Anyone Can Play Guitar: Treat your mother well and play the cello! The time A-Team’s Mr. T had an ‘inspirational’ music career

One look into Mr. T’s dead eyes in the video for ‘Treat Your Momma Right’, and you can see the moment a cold realisation hits his chain-laden soul. Stood there in a pair of budgie-smuggling camo print shorts, sharing a stage with three mumsy-looking backing singers, and moving with the awkward, uncertain mobility of an early Japanese human robot prototype, T’s mind is clearly elsewhere. He’s there in body, but as he intensely stares into some existential void (or the autocue) he’s trying to reach his happy place – like the right side of a choke hold or the inside of a Humvee.

Somewhere around his time as Rocky III’s Clubber Lang, the A-Team’s B.A. Baracus, and an Alvin and the Chipmunks cameo, Lawrence Tureaud was also embarking on a wholesome mission of which Helen Lovejoy would approve. Thinking of the children, the motivational video ‘Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool!’ arrived in 1984 with Mr. T growling helpful advice at the ’80s yoof. From tips on how to dress fashionably without buying designer labels (naturally) to how to make tripping up look like breakdancing (an essential life lesson), it later spawned an album of the same name, roping in another famous T (Ice) to write some raps.

So where ‘Workout’ encouraged lazy kids at a bus stop to use a boom box as a free weight, ‘Frustration’ saw T stubbornly try to play the cello, extolling the virtues of determination as he eventually learns how.