Looking back at the life and work of one of decade’s pop culture legends
David Soul, who died on January 4th 2024, will forever be someone who morally superior commentators will have to remind you was a ‘wife beater’ – a singular moment of drunken madness that, for some people of presumably impeccable personal character, must always be appended to his life and career as though it was all that we should ever remember him for. Soul made no secret of the fact that he had hit his pregnant partner in an alcohol-fuelled rage – it was a moment of shame that was going to follow him around throughout his life, no matter how much he atoned for it, found forgiveness from the woman in question (one of five wives during his life) or managed to escape the personal demons that had pushed him to that point. He visited prisons in later years to counsel men convicted of domestic violence and never tried to hide or excuse what he had done, unlike many other celebrities who people seem far less determined to hold responsible for their actions. But you know, to keep those people happy, we mention it here upfront so that they can cluck in self-satisfied judgement. Now let’s move on.
David Soul was one of the icons of the 1970s, his role as one of the two stars (alongside Paul Michael Glaser) of Starsky & Hutch, guaranteeing him the sort of fame you can never ever escape from. Starsky & Hutch began life in 1975 as a gritty, Dirty Harry-inspired cop-buddy show that was radical in terms of the violence and streetwise attitudes on display as well as the unusually expressive relationship between the two main characters. The latter was an immediate threat to more homophobic male viewers and TV executives, even though both characters were obviously straight, but the former proved the show’s downfall, as the violence was heavily criticised and increasingly softened season by season, partly to placate Glaser who vocally expressed a desire to leave the show during seasons 3 and 4. By the end of the show in 1979, it was barely recognisable with the two street cops now regularly going undercover in increasingly outlandish situations. It’s a classic example of a 1970s show running on fumes by the end, a parody of its former self. But at the time, it was the biggest show in the world.
If you weren’t around back then, it’s impossible to imagine just how popular this show was. It spawned T-shirts, toy cars, action figures, novels, annuals, posters, badges… and that was just the stuff that I owned. It inspired numerous shows that came afterwards, including The Professionals in the UK where Starsky & Hutch was especially popular and especially controversial as a result – despite being shown after 9pm on a Saturday, it was loved by kids and that led to episodes being edited or dropped entirely by the BBC. It also led to David Soul’s secondary career becoming almost as big as his TV show.
In the 1960s, Soul had appeared on TV as a masked singer, ‘The Covered Man’, the gimmick being that he wanted his music (rather than his looks) to speak for him – and perhaps to allow him the freedom to pursue an acting career alongside his musical one, just in case the singing gig didn’t take off. Soon, the music was dropped in favour of increasing TV and film work on everything from Star Trek and Cannon to Magnum Force, the latter being his direct conduit to Starsky & Hutch. But his position as one of the biggest TV stars in the world allowed him the freedom to return to the recording studio – not an unusual move for a popular actor at the time, often as a vanity project that came and went without anyone really noticing. Soul’s musical career, however, unexpectedly took off in a big way – his 1976 debut single Don’t Give Up On Us hit the top of the charts in both the UK and the US, and while he was something of a one-hit-wonder at home, in Britain, Soul proved to have more staying power, with the follow-up Going In with My Eyes Open going Top Ten and the third single, the magnificent Silver Lady spending three weeks at Number One. These soft-rock, country-flavoured hits were written by prolific British songwriter Tony Macauley but it was Soul’s performance that made them such genuinely great records – schmaltzy, yes, but glorious nevertheless. He had two Top Ten LPs as well before interest in his work fizzled out in 1978. Audiences were a lot more fickle back then.
After Starsky & Hutch, Soul starred in the Stephen King-Tobe Hooper two-parter Salem’s Lot, and perhaps should’ve gone on to a long movie star career – but TV success rather damned you back then and he struggled to get beyond the popularity of Starsky & Hutch, which still played constantly in syndication around the world. He did a lot of TV work in the 1980s, including an ill-conceived series based on Casablanca and a lot of forgettable TV movies. By the end of the decade, his stardom had faded away and his drinking and temper were out of control. He was yesterday’s hero, a forgotten man and by all probabilities might have ended up in prison or dead.
Instead, he moved to the UK and began a new career working in the theatre, slowly rebuilding his life while escaping the Hollywood treadmill. It was probably the saving of him. He found work guest-starring on TV shows, became an unlikely campaigner for BBC journalist Martin Bell in his successful election battle against the disgraced Neil Hamilton and eventually became the star of Jerry Springer – The Opera in 2004, also appearing in the controversial television version in 2005. He took up British citizenship in 2004 and married for the last time in 2010 to a woman that he’d been in a relationship with since 2002. He seemed at peace, completely removed from the Hollywood celebrity of the 1970s and the angry, bitter man of the 1980s. His interest in fame had disappeared to the point that he turned down assorted reality TV shows in the 2000s, uninterested in being famous just for the sake of it.
He was, however, a heavy smoker until his final years, when it was too late to prevent COPD and a lung removal. In his last years, Soul was infamously pictured in the press being pushed in a wheelchair by Glaser during convention appearances together. The press reports were unpleasantly sensationalist and exaggerated but Soul was genuinely in ill-health by that time. He died in a London hospital, aged 80.
DAVID FLINT
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