Rhino Factoids: Rhino’s First Time on the Charts

29 years ago this week, your pals here at Rhino Records managed to find their way to the very top spot on the Billboard Hot 100, and we owe it all to Family Ties.

We’re guessing the wheels are already turning in the heads of quite a few readers, but for those of you who are drawing a blank as to what that clue means, the song in question was “At This Moment,” by Billy Vera and the Beaters, and it’s otherwise known as the theme song of Alex P. Keaton and his girlfriend, Ellen, played by Michael J. Fox and the woman who’s still his wife to this day, Tracy Pollan.

The funny thing about “At This Moment” is that it was a song which, by most people’s estimation, had already had its moment: Vera released the song on Alfa Records in 1981, it made it to #79 on the Hot 100, and...well, that would seem to have been the end of the song’s story.

Except that it wasn’t.

Gary Stewart, Rhino’s head of A&R at the time, had been working with Vera on By Request, a compilation featuring songs from his two Alfa Records album and including some live recordings from the Roxy Theater. At the behest of the producers of Family Ties, Vera re-recorded “At This Moment,” and in addition to ending up on the compilation, the new recording was also released as a single in late 1986. When the song was used in two consecutive episodes of the series, the fans went wild for it, and just before the end of January ’87, “At This Moment” found its way to the top of the Hot 100 as well as Adult Contemporary charts.

Vera once said, “I don’t know what I would have done if it weren’t for Rhino.” Believe us, Billy, we feel the same way.