Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward

Author:Bob Woodward [Woodward, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

16

Tom Scott, the thirty-three-year-old jazz-rock saxophonist from the Blues Brothers, rolled over in his bed in Los Angeles early Sunday morning, September 27. He popped open his eyes in bewilderment.

“Get up! Get up!” John was shouting, pounding on the front door.

Scott struggled out of bed, walked down to the first floor and opened the door.

John was standing there, clearly under the influence of drugs. He had come to talk about the musical score for Neighbors.

Scott had previously done the background theme music for a number of television shows (“Starsky and Hutch,” “Baretta,” “Streets of San Francisco”) and a few movies, including Columbia’s 1980 hit Stir Crazy. On John’s recommendation, he had been given the job several weeks earlier of scoring about 50 minutes of original music for Neighbors. He was consumed by the task. It took a full day of detailed work to score about three minutes’ worth of music.

For the final song, which would be the title song “Neighbors,” Scott had made a rough demonstration tape so people at Columbia could get an idea of the melody he had in mind. He had done it sitting at home, playing the guitar and humming into a tape recorder. He’d sent the tape to the music people at Columbia, and they seemed quite pleased.

John sat down in Scott’s living room and continued his attack on Avildsen. He wanted to make sure that Avildsen was not influencing the music.

“Never mind what he says,” John said authoritatively. “Do your own thing.” Scott would do fine following his own musical instincts. Avildsen was poison and could wreck anything.

Scott knew that adding music was one of the final stages in postproduction, and a score could be shuffled around, cut, or dropped based on the whims of producers, directors and stars; those who wrote the music had no leverage whatsoever. When a movie was in trouble (as this one was, considering what Scott had heard and seen of Avildsen), the music could become a convenient scapegoat.

On the second day of scoring with the orchestra, Wednesday, September 30, Scott got a call from John, who was to do the vocals on the title song and was over at a recording studio in town.

“There’s a problem,” John said. “Come down.”

When Scott walked into the studio, John, Derf, and the three other band members from Fear were blasting forth with an angry, savage sound, composing their own punk title song, “Neighbors,” for the movie. The music was an upheaval of noises and overinstrumentation.

“This is a punk picture,” John said to Scott. “I want people to tear the seats out.” There was a pause in the music. “This space here is for your sax solo,” John said, inviting Scott to join the band.

Scott listened in silence, wondering whether John had finally flipped out. This was deranged. John couldn’t unilaterally decide on new music, and no studio would put a punk song on a major movie release.

John told Scott that he could be the producer of the new song.

After hours of work composing an original score, that was the cruelest part.

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