Along with A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees is the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll horror icon. Having made his official debut in 1981′s Friday the 13th Part 2 (following a brief appearance in the original slasher classic), the Jason that fans would come to worship emerged the following year in his trademark hockey mask, eager to slice and dice his way through a glut of dumb and horny teens.
With the franchise gaining momentum almost simultaneously with MTV during the early 1980s, perhaps it was inevitable that the series would exploit the appeal of the alternative music scene, most famously with the release of Alice Cooper’s hit single He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask) in 1986.
Even as music tastes changed the slasher movie attempted to remain relevant to popular culture, with 2003′s crossover blockbuster Freddy vs. Jason featuring a host of nu metal artists. Thirty years on and Jason Voorhees remains as iconic as any rock star.
10. THE HIVES – Tick Tick Boom
A decade ago saw a revival of 1970s-style garage rock, with bands such as The White Stripes, The Strokes and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs receiving critical acclaim for their stripped-down sound. Among these groups were The Hives, who formed in Sweden in the mid-1990s but would not break into the mainstream until the release of their hit singles Hate to Say I Told You So and Main Offender. Originally released as a single in 2007 from their fourth record The Black and White Album, Tick Tick Boom was featured on the soundtrack to the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th, which came from the same production team as the reboots of both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror.
9. LION – Love is a Lie
To many the power ballad was responsible for the death of hair metal during the late 1980s. Horror movies would often be accompanied by rock bands, either releasing a single to promote the film or simply used in the background of a scene. For Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter the metal group included on the soundtrack were the long-forgotten Lion, whose music would also appear in the movie The Transformers: The Movie two years later. For Friday the 13th, their track Love is a Lie was used during a scene when Crispin Glover blasts the song from the stereo and then asks a girl to dance, claiming “It’s good!”
8. JUNKIE XL feat. INFUSION – Nightmares
When Dutch DJ and multi-instrumentalist Junkie XL (born Tom Holkenborg) first emerged in 1997 with his debut album Saturday Teenage Kick, he found himself collaborating with fellow Roadrunner Records artist Dino Cazares, best known as the guitarist for Fear Factory. Following his acclaimed reworking of the obscure Elvis Presley track A Little Less Conversation, Junkie XL returned with his third album in 2003. Radio JXL: A Broadcast From the Computer Hell Cabin saw him working alongside numerous singers, including The Cure‘s Robert Smith, former Republica singer Saffron and Depeche Mode‘s Dave Gahan. Nightmares, which featured vocals from Infusion, was featured on the soundtrack to Freddy vs. Jason, released the same year, and was used during the film’s standout moment, the cornfield rave.
7. ALICE COOPER – Teenage Frankenstein
Although 1983′s DaDa had seen Alice Cooper reuniting with producer and co-writer Bob Ezrin, who had helped define his sound during his early career, the album had failed to impress both fans and critics, prompting Cooper to take a much needed hiatus from the spotlight. Constrictor, released three years later, would see Cooper with a new backing group, consisting of guitarist Kane Roberts and bassist Kip Winger. Gone were the bloated concepts and experimentations, opting instead for simple metal anthems. The opening track from the album was Teenage Frankenstein, which would also be one of three songs that Cooper would contribute to the soundtrack of 1986′s Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.
6. HOT ICE – Theme From Friday the 13th Part 3
By 1982 the 3D revival was in full swing and many popular horror franchises, from Jaws to Amityville, were offering their own brand of three-dimensional horror. Friday the 13th Part 2 director Steve Miner opted to return once again, making him the only filmmaker to direct more than one Friday the 13th movie, and thanks to a revolutionary new kind of 3D that Paramount Pictures had been designing for an abandoned Star Trek movie, Jason Voorhees was brought to the big screen in a new and exciting way. While resident composer Harry Manfredini recycled much of his score for the first two movies, a mutual friend called Michael Zager was brought onboard to create a disco track for the opening credits. Working under the name Hot Ice, the resulting song became a modest club hit during the early 1980s and remains a favourite among Friday the 13th fans.
5. CHIMAIRA – Army of Me
With 2001′s Jason X having performed poorly at the box office, New Line Cinema finally moved their long-awaited project Freddy vs. Jason into production, which would see the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street antagonists facing off in a fight to the death. Directed by Ronny Yu, who had also resurrected the Child’s Play franchise in a similar postmodern fashion with 1998′s Bride of Chucky, the soundtrack featured an array of metal bands, including Spineshank, Machine Head, Ill Niño and Type O Negative. Cleveland, Ohio metallers Chimaira had enjoyed minor acclaim for their 2001 debut Pass out of Existence, but it would be their sophomore effort, The Impossibility of Reason, that would serve as their breakthrough. Their contribution to the soundtrack to Freddy vs. Jason was a new track entitled Army of Me.
4. ALICE COOPER – Hard Rock Summer
Having struggled to recover from the commercial slump that had dogged his career during the early 1980s, Alice Cooper had opted to distance himself from the punk and new wave sounds that he had experimented with and to instead embrace the brash rock anthems that had become a staple of the hair metal scene. Hard Rock Summer, which Cooper co-wrote with guitarist Kane Roberts, was produced by Michael Wagener during the same sessions as his comeback single He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask). Cooper described the track as an “upbeat, American rock ‘n’ roller that we did to offset the horror-laced stuff we were doing at the time.” For reasons unknown, the song was omitted from his 1986 album Constrictor, but was used by director Tom McLoughlin during a chase sequence in his sequel Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.
3. PETER FREDETTE – The Darkest Side of the Night
1989′s Jason Takes Manhattan was a last feeble attempt to resuscitate a dying franchise that had slowly but surely lost its target audience as slasher films went out of fashion. The final Friday the 13th movie to be released by Paramount for twenty years saw an increased budget, with the intention of Jason running riot in New York City, but a nervous studio instead insisted that the majority of the film be set on a cruise ship, with only the final act taking place in the Big Apple. The opening credits, which shows many of the lowlives that would resurface later in the movie, was to have originally been accompanied by a song from former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, from his 1988 album Now and Zen, but when the publishing company asked for an unexpected fee composer Fred Mollin wrote a sleazy metal track called The Darkest Side of the Night, which was intended to set the tone for what was to take place in New York, and recuited singer Peter Fredette to perform the vocals.
2. PSEUDO ECHO – His Eyes
To non-Friday the 13th fans, Australian new wave band Pseudo Echo were best known for their 1986 hit Funky Town, a cover of a popular disco tune from Lipps Inc. that had been released a few years earlier. But to Jason Voorhees fans the group’s signature moment was when their song His Eyes was used during a sequence in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. The scene in question saw teen punk Violet (Tiffany Helm) dancing to the track in her bedroom, before being pinned to the wall and stabbed in the stomach by a machete. “I was dancing to music from a band called Pseudo Echo, which was good, and I was hoping that I’d get to be seen dying next to a Sex Pistols poster, but there were some rights issues,” said Helm in the 2005 book Making Friday the 13th: The Legend of Camp Blood.
1. ALICE COOPER – He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
No song has encapsulated the spirit and themes of the Friday the 13th series more than He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask), Cooper’s lead single from the album Constrictor. Cooper was approached by Paramount Pictures with an invitation to record a track for their sixth Friday the 13th movie Jason Lives, in the hope of regaining the franchise’s former commercial glory following the disappointing reception that its predecessor had received. While the remainder of the album was produced by Beau Hill, whose prior work had included hair metallers Ratt, Cooper collaborated with producer Michael Wagener to record the track, first as a guitar-based rock song before re-recording it with synthesisers. It would be the latter that would score Cooper his first hit single in several years.
|
||||
3
comments