Released 1983 Genre Pop rock | Format 7" single, 12" single Length 4:28 | |
B-side "Anybody There", "Power" (live) Label Polydor, Mercury Records (original US) | ||
Street of Dreams is a song by the English hard rock band Rainbow. The song was the first single from the band's Bent Out of Shape album, on which the band tried to repeat their previous success with their album Straight Between the Eyes and the single "Stone Cold".
Contents
Ritchie Blackmore has stated that "Street of Dreams" is one of his favourite Rainbow songs.
Music video
A music video was also made for the song and was directed by Storm Thorgerson. The video opens with a woman being gagged, strapped to a chair and being locked in a closet by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist closes the closet door, before he takes the woman's boyfriend, named Mark, in as patient. Mark tells the psychiatrist about a dream he's been having. In the dream there's a street full of beds, and a rock n' roll band plays a song in a basement, while Mark is by a lake, seeing his girlfriend being kidnapped — and his girlfriend has disappeared in real life. The evil psychiatrist suggests that he hypnotise Mark. Mark agrees and he soon falls asleep and the song starts playing, while we see everything that Mark described. Soon Mark starts waking up upon hearing the sound of his girlfriend kicking the closet door. Mark pushes the psychiatrist aside and frees his girlfriend. As the two flee, the psychiatrist tries to stop them, but Mark knocks him out, and in the last scene we see the psychiatrist falling into the same lake as in Mark's dream.
According to Blackmore's biography on his official website, the music video for "Street of Dreams" was banned by MTV for its supposedly controversial hypnotic video clip. However, Dr. Thomas Radecki of the National Coalition on Television Violence criticized MTV for airing the video, which would contradict Blackmore's claim.