Footloose was practically tailor-made for HERC in 1984: He had been the perpetual new kid in school as an Air Force brat but was raised a small-town boy (via Navasota, TX and Pineville, MO) who loved music, dated a somewhat rebellious former Catholic schoolgirl and drove a VW Bug with music blaring. As a high school Senior, the movie played like a overly dramatized version of his and every other early 1980s high school student's life: cars, music, girls, parents, etc. In fact, it's a universal theme: growing up and rebelling against authority.
Dean Pitchford had won an Academy Award for his songwriting (with Tom Snow) for the movie Fame in 1981 and was inundated with movie offers but never found anything that struck his fancy until he came across an article in People magazine about students in Elmore City, Oklahoma, who had overturned a city ordinance so they could dance at their prom. Pitchford called his script Cheek To Cheek and wrote nine songs to accompany it. He later claimed that he hadn't settled on a title yet but continued to jot down title ideas until he had more than four pages full of words and phrases. One stood out: footloose and fancy free. He wrote it out and then divided the phrase in half before choosing Footloose.
Paramount wanted big names, guaranteed box office draws, in the lead roles and casting directors originally had both Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe (above left) in their sites for "Ren McCormack" but Cruise had scheduling conflicts and Lowe had the part until a knee injury forced him to pass. John Travolta passed on the role and Christopher Atkins (above right) appeared to have the role until the film's director fought for Kevin Bacon, who had impressed with his performance in Diner. He self-financed a screen-test for Bacon, who was up for the lead in the film adaptation of Stephen King's Christine and convinced Bacon to pass that role up.
For the role of the preacher's daughter, "Ariel", casting directors first eyed Daryl Hannah (above left), who turned them down to play "Madison" the mermaid in Splash. Over a dozen other actresses tried out or declined the invitation to audition for the role of "Ariel Moore" including Brooke Shields, Michelle Pfeiffer, Diane Lane, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lori Laughlin (above right), Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Diane Lane and Phoebe Cates. In the end, Lori Singer, fresh from her stint on the television series Fame won the role. Singer bears a striking physical resemblance to initial choice Hannah.
The film was produced on an $8.2M budget (equivalent to $18M today) and was an immediate hit, opening the four day Presidents Day weekend of 1984 atop the box office charts with a haul of more than $10M. Footloose stayed on top for three weeks before Splash knocked it out of the top spot, eventually going on to earn over $80M or $189M in today's dollars. It is the seventh highest grossing film of 1984 - HERC would have pegged it higher - and to date "only" 730 films have earned more. (For comparison, Man Of Steel had an estimated budget of $225M and made $117M in it's opening weekend.) The movie is cited as one of the first to successfully use MTV as a marketing tool with music videos featuring clips from the film.
The film's soundtrack, featuring those nine songs Pitchford had written, went on sale at the end of January 1984, two weeks before the movie opened. Dean Pitchford turned to his friend and co-writer Kenny Loggins (the pair, along with Steve Perry, wrote the 1982 hit "Don't Fight It") to write music for two of his songs. Album coordinator Michael Dilbeck lined up Columbia artists to team with Pitchford to provide music and complete the recording of the album. Miles Goodman was charged with adapting some of the music to provide the score. The only two songs not released as singles were the two non-Columbia artists with the final two spots on the album: Sammy Hagar (Geffen) and Moving Pictures (Network).
The title track by Loggins was the first single released, just prior to the album in January 1984. The single entered the Hot 100 at #56, the third highest of eleven chart debuts for the week ending January 28, 1984. Nine weeks later, in the Spring of 1984, "Footloose" was #1, a position it would hold for two additional weeks before beginning a prolonged trip down the Hot 100, last appearing at #93 in its 23rd week on the chart. It ended up as the #4 single of 1984. The single version of the song differs from the album version slightly as it is a few seconds shorter and features a fade-in intro. While most radio stations played the single version (heard in video below) back at the time of it's release, the album version gets all the play these days.
