Demon Music group, in conjunction with the Hughes family, are proud to present the first official compilation of music from the movies of legendary filmmaker John Hughes, curated by Hughes’ music supervisor Tarquin Gotch, covering the classic eighties period 1983 – 1989.
The 4CD box set titled Life Moves Pretty Fast: The John Hughes Mixtapes will be released on November 11 through Demon Music Group and include tracks from the films The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Uncle Buck, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Some Kind Of Wonderful, Planes, Trains And Automobiles, She’s Having A Baby and The Great Outdoors.
The films of John Hughes are some of the most iconic of the 1980s, and they have created a lasting cultural impact still felt and referenced across TV, film and music.
As well as the characters and stories created in the films, what made John Hughes’ movies different from the rest was the symbiotic relationship between what was happening on screen and music. Whether Cameron Frye staring at the painting in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off set to The Dream Academy’s “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What”, Duckie and Andie from Pretty In Pink at prom set to Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s “If You Leave”, or Neal and Del’s classic “Those aren’t pillows” scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles set to Emmylou Harris’ “Back In Baby’s Arms”
John and his team revolutionised the way music was used in movies, commissioning artists such as Kate Bush (‘This Woman’s Work’ for ‘She’s Having A Baby’) and OMD (‘If You Leave’ for Pretty In Pink) to write new song and giving bands such as Simple Minds & The Psychedelic Furs their biggest hits. Life Moves Pretty Fast, named for the famous quip by Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, documents the influence that music in Hughes’ movies had, which is still felt today in the work of Quentin Tarantino to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and beyond.
John’s son James Hughes on his father’s relationship with music “It serves as a reminder not just to the musicians he championed in the 1980s, but to how intensely his search for music expanded beyond this era. Until his final days, he was still collecting outrageous amounts of music from around the world, galaxies removed from the New Romantic and new wave sounds that, to many, still define him.”
One of John’s closest collaborators was music supervisor and band manager Tarquin Gotch “Back when we were working on these movie soundtracks, the best way to send music around the world was cassettes by Fedex. We sent John cassettes of newly released music, of demos, of just finished mixes and in return he would send VHS videos of the scenes that needed music. John said he only made movies so he could choose what music to put in them, so as his success at the Box Office grew, and thus his power with the studios, the number of tracks in his films, by up-and-coming UK bands, steadily grew.”
Life Moves Pretty Fast – The John Hughes Mixtapes, is released as a limited edition 4CD 74-track deluxe CD set also includes a 14-track cassette and re-issue of the 7” single “Beat City” / “I’m Afraid” originally distributed to the John Hughes fan club mailing list upon the release of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It is also available as a limited-edition RED vinyl 6LP boxset, a 25-track black vinyl 2LP version and a standard 4CD 74-track set.
All formats feature imagery of the tapes that John played on set as well as compilations that he made and exclusive interviews and memories from Matthew Broderick, James Hughes, Tarquin Gotch, Ron Payne as well as track-by-track sleeve notes.
Below is the track listing for the 4 CD set.
For ordering details, visit JohnHughes.lnk.to/Mixtapes
