When 'Chill' Turned Hot
MOTOWN’S SOUNDTRACK SMASH, MODESTLY BUDGETED
For years, Motown’s past sustained its present – perhaps never more so than in 1983, when its 25th anniversary TV special was watched by 34 million people, and when The Big Chill soundtrack album began selling in its hundreds of thousands, eventually exceeding six million copies in the U.S. alone.
Motown Records’ profit in ’83 reached $7.7 million, more than double its 1982 take of $3.7 million. The firm’s then-president, Jay Lasker, said, “From that period of time – the 1960s – Motown probably has the best catalogue in the whole record business, small company that we are.”
The difference between Motown 25 and The Big Chill soundtrack is that the former required substantial amounts of labour and loot (not to mention persuasion) to come to fruition, while the latter required little effort and expense – and fell into Lasker’s lap.
This all came to mind again recently when the New York Times polled readers for their all-time favourite films, and The Big Chill was among the most highly-rated. It’s likely that many of those voters were the baby boomers at whom the movie was aimed in the first place. The ten-track soundtrack album featured five classic Motown hits, kicking off with Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” – which is heard resoundingly during the film’s opening minutes.
The other four from Hitsville U.S.A. were the Temptations’ “My Girl” and “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” – the latter plays a central role in one particular scene – and the Miracles’ “The Tracks Of My Tears” and “I Second That Emotion.” The five non-Motown cuts are the Rascals’ “Good Lovin’,” Three Dog Night’s “Joy To The World,” Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” and the Exciters’ “Tell Him.”
One other track that’s central to the movie’s storyline, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, was not included, supposedly for financial reasons. “The soundtrack had a modest budget,” Robert Holmes, a senior executive at Columbia Pictures’ music group, confirmed to the New York Daily News at the time, “so there were no advance payments and royalties were fairly low.” Tracks by the Beatles and Bob Dylan were excluded from the film’s soundtrack for similar reasons.
And that storyline? The Big Chill takes place over a weekend, when a cadre of college chums – onetime radicals in the heightened political environment of the 1960s – reunite at the funeral of one of their group who committed suicide. The cast included William Hurt, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline and Jeff Goldblum. (Kevin Costner filmed the part of the suicidal friend, but this was deleted from the final cut.) There was a Michigan connection, too: the characters were originally drawn to each other while attending the state university in Ann Arbor.
ADULT LIFE’S REALITIES
The Big Chill “reflected another perspective,” observed the American Film Institute years later, “in which liberal idealism proved to be superficial over time, when the realities of adult life – work, marriage, children – demanded other priorities.” The AFI added, “This message strongly resonated with audiences in the Reagan era, with their roots in 1960s culture, questioning how the generation of radicals and hippies became conservative Republicans.”
The movie was co-written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who was previously involved in scripting such box office giants as The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Return Of The Jedi. It was produced by a new company set up by talk-show king Johnny Carson, and released by Columbia. The budget was approximately $8 million, and the result went on to earn more than $53 million, the equivalent of $160 million today.
Harold (Kevin Kline) delights in finding the Temptations’ Anthology 3LP set
“Columbia Pictures had called Lee Young Jr., our vice president of business affairs, and asked for some songs to be included in this movie they were doing,” explained Jay Lasker, years later. “We licensed them four or five of our songs. After the movie was completed, they asked us if we wanted to release the soundtrack ourselves.”
The Motown president wasn’t terribly interested, but asked Young to see the picture and make a judgement call. He came back with enthusiasm, suggesting the record company should acquire the rights. “I said, ‘Lee, if you feel that way, go ahead. It’s not going to cost us a lot of money.’ ”
When released on September 8, 1983, The Big Chill soundtrack quickly began to sell in sync with the movie’s box-office success. “Motown has found that people see the movie in a mall theatre,” said Columbia Pictures’ Holmes, “and come out so happy they walk right across to the record store and buy the album.”
The head of EMI Music Publishing’s soundtrack unit, Pat Lucas, made a related point some years later when working the Jobete Music catalogue. “A Motown song is worth a couple of pages of dialogue in capturing a period and conveying what the characters are going through,” she told the Hollywood Reporter. “Because the songs have been around for so long, they are instantly recognisable – and filmmakers like that. This powerful music that goes right to your heart and memory and rarely fights what’s going on in a scene.”
LOCATING THE ORIGINAL MASTERS
Lasker admitted that he ignored the initial retail interest in the soundtrack album, but eventually decided to have 100,000 copies pressed to ensure the demand was covered. “And sure enough, it was a smash. I had nothing to do with it – it was luck.” Moreover, he gave credit to Lee Young Jr. for the smarts in recommending the soundtrack acquisition in the first place.
What may also have helped Motown’s The Big Chill was the use of digital equipment to piece together analogue performances and to produce a significantly improved sound quality. (Compilations such as soundtrack albums often use second generation tape copies.) Veteran recording engineer Roger Nichols worked on the project. “With a lot of this material, the original master tape has seldom if ever been used since the initial album release,” he told Billboard soon after the LP went to market. In this instance, Nichols did his best to find the original tape masters.
Keen on ‘The Big Chill’: Lee Young Jr.
Another Motown initiative was, unusually, to promote the soundtrack to album-oriented radio. “AOR programmers would say this music doesn’t fit their demographics,” commented Lasker in another Billboard report. “But the people going to see this movie are basically the same people they say are their demographics. Columbia Pictures tells me, and my own common sense tells me, what the market is on the picture: white, upper middle class college kids and alumni.”
Motown bought advertising on more than 100 AOR stations across the U.S., and hired independent promotion reps to bulk up its marketing. “I think it’s also going to sell in some black shops,” continued Lasker. “But I don’t think that’s where the big market is. Black radio plays Marvin Gaye and the Temptations all year long as oldies.”
Black or white, the audience response put The Big Chill on the main Billboard album chart for a remarkable 161 weeks, with a No. 17 peak. The release was certified gold before the end of 1983, platinum three months later, and six times platinum towards the end of 1998.
That chart tenure means that the album remains one of the longest-running soundtrack hits since 1963, when Billboard combined its separate mono and stereo charts into one comprehensive listing, as well as one of Motown’s biggest sellers. (The record industry’s standard bearers in that movie music category post-1963 are Saturday Night Fever and Purple Rain, both of which spent 24 weeks at Number One. The Bee Gees-led Fever has a slight advantage over Prince & the Revolution’s Purple Rain in terms of total weeks on the Billboard 200: 124 vs. 116. Also for longevity, the only others from Motown which come close to The Big Chill are Lionel Richie’s debut album (140 weeks, No. 3 peak) and his Can’t Slow Down (160 weeks, No. 1).
But perhaps the last word belongs to the American Film Institute: “Combined with a blockbuster soundtrack and an ensemble of talented actors, The Big Chill remains today an embodiment of American culture in the 1980s and a touchstone of the decade in filmmaking.”
Dancing notes: Billboard chart and awards guru Paul Grein reminds me of another Motown movie milestone – the Contours’ “Do You Love Me,” deployed in the soundtrack of 1987’s Dirty Dancing, which fuelled the track’s return to the Top 20 (reaching No. 11) of the Hot 100 in 1988. It had previously peaked at No. 3 in 1962. Oddly, “Do You Love Me” wasn’t included in the original Dirty Dancing soundtrack release – which spent 96 weeks on the Billboard chart – but figured in the “sequel,” More Dirty Dancing. Similarly, Motown milked its movie giant with a second compilation, The Big Chill (More Songs From The Original Soundtrack), which charted for 49 weeks and was certified platinum.