After being on the Hot 100 for four weeks, "Footloose" was joined by Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out For A Hero" at the end of February 1984. The Jim Steinman co-write and production started at #84 and in a chart life that lasted 13 weeks peaked at #34. As he would for the next two singles, John "Jellybean" Benitez remixed the song for the clubs although this Extended Remix Version apparently was only released in Europe. The radio single version trimmed nearly two minutes from the soundtrack album's nearly six minute length.
In mid-March 1984, with "Footloose" in the Top 10, "Dancing In The Sheets" by Shalamar was the third single released from the soundtrack album. In addition to the standard seven-inch 45RPM single, a 12" single was released with Jellybean's Extended Dance Remix of the track which made it to #9 on the Dance/Disco 80 chart. After debuting at #81, the single eventually peaked at #17 in an eighteen week chart run on the Hot 100. Over on the Black Singles chart, the song peaked at #18 and had a chart life of seventeen weeks. "Dancing In The Sheets" would be included on the group's November 1984 album, Heartbreak. Shalamar, as featured in video below, was the fourth or fifth incarnation of the group, which was formed by Soul Train host Don Cornelius and booking agent Dick Griffey in 1975.
With "Footloose" on top of the charts, a fourth single was released in April 1984. "Let's Hear It For The Boy" by Deniece Williams splashed down at #56 and, within eight weeks, topped the charts on with "Dancing In The Sheets" at it's chart peak of #17, "Footloose" at #23 and the album's fourth single "Almost Paradise" at #29. The single topped the Hot 100, Black Songs and Dance/Disco 80 charts while peaking at #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Hoping to capitalize on the song's success, Niecey's 1984 album was also titled Let's Hear It For The Boy and featured the song as the first track. The song, a million-seller just like "Footloose", ended up at #15 on the 1984 year-end chart.
The movie's "love theme" was released as a single in May 1984 and was the second-highest debuting single that week at #65. Featuring Loverboy's Mike Reno and Heart's Ann Wilson, "Almost Paradise" was itself played at many a prom in both 1984 and 1985; some schools even chose the title as the theme of their proms. After a twenty week run on the charts peaking at #7, the song hit the bottom rung, #100 and was off the chart the following week (September 29, 1984). On the Adult Contemporary chart, the track enjoyed an even longer twenty-two week stay, including one week at #1.
The Footloose soundtrack's final Hot 100 single was "I'm Free (Heaven Helps The Man)" by Kenny Loggins. It hit the charts at #50 for the week ending June 16, 1984, ahead of fellow debuts like "Ghostbusters" and "The Glamorous Life". Peaking at #22 in the seventh week of a fourteen week run on the charts, the single hit the last spot - #100 - the week before "Almost Paradise".
In July 1984, Karla Bonoff's "Somebody's Eyes", the seventh single from the Footloose soundtrack, Bubbled Under at #109 for one week, never cracking the Hot 100. Three weeks later, the song was resurrected, debuting on the Adult Contemporary chart where it spent the next three months, peaking at #16.
Footloose is noted as the album that knocked Michael Jackson's Thriller out of the #1 spot on the Top 200; it then held that position for ten consecutive weeks in a chart run that lasted more than sixty weeks. The album is estimated to be only a few thousand shy of the ten million mark needed to be certified as Diamond by the RIAA. At the 1985 Academy Awards, "Footloose" faced off with "Let's Hear It For The Boy" in the same category Pitchford had won with "Fame" five years earlier. Both songs lost to Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You". As you may have noticed from the album artwork above this paragraph, there was a special 15th Anniversary Collectors' Edition of the Footloose soundtrack released in 1998 featuring four bonus tracks:
- "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" - Quiet Riot
- "Hurts So Good" - John Mellencamp
- "Waiting For A Girl Like You" - Foreigner
- and the Extended 12" Remix of "Dancing In The Sheets" - Shalamar
Those first three were heard in the movie but why did they only include the remix of "Sheets" and not "Hero" or "Boy"? And with that, it's time to stop reading about the music and start listening to the music.
Herc, thanks, as always for the cross-reference link. I appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteThis album was an amazing one that ruled much of my listening for the end of my freshman year of college and the start of my sophomore year (all in 1984). They don't make them like this any more.