1984 Soundtrack – Streets Of Fire

Streets of Fire is a 1984 film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross.

Jimmy Iovine produced five of the songs for the film and the soundtrack album. For Ellen Aim’s singing voice, he combined the voices of Laurie Sargent and Holly Sherwood, billing them as “Fire Incorporated.” The Attackers were the real-life (Face to Face) bandmates of Sargent, who provided the lead vocals on Ellen Aim’s songs “Nowhere Fast”, “Never Be You” and “Sorcerer”, and supporting vocals on “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young.” The version of “Sorcerer,” written and composed by Stevie Nicks, that was featured on the actual soundtrack album was performed by Marilyn Martin. The version of “Never Be You” that was featured on the soundtrack album was performed by Maria McKee.

Two songs written by Jim Steinman were part of the soundtrack: “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young” and “Nowhere Fast”, both performed by “Fire Incorporated”, with Holly Sherwood providing lead vocals on the former and Laurie Sargent on the latter. The title of the former was used as the tagline on some promotional materials for the film. Dan Hartman’s selection “I Can Dream About You” is the most successful song from the movie, and became a Billboard top 10 hit in 1984 (also from his studio album of the same name). In the movie, the song is performed on stage at the end of the film by “The Sorels,” a fictional doo-wop style group consisting of actors Stoney Jackson, Grand L. Bush, Mykelti Williamson, and Robert Townsend. However, the song was actually sung for the film by Winston Ford, whose vocals were lip-synched by Jackson in the movie. While there are thus two versions of the song, only Hartman’s version was released commercially.

Steinman later recalled thinking the script was “terrible”, but he thought the film was going to be a big hit, in part because of the enthusiasm of Joel Silver:

He said this movie is about visuals. It’s about excitement, it’s about thrills. Don’t worry about the script… I remember mentioning it to six or seven people that the script was trashy and I always got the same answer… The script doesn’t matter. This movie is about visuals… Then we go to the first edit, the first cut of the movie in the screening room and it’s Jimmy Iovine and me and Joel Silver… And about 20 minutes into the movie Jimmy turns to me and he goes… this movie is really shitty isn’t it? It’s really bad. I said, yeah, it’s a really bad script. Why didn’t anyone notice that the script was bad? It stinks. I can’t even watch it… Joel’s on the other side going, what am I gonna do next? There’s gotta be a next project, and they’re sitting there and there’s so many lessons I learned during that movie. It went $14 million over budget, I think and I kept saying to Joel, how are they allowing this? ‘Cause they kept screaming at us, it’s over the budget. I said, how, and they, you’ve gotta understand, they built all, Walter Hill didn’t want to go to Chicago. The story took place in Chicago, so they built Chicago in LA.
Steinman has said the filmmakers were convinced they would have the rights to the Bruce Springsteen song Streets of Fire, and filmed an ending using it. However, when they realised they would not get it in time, they asked Steinman for a song, which he wrote in two days.

So I wrote this song that I loved and I sent it to them and he and Joel, I remember, left me a great message saying, I hate you, you bastard, I love this song. We’re gonna have to do it. We’re gonna have to re-build the Wiltern Theater, which they had taken down, it was a million dollars to re-do the ending… and I felt all his hostility for Universal. A guy named Sean Daniels, who was head of production, one day said to me, well there is hostility because we understand you waited about eight months to come up with that final song and you never did it. I said, where’d you hear that? I did it in two days. He said, Jimmy Iovine. So I went to Jimmy Iovine and I said all that to his, yeah it’s true, I know. I blamed you but you can’t be upset with me. I’m not like a writer. I’ve gotta make my way with these people. I had to have a scapegoat.
The Blasters, who turned down the chance to appear in Hill’s 48 Hours, appear in the film performing two songs