Bangles : ETERNAL FLAME

In Bangles’ ETERNAL FLAME, the eternal flame metaphor was suggested by two eternal flames: one at the gravesite of Elvis Presley at Graceland, where Bangles had been given a private tour. 

“We were taken out to the Garden of Memories,” remembers Susana Hoffs, “and there was this little box which was supposed to have a lit flame in it, an eternal flame. Actually, that day it was raining so the flame was not on.”

And one at a local synagogue in Palm Springs which Billy Steinberg (co-writer along with Tom Kelly and Hoofs) attended as a child. 

Billy explained, "Susanna was talking about the Bangles having visited Graceland, and she said there was some type of shrine to Elvis that included some kind of eternal flame. As soon as those words were mentioned, I immediately thought of the synagogue in the town of Palm Springs, where I grew up. I remember during our Sunday school class they would walk us through the sanctuary. There was one little red light and they told us it was called the eternal flame.”

ETERNAL FLAME debuted at number 56 on the Hot 100 on February 4, 1989, when Bangles’ IN YOUR ROOM was ranked at number 45, and rose to number one after ten weeks, making Bangles the third all-female group to top the Hot 100 multiple times, after The Shirelles and The Supremes.