We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy (12 page)

“In those days it was part of the marketing,” Robert Zemeckis says. “It was done by design, to be able to have a really cool song—a good song—played in heavy rotation on the radio. Every time the deejay comes on it’s, ‘That was “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis from the movie
Back to the Future
!’ That’s advertising. That
was the whole reason. The only thing that’s better than that is to have the song be called ‘Back to the Future.’ Then you’d get it. Back in the eighties, that’s what you did. We only had so many outlets back in the day.”

Shortly after the film was green-lighted at Universal, Zemeckis and company called Bob Brown, manager of Huey Lewis and the News, to set up a meeting. The production team wanted music to complement the film, as the Bobs had done for their previous collaborations. For
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
, the Beatles back catalog provided not only the soundtrack, but also inspired the name of the picture. On
Used Cars
, country singer Bobby Bare sang the titular track. But this time, the filmmaking partners wanted to do better. Not only did they want an original song, but one by an artist who might add some additional cachet with the demographic they were hoping to target. Huey Lewis and the News’ profile was on the rise, with
Sports
, their third album, reaching the top spot on the Billboard 200 in the summer of 1984. The record spawned four top 10 hits, including “I Want a New Drug” and “The Heart of Rock & Roll.” Having Lewis in their camp couldn’t hurt, and the Bobs were grateful that the lead singer and his manager agreed to meet with them to discuss collaborating.

Lewis and Brown made their way to the designated location on Universal property, sitting patiently inside a building at Amblin with a sign affixed to its exterior that read
MOVIES
WHILE
U
WAIT
.
AND
WAIT
. AND WAIT
imprinted on it. Before the waiting became too intolerable, they were invited into an office. “We just wrote this movie,” Zemeckis said. “The lead character is this guy named Marty McFly, and his favorite band would be Huey Lewis and the News.”

“Whoa, cool.” Lewis felt humbled. He wasn’t familiar with the director’s work, but being at Universal Studios, feet away from
Steven Spielberg’s office, and hearing someone say they wrote a character who would be a fan of his was music to the singer’s ears.

“So we thought—”

“Maybe we could get you guys to write a song or something?” Zemeckis was eager to make the ask.

“Wow, that’s great. That’s flattering,” Lewis said. He looked at his manager, then back at the filmmakers. “But we don’t know how to write for movies or whatever.” Before the Bobs had a chance to respond, he quickly took appraisal of the offer: Amblin, Universal, Steven Spielberg,
Back to the Future
. It all sounded intriguing enough, and maybe not all that hard to do. But there was one nagging question: What kind of song could they possibly want for a movie with that title? “Even if I wrote a song, it wouldn’t be called ‘Back to the Future.’”

The Bobs seemed pleased by the answer. Rejections come quickly in the film business, and the singer’s response was far from that. Just as Gale had known Frank Price was interested in giving him and Bob Z a development deal to write
Future
at Columbia Pictures, he also knew that Lewis was on the line. This time, his partner sensed it too. The duo went in for the kill. “No, no, no, no, we don’t care what it’s called,” Zemeckis said. “We just want a song.”

The singer thought for a moment, then confirmed the Bobs’ intuition. “Okay, cool. I’ll send you the next couple things we write.” Lewis’s manager sent a tape over to Zemeckis’s office a few weeks later. In the singer’s version of the story, that song was “The Power of Love,” which the director loved at the first listen and wanted to put in the film. Zemeckis, however, has stated throughout the years that a different song was sent over, and he asked Lewis to send another track, something in a major key. “The Power of Love” was the second submission, not the first.

“But I don’t remember that,” Lewis says. “‘The Power of
Love’ is in a minor key in the verse anyway.” Either way, it was agreed that the song would be offered to Universal for the film. A few months later, when Columbia Pictures came courting the band to contribute the title song to
Ghostbusters
, which was nearing its release, Lewis and his team declined. They had already pledged their allegiance to Zemeckis and company.

