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Rick Butler - Songwriter
It was 10:15 PM on a June Friday in Los Angeles. The Lakers had literally just won their
2nd consecutive championship. The phone rang. Assuming it was my buddy Josh (who
thinks that he's a better basketball player than Shaq, and had just lost $900.00 to me on
the championship), I answered, "Send the money Motherf*cker!" After a brief silence,
a quiet, somewhat startled female voice said, "...Hello?"
It was Kristin Mooney, who I'd just met with a few hours earlier, to work on a song idea
for the movie "Stolen Summer." She had no time for or interest in the NBA
Championship (even though the Lakers are from her hometown of Minneapolis). That
afternoon, I played her a piece of music I had written that I thought would be a good
emotional match for Pete's film. She was calling to let me know that in the few short
hours since our meeting, she had written the lyrics, and came up with a great melody for
the song. She read the lyrics to me over the phone, and then played a rough tape she
made of it. Instantly I knew that the newly titled, "Friend" would be the song for "Stolen
Summer." Of course, it wouldn't be all that simple...
Kristin: I'd been living with the script for a couple of weeks and was letting ideas
float around in my head (with the help of a pharmaceutical I'm fond of),
when Rick gave me a CD-R of a hard-driven electric guitar pop
masterpiece. I popped it in my car and in the time it took to drive from
West Hollywood to Los Feliz, I had come up with lyrics and a melody.
I've always enjoyed writing songs inspired by scripts. As a songwriter,
one can sometimes lack inspiration, and a good script can be a great tool
for new ideas. The challenge is to capture the spirit of the story without
being too literal, which I think "Friend" accomplishes.
Now that the song was written (in a very contemporary pop style) we decided that it
would serve the movie better if we produced it in a style that fit the tone of the movie's
time frame - 1976. We talked about the music of that time-period - a very wide range of
pop music existed then - and settled on taking an approach that would contain flavors of
bands like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. With the help of Eric Heywood (pedal steel
and mando guitar), Kristin and I produced and recorded the song the following week. As
is often the case, the song evolved into a much different animal than what was on the
original demo.
When Pete got back from Chicago, I went over to his place (coincidentally, he lives only
a few buildings away from me in LA) to play "Friend" for him. He loved it
(coincidentally, we grew up in the same "tough Chicago suburb," and attended the same
high school at roughly the same time), and he especially loved Kristin's vocals on it.
Needless to say, I was thrilled. But after a few listens, he started singing it back to me,
and he was singing totally different lyrics and melody (if you could call what he was
singing a melody). It turns out (he admits later) he has a degree of deafness which
prevents him from hearing music clearly! He absolutely loved the tune though, and
knowing how fragile these "writer/directors" can be I immediately changed the subject
and complimented him on his script (again).
From that point on, there was a long, multi-tiered process of approvals that the song had
to survive in order to get into the movie. Pete would constantly update me with reactions
to the song from various editors and producers - mostly (but not all) favorable. Finally,
in October, I received a phone call from Rachel Levy at Miramax, who was in charge of
music for "Stolen Summer". She called to let me know that the she loved the song and
wanted it to be the end title song of the movie.
Well, I've gotta run - the Miramax armored car just arrived with my weekly cash drop.
Rick Butler is a songwriter and composer for Static Music in Los Angeles
(staticmusic.com). Projects include commercial campaigns for Blockbuster,
Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Pasta Roni and Mervyns, as well as songs for
the television show "Jack & Jill" (WB).
Kristin Mooney is currently producing a self-titled CD with help from musicians
John Convertino (Calexico) and Eric Heywood (Son Volt, Richard Buckner) among
others, which will be released this summer.
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