We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy (11 page)

While James Tolkan’s presence at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance enhances the scene, it’s easy to argue that the most important bit players to the sequence at hand were Mark Campbell, Paul Hanson, Brad Jeffries, and Tim May, who didn’t appear in this scene physically, yet stole the show with their contributions to the “Johnny B. Goode” musical number. Mark Campbell was a recent transplant to California by way of New Orleans when he was hired to sing “Johnny B. Goode” for the film. His name had been passed around among those in the music scene as being a talented session singer, and within just a few weeks of moving to the area, he received a call from
Future
’s music supervisor, Bones Howe, asking him to come audition.

“We’ve got two or three people we’re considering,” the producer said when the singer arrived at the recording studio. “But your name kept coming up from a bunch of friends of mine.” During the audition, the singers all performed one after the other. Campbell went into the booth and did his thing. He knew he had done the best job of everyone in the room, but Bones wanted the singer to give it a second try. “Okay, check it out,” he said. “You’re singing it like you’ve always sung it, probably, and you’re from New Orleans. Just remember our guy, Michael, is probably from, I think, Ohio.” Neither the actor nor the character is from the midwestern part of the United States, but it didn’t matter. The correction was perfect for the singer. He pulled back his accent and sang it with a little less funk. The singer left and received a call later that evening. He was hired and would be recording the track the next day.

After recording the song, the singer received a follow-up call from Bob Gale. The producer told him that, in an effort to keep up the mystique and illusion that Michael J. Fox was actually singing, Campbell wouldn’t be receiving a credit on-screen. “I told him I understood. I got it,” Campbell says. “I just wanted to do a good job and fool the audience as much as everybody else did. I didn’t think anything of it. What’s really great for me is that Bones Howe kind of took it personally. He went, ‘You’re not getting credit? No, no, no, no. That ain’t right. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. I’m going to figure something out, and I’ll get back to you.’ About two days later, he called me and told me I would be getting a very, very small but very nice percentage of the soundtrack.” Additionally, when the film was released, Mark Campbell’s and Tim May’s names did appear first on the small list of “special thanks,” a move that the singer believes was the result of Bones’s advocacy.

Michael J. Fox knew his way around a guitar, having played in bands in high school. Like a lot of teenage musicians, he briefly, but seriously, considered pursuing platinum records as a career, prior to catching the acting bug. However, even with his skills, he wasn’t asked to play the high-octane musical number. Instead, noted studio musician Tim May played a custom 1979 Valley Arts Stratocaster guitar with a rosewood body, maple neck, and ebony fingerboard on the track. Like the other three-quarters of the illusion-making team, Paul Hanson was hired during the Stoltz era. Bones Howe had called the Musicians Institute in Hollywood in search of talent, and asked the secretary if she knew anyone who could play guitar with his or her teeth, and might be interested in teaching an actor how to finger-sync along with the prerecorded track.

“Oh, you’ve got to get Paul.” Her response was immediate because, serendipitously, Hanson had stopped by the
receptionist’s station just a few hours earlier to socialize and show off, imitating Jimi Hendrix while rubbing the top row of his teeth against the guitar strings. She gave Bones his number and he was hired. Rehearsals with Stoltz went well, and the two developed a strong working relationship. Stoltz was a hard worker and a nice guy, but he wasn’t as confident or musically competent as Hanson would have liked. There was a marked difference in guitar practice when Fox was brought on board. If things were starting to simmer before, they reached a full boil with the new leading man.

“He would come over, mostly in the evenings,” he says. “The thing that I thought was really cool about him is that his memory was so good. I attributed it to the fact that he had to memorize lines all the time being an actor, but he could have actually had a career as a guitar player. The lessons would be about an hour, and we would drink Canadian beer. Moosehead, I think.”