The vocals for the song were recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, nearly four hundred miles northwest of Los Angeles, near San Francisco; the instrumental track was laid elsewhere beforehand. Journey was next door, working on their
Raised on the Radio
album. Lewis did multiple takes within two hours, and as per usual, he and his band immediately started mixing the record. Zemeckis, his producers, Michael J. Fox, and Christopher Lloyd took a field trip to preview the song’s rough draft. “I have to admit, I really didn’t know his music at the time,” Lloyd says. “I also do not know exactly why the actors were there, because we do not sing.”

“We sat them down, played the song,” Lewis says. “It was a work in progress; the mix wasn’t great. I remember being nervous as shit about the whole thing. But they liked it, I think. We got by somehow.”

Lloyd remembers the singer still being largely unfamiliar with the plot of the film, at one point asking the actor, “
Back to the Future
? What the fuck is that?” Before the visitors headed back to Los Angeles, the band’s frontman saw an opening, while Zemeckis and his producers were away, to approach the two actors. With genuine curiosity, and perhaps a dash of skepticism, he asked them a question that had been on his mind for some time: “Is this movie going to do anything?”

It would have been impossible to say at the time, but by the end of the summer of 1985, the answer became obvious. Once
the film was released, the single helped elevate the band’s profile, validating Lewis’s decision to take a crack at writing for film. “It’s our biggest hit,” he says. “The wonderful thing about ‘The Power of Love’ is that
Sports
was a huge hit in America, but in Europe, not so much. As an American act, we made some noise over there, but ‘The Power of Love’ was our first international hit. That enabled us to tour Europe and Asia.”

“People just connected with it,” Neil Canton says. “They were the right choice. The song made people feel good and, I’m sure, brought people into the theater. It’s hard to imagine these movies without the music. When I’m driving along and I hear that song, it just pulls me right back into the movie.”

“It was sort of a perfect marriage,” Frank Marshall says. “People always want a song at the end of the movie by a pop star because it helps with marketing, but usually it doesn’t fit organically. This was not the case here. We thought it would be great if we could go back to the early days of having singles written for the movie and weaving them into the picture.”

With “The Power of Love” in the can, the band was approached to write another song for the end credits. This time, Zemeckis wanted something a bit more referential to the story. Lewis and fellow band member Sean Hopper spearheaded writing a song from the perspective of Marty, and the result was “Back in Time.” While it was never released as a commercial single, the song reached number three on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart and has remained a staple of the band’s live shows since the movie’s release. Over the years, fans have debated about which of the band’s two contributions to
Future
is superior, a discussion that those involved with the film are happy to watch from afar. “Why does there have to be a debate?” Bob Gale says. “They’re both great songs, and I still love hearing them.”

“Being that I wrote them both, I’m not allowed to make those choices,” Lewis says. “It’s like asking if I like my son or my daughter better. That’s not fair. You know, you write songs, and you write them for different reasons. You never really know when they’re going to connect. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, but those two really connected. We used them well.”

With two wins with Huey Lewis in their column, Zemeckis and company decided to go for the trifecta. On March 29, the crew would be filming a scene where Marty and the Pinheads, his band, audition for the Hill Valley High Battle of the Bands. Once again, Zemeckis put a call in to the singer’s manager, this time to see if Lewis would be interested in making a cameo. However, unlike the first two pitches, the director seemed about to strike out. “They came up with the idea that it’d be cool to have me in it, somehow,” Lewis says. “I thought,
Nah
. The band was doing great. I was becoming a rock star. I was playing the role of my life, you know, and I was fine with that. I kind of resisted for a while.”

After giving it some more consideration, Lewis agreed, providing his conditions were met. He didn’t want his character to be listed in the credits or used in any promotional material in advance of the film’s release, lest it damage his rock star image. In fact, it would be even better if he could be in some form of disguise. Zemeckis agreed and the deal was done. When the date came, the singer arrived at the McCambridge Park Recreation Center in Burbank, the day’s shooting location, at 8:00
A.M.
He was given a copy of his script pages, and then sent to wardrobe, where he was outfitted in a brown jacket and shoes—a marked departure from the white T-shirt and jeans he was accustomed to wearing onstage. When he put the clothes on and looked in the mirror, he laughed and shook his head at the
familiar face staring back at him. It wasn’t his own, but instead that of Jack Craigo, the president of Chrysalis Records, where Huey Lewis and the News were signed—a real pencil pusher type. The singer channeled the spirit of the record executive to get into character. The next time the two saw each other, after the movie’s release, there was a subtle acknowledgment of Lewis’s homage.

