That Thing You (Didn’t) Do, Part 1 of 2

The search for a movie’s theme song: Director Tom Hanks’ love letter to ‘60s rock drew upon top songwriters

A shorter edit of this feature appeared previously in SPIN.

Tom Hanks made his directorial debut with 1996’s That Thing You Do!, the fictional saga of an American one-hit wonder rock band. Adam Schlesinger’s title song is the musical centerpiece of that film. It’s a note-perfect tune that captures the exuberance and zeitgeist of the era, all in a tidy two minutes and 43 seconds. But Hanks’ choice of the song by Fountains of Wayne guitarist Schlesinger came only after a lengthy search for the ideal track. Some 30 years on, nobody’s quite sure how many songwriters took up the challenge and sent in a song of their own. But what is known is that some of the era’s top talent took a crack at it, and the results show that Schlesinger bested some worthy competition. Here’s a look at eight submissions that didn’t make the cut.

Marshall Crenshaw – “All I Ever Wanted”
In addition to a critically-acclaimed career of his own, Marshall Crenshaw sometimes writes with and for other artists. His co-write with Gin Blossoms’ Jesse Valenzuela and Robin Wilson, “Til I Hear it From You” landed on the soundtrack of 1995’s Empire Records. Released as a single, it top-tenned in the U.S. So it made sense when a request came to Crenshaw via his then-publisher Bug Music, asking for a song for Hanks’ upcoming movie.

“The music supervisor told me that it was a movie about ‘60s rock and roll,” Crenshaw recalls, “and that they really wanted it to be period-correct.” He had co-written a song with British chanteuse Kirsty MacColl called “All I Ever Wanted,” but he wasn’t sure it was a good fit. “Kirsty had some lyrics in there about having a hangover,” he says with a chuckle. But he went to the trouble of making a new demo, and sent it in. “They said something nice back, like, ‘Thanks, but it’s not exactly right,’” Crenshaw recalls. “I didn’t follow up after that.”

Crenshaw saw That Thing You Do! when it opened in theaters. “And I absolutely loved it,” he emphasizes. “And then I felt bad; I should have tried. So I made a vow that the next time [a similar opportunity] came along, I would try hard.”

It did, and he did. The result was the award-winning title track from the soundtrack of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Meanwhile, Crenshaw’s demo of “All I Ever Wanted” has never been released, but a version by MacColl is on her 1991 album Electric Landlady.

Posies – “Ask Anybody”
Singer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Auer recalls receiving a message from The Posies’ record label while the band was on tour in Europe. “The call went out,” he says. “They needed it yesterday.” The band’s songwriters quickly came up with “Ask Anybody.” Auer says that The Posies were quite busy at the time, “but we wanted a shot at the prize, so we found a way to make it work.” They cut a demo in a 32-track Paris studio and sent in a tape.

“Ours was good, but it didn’t come close to capturing the spirit of the movie,” Auer says. “Ask Anybody” never surfaced as a Posies tune. But the upbeat tune surfaced again – likely with some lyrical changes – as the B-side of a 1996 White Flag single and as the title track on a 1998 album by Florida power pop group Swirl 360.

XTC – “My Train is Coming”
XTC’s primary songwriter Andy Partridge would seem an ideal source for a song evoking the ‘60s. The Swindon, England band had already proven themselves masters of such creative pursuits via their pseudonymous side project The Dukes of Stratosphear. So it was that Partridge was invited to submit an entry for Hanks’ then-untitled project.

Partridge provided the back story in the sleeve notes for his XTC-related odd ‘n’ sods releases, The Bull With the Golden Guts and Fuzzy Warbles Volume Three. He explained that “My Train is Coming” was originally written for the 1998 comedy film Buster, starring Phil Collins. The drummer-singer-actor rejected it, so not long thereafter, Partridge decided to try again. “When I was asked did I have an early ‘60s-ish type song for the film That Thing You Do? I could supply them with this to throw back in my face,” he wrote, adding, “Rejection makes me stronger.” The Merseybeat-flavored tune would be re-recorded live in the studio (with ace guitarist Mike Keneally) and eventually appeared on the 2015 Blu-ray reissue of XTC’s Oranges and Lemons.

Robyn Hitchcock – “That Thing You Do”
A true original, Hitchcock is renowned for his witty and surrealist lyricism. In the mid 1990s, director Johnathan Demme made Storefront Hitchcock, a documentary/concert film about the London-born songwriter.

Hitchcock recalls that not long after, Demme called him. He can’t recall if he saw a script, but he understood the brief: “Write a sort of exuberant, 1964-type pop song.” He decided to give it a go, though doing so was out of character for him. “I don’t consciously write songs for other people,” he says. Today Hitchcock isn’t sure where his copy of the unreleased demo is. “It was just snappy and short,” he says, “a bit like ‘To Be Alone With You’ by Bob Dylan, throwing the title into the first line.”

Unlike most of the other songwriters submitting tunes, he actually met the director in person. “I had a three-minute meeting with Tom Hanks somewhere,” Hitchcock recalls. “He was very nice, saying, ‘Thanks for the groovy tune.’” He shrugs about the entire brief experience. “I don’t think it’s a lost masterpiece or anything,” he says. “But I enjoyed doing it. It was fun.”

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