For Fox, the opportunity to play rock star for a few hours a week in between shooting
Family Ties
and
Back to the Future
was a relief. Not that he ever needed much of an excuse to put his feet up and let loose, but now he could smoke a few cigarettes, throw back a few beers, and talk about his favorite musical idols, all in the best interest of his job. The two spent time practicing alongside May’s recording, and Hanson made a cassette tape of “Johnny B. Goode” at half speed so the actor could practice at home, during his downtime at the television studio, or in his trailer at the film set. Fox’s accuracy and the speed at which he picked up the notes impressed his teacher. And moreover, Hanson enjoyed the company. Although he wasn’t on the A-list himself, he got a kick out of being a part of the lifestyle, even if it was just for a few hours a week. “At some point, I remember he bought a red Ferrari,” he says. “He drove it over to my
house in North Hollywood and parked it on the front grass when I had a party. It was pretty cool having that on our lawn.”

When it came time to film the dance number, the actor felt prepared when he took to the stage. The shots were planned out, and Fox had a loose idea as to what he was going to do, but Zemeckis gave him the freedom to play and feel inspired. The section at the end of the song, where Marty imitates contemporary artists of the three decades between the film’s past and present, materialized differently on-screen than what was originally scripted, where the character was supposed to move his pelvis like Elvis, strut like Mick Jagger, and moonwalk like Michael Jackson—a visual joke that would eventually turn up in
Back to the Future Part III
. While specific artists were named in the screenplay, they were listed simply as a blueprint for the reader of what the Bobs would be aiming for. When the time came to rehearse the number, Fox and choreographer Brad Jeffries worked together to come up with homages to guitarists that might be a more appropriate fit for the scene. Like Hanson, the dance instructor met with Fox for several rehearsals prior to filming and was present on set. In devising the song’s climactic finale, he set high expectations within Fox’s comfort zone, figuring out what movements he could naturally execute that would also be immediately recognizable to the audience.
Future
was Jeffries’s first film as choreographer—he had served as assistant choreographer on the film adaptation of
A Chorus Line
—and he was taken by Zemeckis’s ability to hire the best people to do jobs on the film and then step out of the way while they worked. Within the controlled chaos at the United Methodist church, the director seemed both in charge and at a far enough distance away to give everyone breathing room.

Filming the Enchantment scene was a highlight for Fox and many of the others present those days. Harry Waters, Jr., and the
Starlighters, made up of David Harold Brown, Tommy Thomas, Lloyd L. Tolbert, and Granville “Danny” Young, would jam between takes, sometimes playing Whodini’s 1984 funk hit “Freaks Come Out at Night” for their mostly white listeners. It was true that music was the great unifier, as everyone danced, despite being incongruously dressed in 1950s party clothes. “It was my first film I ever worked on, and it was just so casual and cool,” Hanson says. “I was surprised. The cast was awesome. Bob was a pretty mellow director. Amblin had just hired a brand-new catering company, so these guys, they were really trying to show off how good they were. There was Bundt cake, hot dogs, just food all the time.”

Perhaps the only actor to experience any significant amount of discomfort was Lea Thompson, all stemming from her costume, which she had a love-hate relationship with. As great as Lorraine’s pink dress looks on-screen, and as beautiful as the actress felt when she saw herself in it, it was uncomfortable to wear and even harder to dance in. Even worse still were the extended periods of downtime where she was unable to change in between takes. “I would take it off and walk around in a corset bra and a crinoline underskirt,” she says. “My mother came to visit and she was freaking out because there were, like, two hundred extras sitting there and I’m in my bra. My mom was so scandalized, but the dress was really tight.” Although it was an annoyance, the actress has held on to the dress for the past three decades, with it proudly hanging in a garment bag in her closet. “My kids used to want to wear it for Halloween, but they couldn’t fit in it,” she says, while letting out a genuinely incredulous laugh. “I was tiny!”

