It stands as one of the most beloved, innovative and profitable comedy films of the 1980s, and its theme song has endured the test of time as a venerable spooky season staple.
The original script for Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis’s paranormal crowd-pleaser was very different from the product moviegoers eventually couldn’t get enough of. When it was first sold to Columbia Pictures, John Belushi was supposed to be the movie’s comedy dynamite with rising star Eddie Murphy also attached at one point.
Belushi would pass away and Murphy would also drop out for other opportunities (correctly chosen, as history would later prove). In came another Saturday Night Live alum in Bill Murray, and it’s hard to imagine the film without him. And likewise Ernie Hudson, the most unknown member of the four-man team of specter-fighters who for my money is the heart and soul of the film.
The movie was a surprise summertime smash at the box office… and oddly enough on the pop charts, too.
Detroit native Ray Parker Jr., recently of the band Raydio and still a relatively new commodity as a solo artist, was enlisted to take a crack at writing the movie’s theme song after others had either failed to turn it something deemed suitable or, in Lindsey Buckingham’s case, flat-out declined. (The man whose “Holiday Road” had been immortalized in National Lampoon’s Vacation did not want to be typecast as a movie soundtrack specialist.)
Parker was only given a few days to complete the assignment and found his inspiration in the low-budget local commercials on late-night TV. Once he locked in on the phrase, “Who ya gonna call?” he had just one other major hurdle – how to include the name of the film in the lyrics, a requirement specifically stated by the movie’s producers.
Rather than struggling to rhyme it, he opted to simply have it shouted as a punctuation to his lyrics over and over. The gambit worked, making the song essentially a four-minute commercial for the movie, but a catchy one.
Parker would later run into legal trouble over the tune when he was sued by Huey Lewis over similarities to “I Want A New Drug.” But whatever settlement was agreed upon, it doesn’t take away from the greatness of tune that went all the way to #1 on the pop charts and netted Parker an Oscar nomination.
Not bad for a song that includes the line, “Bustin’ makes me feel good.”
Ray Parker Jr. haunts the countdown at #26 with “Ghostbusters.”