Alan Silvestri -- Back to the Future

 

A few weeks ago, I devoted my Reminiscings of Youth article to the 50th anniversary of "Jaws" which came out on June 20th 1975. Coincidentally enough, director Steven Spielberg, who had made us terrified of getting into the water back then, was the same man, now as producer, who thrilled us with a DeLorean, a mad scientist and a hard-luck teenager. Yup, today is the 40th anniversary of the release of "Back to the Future".

When it comes to missing out on first-run releases, I have two regrets. I missed out on watching the first "Superman" with Christopher Reeve in 1978 and then "Back to the Future" in 1985. I wasn't one to go racing to the theatre unless a movie was truly remarkable like "Star Wars" (and I finally only saw that one two years after its release), and to be honest, I never saw "Family Ties" which was Michael J. Fox's breakthrough sitcom so the invested interest hadn't been there. Plus, though I liked Christopher Lloyd's Reverend Jim on "Taxi" several years earlier, it wasn't quite enough for me to plunk down my money for this crazy flick about time travel.

But then a few years later, I finally caught "Back to the Future" on VHS when for some reason, the Japanese-Canadian Students' Association decided to show it at its old home base in the International Student Centre. Even on a far tinier screen, it was quite the thrill to see Marty and Doc in the 1950s fixing time and getting the former back to his 1980s including the crazy climax when everything that could go wrong did go wrong until it didn't.

Now back in 2022, I provided a ROY article on Huey Lewis and The News' "The Power of Love" for the movie's 37th anniversary and even there, I had to include the orchestral theme by Alan Silvestri because it was just that epic.

Well, this time around, Silvestri's theme is now the topic of this ROY because it is just that epic. I remember reading somewhere that when legendary composer Hiroshi Miyagawa（宮川泰）asked about how to approach this proposed theme song for the anime adaptation of "Uchuu Senkan Yamato" (宇宙戦艦ヤマト）back in the early 1970s, he was simply told that it had to be heroic. And Miyagawa probably looked upward to the heavens and went "How the heck?!". Silvestri was apparently told the same thing when it came to "Back to the Future"; something orchestral and something that can be recognized within the first few notes. 

Silvestri was coming into this particular project some years after he'd come up with an upbeat theme for a show about California motorcycle cops and many years before he would come up with the ultimate theme for assembling superheroes, and luckily for him (and Miyagawa), he did whip up one mighty overture that would help immortalize the first movie and the franchise (though I've enjoyed the former more than the latter). I can't remember scenes from the movie without having that theme play out in my head.

I have to finish off this ROY by including Silvestri's rousing dedicated theme to the final movie in the trilogy "Back to the Future III". It has parts of the original theme but it also contains elements of the composer's obvious love for the themes from Westerns such as "The Magnificent Seven" and "Bonanza".

Now what was heading up the Top 3 of Oricon on July 1st 1985?

1. Akina Nakamori -- Sand Beige - Sabaku e　(砂漠へ)

2. Yumi Matsutoya, Kazumasa Oda, Kazuo Zaitsu -- Ima Dakara (今だから)

3. Naoko Kawai – Debut -Fly Me To Love- / Manhattan Joke