The song Bananarama wrote about Robert De Niro
British-Irish trio Bananarama took the charts by storm in the 1980s with pop hits like ‘Cruel Summer’ and ‘Venus’. Providing a slightly more light-hearted version of the new wave sound that dominated the decade, they even claimed the title for most chart entries by an all-female group.
One of their highest-charting hits was ‘Robert De Niro’s Waiting…’, a 1984 track written for their self-titled second album. Over a sparkling pop soundscape, the track fantasised about a relationship with the Hollywood actor, with a chorus that repeated the line, “Robert De Niro’s waiting, talking Italian”.
The members of Bananarama once explained the inspiration behind the track in an interview with The Guardian. Sara Dallin noted that the band had intended to write a track similar to ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’ by Grace Jones. Still, somehow, they ended up with a song based on “a fantasy common to a lot of young girls: falling in love with a star, having their poster on their wall – and escaping into a world that’s so much easier to deal with than a real relationship.”
At the time, the band were huge fans of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but decided to base the song around the latter: “Obviously Robert De Niro seemed better”. They first penned the track in their council flat in Holborn, with lyrics inspired by De Niro’s appearances in Martin Scorsese films specifically, according to Siobhan Fahey.
But the track also had a darker meaning. From Fahey’s perspective, the song was about “a fantasist who didn’t want a real boyfriend because she had been date-raped.” She noted that the song initially had some “lurid lyrics” that had to be dialled back. The song’s protagonist avoided men as a result of this experience and because “no one could match her obsessive love for a film star”.
As Dallin recalls, the song was released in the early 1980s when De Niro was filming Brazil in the UK, which led the actor to reach out to the Bananarama trio: “he invited us for a drink at Kettners in Soho. We were all sitting there when this guy knocked on the window. It was a freezing winter’s night and he had a bobble hat and glasses on, and we just thought: ‘Who is that person trying to catch our attention?’”
When the band eventually realised that it was the actor and long-time Scorsese collaborator they had revered for so long, they found that he was actually quite subdued in person: “He had his producer with him, who did most of the talking. I think De Niro was quite shy.”
The song was also accompanied by a music video, though Fahey notes that, due to the low budget, they were unable to secure their ideal leading man. She lamented, “We were really disappointed they couldn’t find a De Niro lookalike. We wound up with someone who resembled John Travolta.” Despite their disappointing accompanying visuals, ‘Robert De Niro’s Waiting…’ went on to become one of their most successful tracks.
