…or lack thereof
If you have never seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, stop reading now. Immediately. Get yourself over to Play or Amazon or something and go get yourself a copy. Order it, download it, watch it and then come back.
Right, everyone else – still here? Good.
Believe it or not I managed to make it to my 17th year without ever seeing this film. My good friend Bodger, upon discovering my apparent deprived childhood would not let me leave his house again until I had seen it. Twice. Needless to say we were late for college that day.
Many, many things have been said about this film – none of which I’m going to try and emulate or even beat (perhaps another time), however one area that’s not touched upon that often is that of the awesome soundtrack to the film.
From the manic synths of Sigue Sigue Sputnik through to the soft, dulcet tones of The Smiths; the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off OST is a wonder to behold. Except… it doesn’t actually exist.
That’s right, perhaps one of the most bizarre yet luminescent and nostalgic collections of music ever to placed into one film was never actually released as an album.
The reason? The director, the supremely talented John Hughes, was worried about the mix of songs being ‘too eclectic’ to see as an album.
According to Wikipedia, he said:
“The only official soundtrack that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ever had was for the mailing list. A&M was very angry with me over that; they begged me to put one out, but I thought “who’d want all of these songs?” I mean, would kids want “Danke Schoen” and “Oh Yeah” on the same record? They probably already had “Twist and Shout,” or their parents did, and to put all of those together with the more contemporary stuff, like the (English) Beat – I just didn’t think anybody would like it. But I did put together a seven-inch of the two songs I owned the rights to – “Beat City” on one side, and… I forget, one of the other English bands on the soundtrack… and sent that to the mailing list. By ’86, ’87, it was costing us $30 a piece to mail out 100,000 packages. But it was a labor of love.”
Amazing.
Thanks to a mixbag of research and Wikipedia, I’ve managed to hunt down a full track list for what would’ve been the FDO:OST.
- “Love Missile F1-11” (Extended Version) by Sigue Sigue Sputnik
- “Jeannie” (Theme from I Dream of Jeannie)
- “Beat City” by The Flowerpot Men
- “Main Title / Rebel Blockade Runner” by John Williams (From, Star Wars)
- “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” (instrumental) by The Dream Academy (a cover of a song by The Smiths)
- “Menuet Célèbre” by (Zagreb Philharmonic Chamber Studio)
- “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton
- “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles
- “Radio People” by Zapp
- “I’m Afraid” by Blue Room
- “Taking the Day Off” by General Public
- “The Edge of Forever” by The Dream Academy
- “March of the Swivelheads” (a remix of “Rotating Head”) by The (English) Beat
- “Oh Yeah” by Yello
- “BAD” by Big Audio Dynamite
And – minus a few that I couldn’t find in the library – I’ve managed to throw [most of] them down into a handy little Spotify playlist.