“Hey, Jack, how’s it going?”

“I’m doing pretty good. I saw your little cameo in
Back to the Future
. I enjoyed it. I think you should win an Oscar.” The executive paused for a moment and, without even the slightest bit of humor, added: “Or maybe I should.”

Although he was proud of his contributions to the film, and undoubtedly pleased when he saw a poster for the band’s
Sports
album prominently displayed in Marty’s bedroom, Lewis was not surprised when the
Back to the Future
soundtrack failed to shoot to the top of the charts, even as the movie was doing well in theaters. With only ten tracks, the record was an odd one: two from Huey Lewis and the News, three from the (fictional) Starlighters, and three separate songs from Lindsey Buckingham, Eric Clapton, and Etta James. Alan Silvestri contributed two selections from his score, which omitted more than twenty instrumental music cues from the composer and his ninety-eight-piece orchestra. “I was very disappointed, as were myriad fans,” Bob Gale says. “The corporate mentality back then was that orchestral scores didn’t sell, and Universal wanted us to put those other eighties songs in the movie so they could put them on the album. They also had to pay a royalty to everyone in the orchestra based on how much music was used, so they limited it for that reason as well.”

“That soundtrack record was just before
Dirty Dancing
—a year or so before soundtrack albums would become the thing,”
Huey Lewis says. “That soundtrack album sold nothing, because it was ‘Back in Time,’ ‘The Power of Love,’ and maybe a Phil Collins song, or something. It was kind of a crappy record. It didn’t even go Gold at the time, while we were going platinum with our other records.”

Though it took three months, the album did reach Gold status. While one can suspect Lewis was surprised, no one was more surprised than Harry Waters, Jr., who hadn’t even expected to appear on the record in the first place. “We are invited to Amblin, and it’s me, Huey Lewis, and Mark Campbell from Jack Mack and the Heart Attacks, and they’re giving us a Gold record for
Back to the Future
,” he says. “Huey, of course, was the reason that the album went Gold—thank you, Huey! It’s hanging here on my wall. I got a twelfth of a cent for the half a million albums that were sold, so it wasn’t a whole lot of money, but it is sort of legendary in the sense that there are all these different versions of ‘Earth Angel’ that show up when you google, and I get to be one of those.”

Just as George and Lorraine remembered “Earth Angel” as being important to their relationship,
Back to the Future
audiences equally look back fondly at that moment in the film. While often overshadowed by the sheer exuberance of “Johnny B. Goode,” the song is the perfect complement to the emotional climax in the film. “Music brings a lot of emotion in our lives,” Neil Canton says. “You can hear a song and know where you were when you first heard that song. It’s a very emotional connection.”

“The music in
Back to the Future
transcends race, it transcends across social status, and it even goes across the world,” Waters says. “When we did the
Back to the Future
reunion in 2010, there were people there from at least six different countries. I remember there was a couple from Canada, and he proposed to
her in front of the stage after I sang ‘Earth Angel.’ I loved being a part of it.”

But for all of the memorable experiences his performance in the film has brought him, Waters still has one bit of unfinished business with
Back to the Future
. Although it has been more than three decades since his scene was shot, the actor still hopes to have a chance to meet his fictional cousin, Chuck Berry. “I’d have to say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Berry, let me introduce myself to you,’” he says. “‘My name is Harry Waters, Jr., and I was in that movie
Back to the Future
. I played your cousin Marvin. I’m sorry we never got to meet.’ I’d have to wait and see what his reaction was, because I can’t say, ‘I’m sorry that we appropriated your song. I was just a willing participant.’”