‘I told the producers I didn’t know how to do a song for a film – and added that, frankly, I didn’t fancy writing one called Back to the Future. They said, “No problem, just give us one of your songs”’
Steven Spielberg and Bob Zemeckis asked to meet us, along with Bob Gale and Neil Canton. They said they’d just written this film whose lead character was a guy called Marty McFly, and whose favourite band would be Huey Lewis and the News. They asked: “How about writing a song for the film?” I said: “I’m flattered but I don’t know how to write for film necessarily. And frankly, I don’t fancy writing a song called Back to the Future.” They said: “No problem. We just want one of your songs.” I said: “Tell you what, we’ll send you the next one we work on.”
Chris Hayes, our guitarist and songwriter, had already written a chord progression, which he’d recorded on to a tape, and he gave it to me. I was going through a jogging phase and was out running one day when the song’s lyric just came to me. We sent them the demo but when Zemeckis heard it, he said it wasn’t upbeat enough. So I went back to the guys and we worked on it.
Johnny Colla, our saxophonist, got involved with the arrangement. On the original demo, the bridge chords happened twice and the song started on a verse in a minor key. Johnny had the idea of minimising it to just one bridge, and also came up with that big positive, three-chord major-key intro. I did my lead vocal in a couple of takes.
