The Bangles – Walk Like an Egyptian

“Walk Like an Egyptian” – Single by the Bangles from the album Different Light. Released in September 1986.

Liam Sternberg said he was inspired to create the song while on a ferry crossing the English Channel. When the vessel hit choppy water, passengers stepped carefully and moved their arms awkwardly while struggling to maintain their balance, and that reminded Sternberg of the depiction of human figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings. He wrote the words “Walk like an Egyptian” in a notebook. Later, Sternberg looked back in the notebook, and composing the melody with a guitar, he put together an up-tempo song with lyrics about Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Nile River, crocodiles, desert sand, bazaars and hookah pipes and then segued into modern scenes of blonde waitresses, school kids and police officers.

The music video for “Walk Like an Egyptian” was nominated for Best Group Video at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards. It features both the Bangles performing the song at a concert and scenes of people dancing in poses similar to those depicted in the Ancient Egyptian reliefs that inspired songwriter Liam Sternberg. Most of these people were filmed on the streets of New York City, although special effects were used to modify photos of Princess Diana and the then Prince Charles, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and the Statue of Liberty.

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The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian

The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian (1987)• TopPop03:20

In a popular scene from the video, Hoffs was filmed in a close-up where her eyes moved from side to side, looking left and right. When asked about the scene in an interview, Hoffs explained that she was looking at individual audience members during the video shoot, which took place with a live audience. Looking directly at individual audience members was a technique she used to overcome stage fright, and she was unaware that the camera had a close-up on her while she was employing this technique, switching between one audience member on her left and one on her right.

In the US, this was the #1 song of 1987 according to Billboard’s year-end chart. It held the top spot for four weeks.

Bangles drummer Debbi Peterson didn’t perform on this song at all; percussion was done with a drum machine. When they performed it live, which you can see in the video, Debbi abandoned her drum kit and moved out front with a tambourine as a backing track played the drums.

The famous whistling after the guitar solo was machine made, according to Vicki Peterson. In concert, Debbi would mime it.

Bangles bass player Michael Steele was a member of The Runaways, a groundbreaking all-female rock band of the ’70s that never had a hit – their story was made into a movie in 2010. Steele was the second Runaway to become a hitmaker, following Joan Jett, whose 1981 cover of “I Love Rock And Roll” was a monster hit. Lita Ford became the third member to make it big when “Kiss Me Deadly” reached #12 US in 1988.

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