One of the most memorable, if infamous and incongruous, moments in ’s 1987 vampire classic is that crazy concert scene, when a hulking, shirtless, and most definitely undead saxophonist — all trussed up in S&M chains, a Cameo-worthy codpiece, a generous application of body oil, and painted-on pants — aggressively gyrates his sinewy hips like a Chippendales dancer on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. More than 35 years later, many viewers still wonder… who was that sexy sax man? And how exactly did he end up in a teen horror flick with Kiefer Sutherland and the two Coreys?
“Is that a ringer? Is that a wrestler? Is that a real person? Like, what's going on here? Why is this guy moving his hips like that? And why is he playing a saxophone instead of a guitar, and why is he dressed in purple pants?” the mysterious musical muscle-man recalls of the many amused/bemused/confused reactions to his Lost Boys performance.
The man’s name is Tim, or Timmy, Cappello, and at age 68 he’s still baring his biceps, blowing that horn, and rocking the heavy-metal neck-chains. Of course, they’re not the same chains from 1987.
“Oh God, no!” Cappello laughingly tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I go to Home Depot about once every six months, and I have a chain-cutter and I make myself a new set for about 30 bucks. I wanted it to look a little wrong. … I think a certain percentage of ‘wrong’ is important.”
Cappello’s brief appearance in The Lost Boys was so wrong, it was totally right. But the story of his casting is stranger than the plots of most fantasy movies.
“I was at the Warner Bros. lot auditioning for the Gary Busey part in Lethal Weapon, and I heard this song on this radio,” Cappello, a conservatory-trained multi-instrumentalist/“utility player” whose credits include working with , Peter Gabriel, Carly Simon, and Ringo Starr, begins. “It's a fairly long song, so I had to sit there. I had to wait. And by the time it was done, I couldn't read for the part. But I went in anyway.
“And a guy walked by that I had never met, and he said, ‘You play with Tina Turner, don't you? … Come with me.’ And he walked me down the hallway, knocked on a door, and behind his desk was Joel Schumacher, the director of The Lost Boys. And Joel said, ‘Timmy, I've been trying to get in touch with you for two weeks! Do you have a phone? Are you in this business at all? Do you want work? What the hell is wrong with you? Would you like to be in my next film and perform a song?’
“And I said, ‘You bet your ass I do.’ And so that was it. It was a 30-second meeting.”
And, as fate would have it, it turned out the song that Schumacher wanted Cappello to perform in The Lost Boys was “I Still Believe” by Santa Cruz-based new wave band the Call — the very song that Cappello had just been listening to in car, causing him to miss his Lethal Weapon audition.
Schumacher had actually wanted the Call themselves to perform in the boardwalk concert scene, but they declined to appear in an occult film due to their Christian beliefs. (“They hate me, because I turned their prayer into a greased-up, hip-popping, jumping-around, ultra sort of balls-out thing that I don't think appreciated at all,” Cappello chuckles.) But Schumacher was a big Tina Turner fan, and he was also a former member of Andy Warhol’s entourage and had spotted Cappello in all his full-page, full-blooded, full-frontal glory in a story about Turner in Warhol’s glossy publication, Interview. And that gave the director a brilliantly bonkers casting idea.
“When I walked [into Schumacher’s office] that picture [of Cappello in Interview magazine] was on Joel's wall. It was right behind him. And something in me said, ‘I don't know what this is… but I kind get the feeling I got the part,’” says Cappello.
Cappello had been pushing the envelope when it came to the joy of sax since the early ‘80s, when after quitting heroin at age 26 and getting into bodybuilding to maintain his health and focus, he formed “porn-pop” band the Ken Dolls (decade before the Barbie movie!) and brought his Kenergy to New York City club stages in an outfit that made his Lost Boys look seem tame: a G-string, and sometimes even less. (This actually got the group banned from CBGB.) During Cappello’s 1980 tour with Carly Simon, Simon would even lead the leather-G-stringed musician around her stage by a dog leash. But it was in 1984 that his new boss, Turner, helped him perfect his now-iconic sexy sax man look.
“Tina was the first person to give me a codpiece. She was shopping and she saw an S&M store and she said, ‘That's what Timmy needs!’ So, she brought it in,” Cappello reveals. (Much like his chains, which he was says were inspired by female exotic dancers’ necklaces, the codpiece Cappello currently rocks onstage is not his ‘80s original. “Obviously, I'm on my sixth or seventh one, because they'll only last for so long for all the abuse that they take,” he quips.)
“[Tina] would take me shopping sometimes, and when she'd get me something, she always said to me, ‘Look, Timmy, there's some times that I have to go offstage to do a costume change or take a little rest and I'm going to go to you — but only if you are my tough guy. Don't put your hair down, your long, flowing hair, when I announce your name. Be a tough guy!’” Cappello elaborates. “But then I would always try to stretch it. I would always try to see if I could get away with something else. … I was taking a big chance with the purple pants. They were actually purple and pink!”
Once Cappello landed the Lost Boys role of a lifetime, he showed up to the Santa Cruz boardwalk wearing his pink/purple leggings and Schumacher just let him do his thing, during what Cappello recalls as two easy run-throughs of “I Still Believe.” Apparently the director also felt that the swarthy musician’s vibe was so wrong, it was right.
“I just said, ‘I'm going to push this as far as I can and see if they tell me, “Oh, no, no, we can't have this!”’ But Joel just said, ‘Yeah, I'm great with it. Go ahead.’ I think he trusted me,” Cappello recalls. And the rest was Halloween movie history.
While Cappello’s résumé as a touring and session musician is long and impressive, he’ll forever be best known as that musclebound Lost Boys saxophone stud. And he’s totally OK with that, happily stripping down and strapping on a new set of chains whenever he has the chance, because that one brief, fiery, fleshy screen moment has kept him working ever since — whether it’s playing shows nine months out of the year, or playing sax for new acts like British synthwave band Gunship.
“The only reason that I'm here talking to you is because of Lost Boys,” Cappello says with a smile, speaking to Yahoo Entertainment via Zoom from his hotel room while on tour. “[These career opportunities] just keep getting dropped in my lap, and I ain't gonna say no. There is no way I'm saying no to this; I love it too much. I'm just the luckiest guy in the solar system. I just can't believe my luck. I mean, I'm a good player and I'm a good singer, but I'm not going to make anybody forget John Coltrane, and I'm not going to make anybody forget Steve Perry. I'm just a blues shouter — and a blues shouter on the saxophone, as well! But I’ve found my spot. It just feels like, ‘Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. You're the luckiest guy in the world, and accept it.’”
Cappello still believes, practicing his sax and working out at the gym every day, and much like the vampiric characters in the film that made him famous, he feels like he can live forever — or at least for a very long time. “Knock on wood, but I'm in perfect health and have a lot of energy. I feel like I'm in my twenties,” he declares, adding that he's like to go out doing what he loves. “My goal is, hopefully far in the future, to hit a high F sharp, have an aneurysm onstage, and just drop over.”
Watch a bonus clip from Timmy Cappello’s interview, in which he reminisces about a hotel room cast party with co-star Corey Haim and how the teen actor charmed local police during a response to a noise complaint:
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