When I was a kid in the 90’s, McDonald’s had a campaign selling movies with their meals. I guess my family thought it was a great deal and purchased Robert Zemeckis’s sci-fi classic “Back to the Future”. I ended up watching that VHS cassette tape ‘til it wore down. From the De Lorean, to Marty McFly’s puffy vest, everything about this movie spoke to me. But nothing more so than the musical score.
A quick refresher: “Back to the Future” is about Marty McFly, a high school kid in 1985 who likes to shred guitar and hang out with his girlfriend Jennifer while dreaming of the day he might own a big truck. His friend Doc Brown, a wacky scientist, creates a time machine out of a DeLorean enabled with the flux capacitor, the device that makes time travel possible. Marty is transported alone to the 1950’s, accidentally throwing off past events. He gets into trouble with Biff the bully, befriends the 30-years-younger Doc, and needs to make his parents fall in love again at the school dance, otherwise he’ll cease to exist. If you haven’t seen this film, I highly recommend it. But from here on out, there are many spoilers so be wary reading further ahead!!
As far as its soundtrack goes, this movie has it all. One fantastically executed aspect of that is Alan Silvestri’s orchestral score. From whimsical motifs, paced footing with snares and strings, and fast acting orchestral hits, Silvestri crafts curiosity, suspense, and urgency for resolution. And as resolution is met, proud and triumphant horns with a counter string melody exude anthemic energy, making for an unabashed victorious feeling.
Another important part of Back to the Future’s score is its placement of pop/rock songs, used to great effect as both source and incidental music. As the movie begins, our hero blows up a giant comically-sized guitar amp saying, “Rock n’ roll”, informing us that Marty is a musician with a little attitude. As he leaves the ruined amp and house, “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News plays in the background, introducing us to one of the most memorable songs in this soundtrack. Written specifically for this movie, it grooves with powerful 80’s synths and upbeat rock drums, framing the playful, fun and carefree nature of our main character and the environment as energetic, new, and dare I say hip.
Marty plays lead guitar in his band called The Pinheads. Marty’s band auditions to perform for his highschool dance using music constructed from the same riff as “The Power of Love”, a really clever way to reincorporate this song as source music. Unfortunately, his band is rejected to perform which creates doubt about his musical career, though we come back to this later in the narrative of the movie. Next, through a series of events with Doc Brown, Marty is suddenly thrust into the 50’s, igniting a huge change to the music. The soundtrack gives us a taste of that decade with songs such as “Mr. Sandman” and “The Ballad of Davy Crockett”. Eventually we make it to one of the pivotal moments of this movie: the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance.
This school dance is where Marty’s mom and dad need to fall in love, and contains two important musical placements. During the dance, Marty is locked into the trunk by Biff the villain, and rescued by none other than Marvin Berry and the Starlighters, the band performing at the dance. Having hurt his hand rescuing Marty, Marvin tells him he needs a guitar player otherwise the dance cannot go on.
Because this dance is such an essential moment to his personal history, Marty plays guitar to save his life. He gets on stage with guitar in hand performing “Earth Angel”, a soft lovey 50’s ballad by the Penguins. He can see there’s conflict on the dance floor as someone else is trying to dance with his mother. If his mom and dad don’t kiss during this song, he’ll be gone forever! As he’s fading and hoping his dad will pluck up the courage to go for it, Marty is missing chords and slumping to the ground, and fast shrill strings enter the scene against the sweet song, conveying danger in the score. But with Silvestri’s triumphant horns supporting him, George McFly takes his sweetheart Lorraine and plants a big one on her, thus saving Marty’s life and that of his brother and sister. From there the shrill strings turn into a lush and beautiful accompaniment to “Earth Angel” and everyone is saved.
Now that he’s back on his feet, Marvin asks Marty to play something more upbeat to dance to! And so Marty begins his rendition of “Johnny B Goode” by Chuck Berry. This is one of my favorite scenes in all of film – an amazing composition of story, acting, music, and comedy.
As he plays and sings, “Go, go Johnny go go go! Johnny B. Goode!”, Marty decides to go for the guitar solo. Everyone’s dancing like there’s no tomorrow. Marvin is so impressed, he calls his record label. But Marty, absorbed in his guitar playing, loses all control and begins to shred like a wildman à la Van Halen (incidentally Eddie Van Halen has a small cameo in this movie, can you guess where?). As he starts bending and wailing notes, tapping frets and sliding down the neck with reckless abandon, he gets on his back and crawls on the floor. As each musician on stage begins to look at Marty with utter confusion and the high schoolers stop dancing, Marty realizes he’s the only one still playing and sheepishly says they might not be ready for this yet. It’s apparent to the audience behind the fourth wall that maybe no one’s ready for it yet.
You can check out the scene here, and I promise it’s a laugh.
This scene just culminates so much: tying together George and Lorraine’s union, Marty and his siblings being saved from utter extinction, Marty getting his chance to play guitar at a school dance, and creating a fun comic scene for us spectators. Just from this scene alone, the amount of choreography for Marty’s performance, the musicians who recorded this in-studio (guitarist Tim May with the infamous guitar solo and Mark Campbell’s vocal performance for Johnny B. Goode), and the sheer production value of this one scene cannot go unnoticed. It’s a seamless blend of acting, musical composition integrated directly into the comedy of the scene, editing and pace, and a fantastic example of story and score working hand in hand to bring us, the audience, some joy.
I’m glad my parents bought that $5.99 VHS deal from McDonald’s all those years ago, otherwise it might have changed my future. “Back To The Future” extended to two more movies, a whole lot of 80’s nostalgia, and even predicted some uncanny future events for 2015 (how did they predict the Cubs would win the World Series?!) Much like time travel, musical choices can make or break a situation. In this case, I think all things are as they were intended to be.
