John Hughes and Music

As this is an article in the music section you may be wondering why I am writing about John Hughes. John Hughes was one of the most successful commercial filmmakers of the 80s and 90s. However I was extremely struck when his death was announced in August, that so few words were written about this undoubtedly brilliant film maker, his death stood in stark contrast to that of Michael Jackson’s just two months earlier.

I had been watching his 1980s classic, The Breakfast Club, just a few weeks before his death, and it made me remember why I loved this artist so much. Perhaps the most striking thing about the film for me is the use of the song, ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, by the Simple Minds, at the end of the film. What I realised was in just three minutes was that one song can singlehandedly encapsulate an entire film.

John Hughes made films about adolescence. In just ninety minutes, he could describe for me and many others the wonders and the traumas of adolescence. His films, and the music within them could remind me of an entire period of my life, one of the most important periods of all our lives.

But I realised it wasn’t in ninety minutes, but in just three carefully selected minutes, where the Simple Minds play over a beautifully constructed montage. As the rousing anthem rings out, we see Judd Nelson redeemed, pumping a triumphant fist in the air and as those chords play out, we are reminded of all that has happened not just in the film, but in our own teenage years. Those three minutes distilled, like the best lyrics can for song, what many of us most wanted and most desired as a teenager – to make our mark, to be remembered.

So I still haven’t really answered the question that you might have first asked, why am I writing about John Hughes in the music section? Well it’s because he, like us, was a fan of music, and that is something that just screams out in each and every one of his films. He loved the Beatles and used their music incessantly in his films, most memorably ‘Twist and Shout’ in Ferris Bueller. No doubt if you ask anyone who has seen this film what they remember about it, then there is a very good chance that this scene and that song will be it.

John Hughes loved pop music and his films are like the very best pop songs; they work on crude stereotypes, they are bold, they are brash, and they are loveable. His films, like the best songs, show the duality of what it’s like to be teenager, the thrills, the spills and the heartbreak. What John Hughes does for us as music fans is carefully select some of the very best of pop music as though he were a friend creating a mixtape for you. ‘Twist and Shout’, The Beatles’ cover of a 1950s rock and roll song was sent rocketing back up the charts in the middle of the 1980s thanks to Bueller’s memorable ecstasy. In the same film Hughes made a hit out of an obscure Swiss band’s laughable song, ‘Oh Yeah’, which, for those of you who don’t remember, plays whilst Ferris admires a gorgeous vintage Ferrari, as a testament to that universal feeling of wide-eyed teenage awe that has been featured on countless adverts since.

The list of bands who cite Hughes as an influence as though he were a touchstone from them like the Beatles themselves is staggering, whether it’s the teenage grandeur of M83, the dreamy indie of Real Estate, or the maudlin sensitivity of Death Cab For Cutie, whose touching tribute at the Critic’s Choice Awards inspired this article all these months after his death. They played their hearts out, and although Ben Gibbard couldn’t hit the right notes at the beginning of the song, like the characters in John Hughes’ movies, as the final chords rang out you didn’t care, you were roused and inspired.

John Hughes not only leaves us with a legacy of incredibly well made films, putting everlasting images to songs, he draws our attention to more than just melodies, but memories and meanings beyond the surface of a song so that we remember why it is that we listen to music, how it relates to our lives and the lives of the characters in his films that we identify with.

So please, as music fans remember John Hughes, appreciate him as a wonderful filmmaker, and music lover with as profound an influence on our culture and on some of the very best acts in modern music, as the Beatles.