Allee Willis

“Boogie Wonderland” was the second motorized piece I made in 1985. Jon Lind and I wrote the song in 1978 about someone who was at the end of their rope and ran to the disco every night to dance themselves numb looking for momentary romance in order to forget the pain of their everyday life. I wanted the art to reflect the good times inside a disco named Boogie Wonderland. I just started painting a bunch of figures dancing, using an early photo of James Brown as one of the models. When James Brown came to my house later that year to write with me and saw the piece he went insane and told me he got married in the clothes that he wore in the photo. When I turned the piece on he jumped up and started dancing. I painted and built two “Boogie Wonderland” motorized pieces, one of which hung in a store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for years