For all of the fun involved in shooting the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, there was a bit of stress caused by a
clearance that came at the eleventh hour, jeopardizing the gag in the middle of “Johnny B. Goode” where Marvin calls his famous cousin backstage. While the Bobs always intended on having Marty play the song, dating all the way back to the first draft of their script written almost half a decade before filming, they had difficulty getting Chuck Berry on board. Perhaps it was a dispute over money, or maybe the rock ’n’ roll pioneer had a problem with the film’s revisionist history, a white teenager inventing rock and black musicians just copying his lead. With the set dressed, the crew in place, and the actor waiting for the word, the real Berry wavered before granting his approval for his name to be used in the scene, as the team waited impatiently throughout the day. “His doubts went away when we paid him to use the song,” Bob Gale says. “I think it was fifty thousand dollars—a lot for a song back then.”

Filming was slightly delayed because of the uncertainty, so once the okay was given, everyone had to move quickly. “I was the only actor on set,” Waters says. “We’re all in that little corner offstage in the auditorium of the church. They said, ‘All right, action!’ I do the line, which has now been documented on at least twenty different sitcoms, cartoons, YouTube videos, everything.
Family Guy
has four versions. I did it in one take and he said, ‘Great, cut, print.’ We were done and the crew cheered. When it finally showed up in the film, I was amazed. I only gave the line that one time, which is rare for any sort of shooting. I always get to have that as a feather in my cap. I got to do a famous line in this historic movie, and I did it in one take.”

However, that wouldn’t be the only plume in Waters’s headpiece. Alan Silvestri, the film’s composer, asked the actor if he would be interested in providing the vocals on the track for “Earth Angel” that would be used during filming. At the time,
the request struck the actor as odd. After all, Michael J. Fox had spent months practicing alongside a recording of studio musicians playing “Johnny B. Goode.” Why hadn’t they hired someone to sing during the moment when George and Lorraine share their first kiss? Despite the curiousness of the situation, the actor agreed. As far as he was concerned, if Zemeckis or any other member of the creative team asked him to jump, he was going to put his legs to work before asking, “How high?”

Waters and his brother, who was visiting from Denver, went to the recording studio in Hollywood. The actor went into the booth, put on the headphones, and listened to the playback. For a musical theater performer, this stirred mixed emotions. It was fun to croon in a studio, but he was out of his element. There were the occasional off-key notes, and after fourteen takes of varying levels of acceptability, recording wrapped. The two were invited to stick around and watch Bones mix the song, scrapping portions of the flawed takes and fusing them with moments of vocal excellence. When Waters heard the track while filming, he thought it sounded decent enough, but still expected the vocals to be replaced by a “real musician” by the time the movie hit the theaters, with his recording only used as a reference for him to lip-synch along with on set.

It wasn’t until June 26, three months later, at the cast and crew screening at the Avco Center Cinemas on Wilshire Boulevard, that he realized he hadn’t been dubbed over in postproduction. For the first few minutes of watching himself sing, Waters was so engulfed in the story that he hadn’t recognized the sound of his own voice, but once Marty’s parents kissed, and the violins came in—a decision made to heighten the emotional impact of the scene, even though there are no violinists onstage—the actor realized he had been listening to himself all along.

Mark Campbell attended the screening with his mother, who flew from New Orleans to share the moment with her son. When the “Johnny B. Goode” scene started, the audience was captivated. His mother couldn’t have been happier. The woman in the seat directly in front of her turned to her date and said, “I didn’t know Michael J. Fox could sing,” which resulted in her getting a swift correction from the proud parent. The singer was a little embarrassed, but mostly proud that the trick had been pulled off.
Yup
, he thought.
We fooled ’em, all right.

A week and a half after that screening, the
Back to the Future
soundtrack was released. Initially, it failed to catch on, barely making an impression on the album charts. By September 7, after several months wading in the kiddie pool, it made a splash into the top 20 on the Billboard 200. By the following month, it moved to its peak position of number twelve, fueled not only by the success of the film, but by Huey Lewis and the News’ “The Power of Love,” which was inescapable on radio and in television spots during the summer of 1985. The song reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and stayed there for two weeks—the first of the band’s releases to hit number one—and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Like Ray Parker, Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” a year before, it is hard to tell which was the chicken and which was the egg in appraising the tandem success of the song and film. Did people request the song on the radio because they enjoyed the movie, or rush to theaters because of the single?