20 in the UK despite much radio airtime, but it went to number one in the States in July 1976 making it the 438th US chart-topper and number one on America’s bicentennial. It didn’t suffer any type of radio ban because the lyrics are not raunchy nor suggestive enough to the authorities to notice.
It’s had its place in numerous movies including, Good Will Hunting (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Arrested Development (2003) and the TV shows The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park.
Bill Danoff had obviously made a fair bit of money from the song and is generally happy, but one thing niggles him, “It’s always contextualized in some ridiculous way, which always pisses me off a little bit, but it also makes me aware that there’s something endearing about it,” he told Songfacts. “Of all the usages of it, my favourite was Malcolm In The Middle when they’re finally getting out of the house and the boys are finally sorted out and Mom and Dad are going out on their own. She’s got her leg up on the dashboard of the Dodge Caravan, and she’s shaving ‘it’. She’s all lathered up and the radio is on playing Afternoon Delight.”