Starship would score the second of three No. 1 hit singles with “Sara,” but there was something different about this one. Its emotional sweep has given the song far more resonance in the years since its original Sept. 10, 1985, release on Knee Deep in the Hoopla.
There’s a textured approach that stood out, particularly in a period of increasingly mechanized songcraft. As Mickey Thomas said in an exclusive Something Else! Sitdown, “Sara” also represented a shift in the hitmaking approach then defining Starship, too.
“When you think about the exuberance pop of ‘We Built This City,’ or the kind of mainstream fashion of ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,’ ‘Sara’ had a solemn quality to it – and much more depth musically,” Thomas tells us. “That’s the principal reason it’s held up better than the others.”
Written by Peter Wolf, using Mickey Thomas’ then-wife’s name as inspiration, Starship’s “Sara” also stood out in another way: Guitarist Craig Chaquico and the recently returned Grace Slick played much lesser roles in this session. It was a harbinger of things to come, as keyboardist Pete Sears, Slick and then Chaquico would all depart into 1990. Today, it sounds a little like a requiem for Starship, too.
“Peter Wolf, who produced Knee Deep in the Hoopla and part of [the 1987 followup] No Protection, he wrote the song for me,” Thomas tells us. “He’s a great musician, classically trained. He wrote something that was unusual for that time, something with a kind of haunting quality to it.”
“Sara” was released as a single in December 1985 and topped the Hot 100 the following March. “All of my musician and sessions friends down in L.A. at that point in time, as soon as ‘Sara’ hit the radio, were calling me,” Thomas added, “and saying: ‘Wow, man. I love that. How did you get that sound?’ It was an audiophile song.”
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