The thing you need to know about Road House: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is that it’s not what you think, or perhaps even hope, it is. It’s not a wall-to-wall collection of all of the Jeff Healey Band’s performances from the film. Four of their songs make the cut, but one (“I’m Tore Down”) is only minimally memorable from the movie, and several of the big showstoppers (“Travellin’ Band,” “White Room,” “Knock on Wood (feat. Kathleen Wilhoite)” are nowhere to be found. There’s no snippets of the High Hollywood action-movie score by Michael Kamen, the late great film composer who counted the original Die Hard trilogy and Metallica’s orchestral album S&M among his achievements. “These Arms of Mine” by Otis Redding? That’s in there, thankfully. Alabama’s “(There’s A) Fire in the Night”? No joy.
What you get is a mixture. There’s those four Jeff Healey tracks, including “Roadhouse Blues” and “Hoochie-Coochie Man” from the Denise striptease and Bob Dylan’s self-plagiaristic “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky.” Otis is on there. Most of the songs are covers—Dylan, the Doors, Willie Dixon, Willie Nile, Maria McKee by way of Feargal Sharkey, Fats Domino. There are at least four songs on here, including two performed (and one co-written) by Patrick Swayze himself, that I don’t think are in the actual movie at all.
You could complain about that, were you so inclined. Me, I’m happy to hear Patrick Swayze’s surprisingly high breathy singing voice over massive ’80s production tricks (giant drums, “ay-oh ay-oh” backing vocals, little glittery synth fills). And anyone who played Prince’s Batman album and Madonna’s Dick Tracy tie-in I’m Breathless as often as I did in middle school knows this much is true:
Tags: music, patrick swayze, road house, the jeff healey band