The 8 songs Steven Spielberg couldn’t live without
Earlier this week, esteemed filmmaker Steven Spielberg joined Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4 for his entry to the longstanding Desert Island Discs feature. The 76-year-old director has worked his socks off over the past half-century, delivering beloved classics like Jaws, E.T., Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Jurassic Park. These movies are just the very tip of an iceberg oeuvre that places Spielberg in a state of cinematic divinity.
Spielberg knew he wanted to create films from a very young age. Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, he began making simple films, and in 1958 he made a short western which won him a Boy Scout merit badge. The scout troop screening was met with laughter and applause and had Spielberg instantly hooked.
Six decades on, the American director has earned three Academy Awards, from eight nominations in total for Best Director Oscars. The Fabelmans, his latest film released in November, came as a semi-fictionalised account of his childhood story and subsequent rise to fame and fortune.
While shooting the movie, Spielberg had his childhood home reconstructed. “When I first saw my house being rebuilt, my childhood home being rebuilt on a sound stage, my first thought was, ‘Is this going to be the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever asked people to accompany me through? Is this $40 million of therapy?'” Spielberg told Laverne. “I didn’t know really what I was doing, except I was answering a need. I had been recently orphaned by the loss of both parents [and I wanted] to recapture some of those memories in some way that wouldn’t seem too indulgent to actors I really respected, like Michelle Williams and Paul Dano and Judd Hirsch. So it was a tightrope for a while.”
As the interview progressed, Spielberg picked out some of his favourite songs of all time and explained their impact. For his first choice, he chose ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, Gene Pitney’s 1962 song that shares its name with the John Wayne movie of the same year, which was unfortunately committed from the final cut’s soundtrack.
Introducing his second desert island disc, Spielberg picked out Bach’s Little Fugue in G minor as recreated by Leopold Stokowski. “[This] is the song that identified my father to all of us,” he said, introducing the track. “Because every time he came home from work, and he pulled the car into the driveway, he’d get out of the car and walk around to the front of the house whistling this.”
“He’d whistle it from the car, he’d open the front door – it would get louder and louder,” he continued. “We knew it was him, we knew it was home, we knew it was supper time, and he’d walk into the house. And as he hung up his hat and his coat on the coat rack right in front of the front door, he would continue whistling it, and he would only stop whistling it when we started talking to him, ‘Hey, Dad!’ and he’d stop whistling, ‘How was school?… Yadda yadda…’ So it’s the piece of music I most identify with my father.”
Elsewhere the director showed his love for rock ‘n’ roll with selections by Bruce Springsteen and The Beatles.
Selecting ‘Michelle’ from The Beatles’ 1965 album, Rubber Soul, Spielberg revealed that the Paul McCartney composition holds a special place in his memory. “I was a freshman in college, and there was a girl I liked a lot,” he recalled. “She would agree to let me take her out to dinner, or to a jazz club, or out to a movie, but she would never ever, ever let me kiss her. And we were driving back from someplace, and we pulled into the big parking lot by the dorms on the college campus at Long Beach.”
“‘Michelle’ came on. I think we heard it for the first time together on the radio, and the melody is just heart-achingly beautiful,” he added. “I look over at her, and she’s got tears in her eyes, and just before the song is over, she jumps over on my side of the car and starts kissing me. And when I got to know Paul [McCartney] a number of years ago, that was one of the first stories I ever told him!”
Immerse yourself in Steven Spielberg’s diverse taste in music with the playlist below.
Steven Spielberg’s favourite songs:
- ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ – Gene Pitney
- Fugue in G minor, BMW 578 – ‘The Little’ arranged by Leopold Stokowski, composed by J.S Bach, performed by Philadelphia Orchestra and conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin
- ‘Michelle’ – The Beatles
- ‘What the World Needs Now Is Love’ – Jackie DeShannon
- ‘Come Fly with Me’ – Frank Sinatra
- ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ – Bruce Springsteen
- ‘Somewhere’ – composed by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, performed by Reri Grist
- ‘Coolhand’ – Buzzy Lee
Stream the playlist below.
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