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It’s what we deserve: David Hasselhoff and Marla Maples butcher ‘If I Were a Carpenter’


 
It’s not the thing David Hasselhoff is most known for in America, but he did have a singing career. In 1989, perhaps capitalizing on the stirrings of liberty in the Soviet bloc, he released a single called “Looking for Freedom,” which was a #1 hit in guess what country. Just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on New Year’s Eve 1989, “the Hoff” performed the song at the Wall itself.

Knight Rider had been a solid hit for Hasselhoff in the mid-1980s and shortly became an inexplicable sensation in the German-speaking countries. In 1989 Hasselhoff took on the role of Mitch Buchannon in Baywatch, which would become an iconic pageant of T&A throughout the 1990s.

Having successfully solidified his career with a second hit show, in 1994 Hasselhoff was having thoughts about reigniting his music career. He planned a lavish pay-per-view live concert in Atlantic City, scheduling the concert and transmission for a certain Friday in June—the exact date was June 17, 1994. The New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets were fighting it out in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, but that couldn’t be helped.

Hasselhoff could not have known that the L.A. Police Department would choose that day to arrange the arrest of O.J. Simpson on murder charges. As all people on earth as well as certain lifeforms on Saturn know, a distraught Simpson declined the opportunity to turn himself in and instead embarked on a slow-moving car chase that lasted several hours, helicopter footage of which dominated the TV ratings for the day (and evening on the East Coast) like few events before or since. Hasselhoff’s investment of several hundreds of thousands of dollars would yield next to no viewership.

In attendance in Atlantic City that night was Donald Trump, and in fact (according to Hasselhoff) it was Trump who informed Hasselhoff that the chase was underway.

Marla Maples had become Trump’s second wife in 1993, and for reasons unknown Hasselhoff thought it would be a good idea for him and Marla to attempt to cover Tim Hardin‘s classic song “If I Were a Carpenter,” most memorably covered in 1970 by Johnny Cash and June Carter.

It didn’t turn out as good as that version.

See the video after the jump…....

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.10.2016
11:12 am
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