By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
On Aug. 27, 2025, former U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North married Fawn Hall. Both North and Hall were known for their roles in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States trafficked arms to Iran.
During this time in the 80s, rumors swirled that North and Hall were an item, leading to the creation of the song ‘Ollie’s Girl’ by the bizrock parody band The VPs.
Forty years later, the rumor proved true when the pair married. This is only one example of the everlasting relevance of The VPs, whose catalog also includes songs like ‘Stockbroker on the Line,’ a parody of ‘Love Potion No. 9,’ and ‘Madison Avenue Man, ‘ a riff on ‘Secret Agent Man. ‘
With this return to relevance, band founder and drummer Jim Clash joined the KOAL newsroom to recap the band’s history and provide a look at what may lie ahead for the VPs.
“I’ve been a drummer for a long time, and when I was working at a business school, Columbia, we formed a band to parody the whole 80s thing. We started at Columbia Business School, actually parodying the business school,” explained Clash. “We started the advertising agency Gray, produced a music video called ‘Madison Avenue Man’, and an Ad Age reporter was there; she wrote about it, and all of a sudden, we had all these offers to play corporate parties in New York.”
He continued,” We didn’t have any songs, we had to put it together, and we ended up recording three albums, three LPs, and we got to be like famous for 15 seconds. We were on the Today Show, Good Morning America, the BBC, and The New York Times Magazine. And our shtick was we were business guys by day, and by night, we parodied what we did by day, all the greed of the 80s.”
Examining the ongoing relevance of the band’s songs, Clash stated,” Look at ‘Stockbroker on the Line’, you’ve got this manipulation of the markets, I mean, I’m not going to get into it, but you see the ups and the downs in the volatility. Obviously ‘Ollie’s girl’, a parody of ‘Bobby’s girl’ about the Iran-Contra scandal in the 80s. Stranger than fiction, Oliver North and Fawn Hall just got married. So what we implied in the song was that they were an item, Oliver North was married at the time, and here we go, 40 years later.”
Last releasing music in 1989 as the members of the group found themselves dedicating more and more time to their careers on Wall Street, the group has gone dormant as of late. But, for fans of the unique bizrock group, Clash provided a glimmer of hope, teasing a potential reunion as the Senior VPs.” I mean obviously if we got some attention from like a documentary filmmaker or something. Back in the day, we had interest from a movie company, Orion Pictures, and Laura Mar to do a sitcom kind of like Friends. I mean, if that happened, we could reunite.”
Clash also shared what the members of the group have been up to since their original run of fame: “Morris Rubinco, our lead guitarist, is in Hawaii now. I don’t know if he’s retired or not, but he was a banker. And then we have Phil Shaw, I think he’s somewhere in the Midwest. He’s still around. There’s me, and then there’s Jennifer Hoadley, who’s an executive director at the Meridian Surgery Center in New York. So, we could do it. It’s just a question of logistics.”
Clash also examined the current state of music, which he described as “more corporate-controlled”. “I mean, you can laugh that we were a corporate band, but we were in control. We were on our own record label. I raised a hundred grand on Wall Street to put that whole thing together, record the records, put out a TV commercial and get all that publicity. So I kind of wonder if we were around now, how that would have worked with social media and being able to put songs out on Apple and all that stuff.”
“I’m disappointed in the state of rock music today,” added Clash. “The 20s were in American literature, a very creative period, with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck. I saw the ’60s that way with Jefferson Airplane and The Who and The Doors, and we haven’t had that.”
Closing out our conversation, Clash shared,” I pursued a dream back then out of Columbia Business School. A lot of people thought I was crazy, but we made it happen. Anybody who has a dream and wants to make it happen can do it. Just be diligent and be realistic.”