Here’s a 1977 commercial for Pioneer home stereo components that appropriates Sonny Rollins’ story of dropping out of the music business in 1959 for two years in order to take his playing to another level, which he did by practicing at night on the Williamsburg Bridge. It’s a wonderfully evocative and moving story…until you see it transformed into a cheeseball commercial for some awfully oversized late 70s stereo gear. The commercial shifts the location to the Brooklyn Bridge for some reason but retained Sonny, hiring him to re-enact his nights on the bridge. I hope he earned more from doing the commercial than just scale plus some Pioneer equipment.
May 3, 2024
2 Responses
I would wonder why they might’nd have said “a bridge in New York”: You can see why they chose the visual of The Brooklyn Bridge maybe, but to deliberately suggest it was never The Williamsburg Bridge is strange…
My guess is that they thought nobody outside of NY would know what the Williamsburg was whereas the Brooklyn Bridge is famous the world over largely because of the old joke about ‘buying the Brooklyn Bridge’.