Featured Essay: Reach With Richard Simmons

by Nick Reed

My grandmother is 93 years old. Though if you ask her, she’ll say she’s 92. Just another one of those weird quirks she picked up with her advancing dementia; for some reason, she always says she’s one year younger than she actually is. But she is at least somewhat aware of the passage of time, despite seemingly being unable to form any new memories since her husband passed away in 2010. Sometimes she still thinks he’s coming back. Do you humor her or tell her he’s gone? Does it matter, considering she won’t remember the conversation the next day?

Living in a nursing home dehumanizes you. Your family may visit, but other than that you’re surrounded exclusively by people who don’t know you. The caregivers call her Barb, even though she has always been Barbara. They don’t know about her life. And I don’t blame them, given how underpaid and overworked they are. Most of them are gone within a month; they’d rather do literally anything else. To them she is just Barb. Can’t walk, goes to bed early, doesn’t drink milk.They don’t care about who she was in the past. They don’t know that she wrote books, owned local businesses, and gave speeches in all 50 US States. They don’t know that she was, for a short period of time, a minor celebrity.

We didn’t know a whole lot about this either. Most of it happened before our time. There’s also the fact that my grandparents could be full of shit sometimes. They had these made-for-TV personalities where they’d come off like they were always in control.It was only after we’d grown up and had to move her things around that we got a sense of what she was up to before we were alive. In one box there were photo albums and tapes which she said were of her TV appearances. With no VHS player I couldn’t watch them, but my little brother was able to digitize the most interesting ones:

Barbara Reed on the Richard Simmons Show - “Candy Criminals”, Episode 1

Barbara Reed on the Richard Simmons Show - “Candy Criminals”, Episode 2

Come to think of it, she had mentioned once that she was on the Richard Simmons show. I always assumed that meant she was in the crowd, doing aerobics during the cuts to commercial break. But no, she was the featured guest. Discovering these videos really was a marvel. Look at how young they look! Richard Simmons was 33 years old. My grandma was about 50. Lest you doubt the benefits of living a healthy, active lifestyle, skip to the end and check out some of her dance moves. I know people half her age who aren’t that flexible.

I get a little emotional watching these videos. Seeing her look so happy and confident. Watching her speak so eloquently, with a tone I still remember from my childhood. But there’s also the fact that this is from an era long past. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are plenty of fitness influencers who may have the charisma or warmth of Richard Simmons, but they don’t become celebrities like he did. Richard Simmons was a household name when I was growing up. Mostly we just mocked him, though to be fair he made it easy. If you actually bothered to watch the guy you’d know that he was fully aware of how ridiculous he looked. He was also legitimately a very funny person. Ever see him on Whose Line?

In 1982, he released a record. I have it on vinyl. And if you have a couple bucks and a Goodwill nearby, you can have it too. Look, I’m not gonna beat around the bush here. This is not a very good album. It currently has a 1.81 rating on RYM and I think it earns it. But give the man some credit! Workout records were fairly common in the 80’s (even Arnold Schwarzenegger had one, and believe me when I say you need to hear it), but they mostly used songs that were already popular. Richard Simmons insisted on writing original tunes. He doesn’t just bark “Inhale! Exhale!” – he actually sings too. Mostly on the subject of how you shouldn’t eat cake. t’s a full production – something like a dozen musicians are credited on this thing. They all have such 80’s names too: Bruce Roberts. Lauren Wood. Steve Forman. Kenny Lewis. Believe it or not they got one of the songwriters behind “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire and “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” by the Pet Shop Boys. Suffice to say nothing on here lives up to those two songs. It sounds more like Huey Lewis and the News at their schmaltziest.

Okay, it doesn’t live up to Huey Lewis either. But if you’re truly working up a sweat it shouldn’t matter. You’re not supposed to sit down and listen to this with a cocktail and a pastry, like I am now (sorry, Richard). That’s why I still love this record. Or at least recognize it as something unique. It’s a designed workout album. Something you can actually use. The point of the album resides not in the grooves but rather in the “deluxe” workout booklet (the first page of which, by the way, is absolutely hilarious) included within. The two sides are designed as 20-minute workout sessions with cooldown songs on both sets. Side one you’re supposed to do in the morning; side two when you get home from work. If you do both sides in the same session, Richard recommends taking a ten-minute break in between. It is not clear if this is for your body or your ears.

For me, it’s a good precursor to watching these episodes. It’s a good way to get your head inside the world of 1982, before irony and meta-referencing infected every corner of pop culture. When you could just be a funny man in a leotard trying to get people to get in shape. The exact records of The Richard Simmons Show are spotty, but from what I could gather, my grandma was the first person to be interviewed for it – I believe these are the 2nd and 3rd episodes. They were filmed the same year Reach was released. The year Richard Simmons became a household name.

For my grandma, being on the show is hardly the defining moment of her life. But I love to show it to the people who call her “Barb.” I love to see the looks on their faces when they see this incredibly vibrant, flexible woman on a nationally syndicated TV show, not just as a dancer but as someone worthy of being interviewed. For two full episodes. They look at her in her wheelchair and ask, “is that really you?” Surely, all the kids and grandkids have stories about the folks in there, but I like to think this one is a little more memorable than most. If nothing else, it’s a great piece of trivia. Who doesn’t love trivia?

In a very roundabout way, this is the magic of physical media. Reach was released 43 years ago. Everyone involved who’s still alive is now pretty old. John Hug, Buzzy Feiten, Katie Kirkpatrick, Craig Krampf…where are you now? What about those whose faces and outstretched arms adorned the cover? Do you think they ever told their grandkids that they were on an album cover? Or is it just a funny story from the past they never think about anymore? Are they aware that it still circulates regularly in social media groups with names like Wrecked Album Covers? Either way, as long as copies of this are still being circulated and are being bought by people who are actually willing to slap ‘em on a turntable, they live on.

Nick Reed is a DJ from Wisconsin. You can find him at bluesky, or writing about music on his website.

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