What is the story behind the Buckaroo Banzai Bootleg?
The Quest for the Official Buckaroo
Banzai Soundtrack
By Sean Murphy
This article was originally published in the October, 2016 issue of the World Watch One Newsletter. For the latest information about an official release of the soundtrack, check out What is the latest news on an official Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack release?
When my friend Elyse discovered that I’d never seen Buckaroo Banzai, she proceeded to drag me to a midnight showing on the big screen, telling me that the film would be totally up my alley. The year was 1996.
I was completely blown away by what I saw and I wanted to learn as much as I could about the movie. I left the theater humming the music that played over the team march. The first thing I needed was to get my hands on the official soundtrack so I could listen to that theme music again.
Imagine my shock and disappointment when I discovered that no official soundtrack existed. The reason why was discussed by the film’s director, W. D. “Rick” Richter, in an interview found in the December, 1984 issue of Starlog magazine. He revealed that “Several record labels wanted (the soundtrack), but the powers that be kept upping the ante...Then, it simply became too late. We lost a major source of publicity.”
I was pretty bummed out to discover that there should have been an official release but studio politics/ego/whatever got in the way.
My quest to find out more information about Buckaroo Banzai continued and led me to ask more and more questions, such as “Where can I find the novelization?” and “What is the watermelon doing there?” I eventually compiled the information I found and put up the Buckaroo Banzai FAQ on the web in 1996. I hoped that others could share in what I’d discovered and add their information as well. But...
The one unanswered question, the one uncompleted quest that nags me twenty years later is this: Will we ever see an official release of the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack by composer Michael Boddicker?
“Wait just a minute,” I hear you say. “I’ve seen the soundtrack available for download on the internet!”
Yes, you have. That soundtrack download is a bootleg.
The Bootleg Soundtrack
The sound quality of the bootleg is not great and the release raises many questions. Are the track names correct? Are there more unreleased tracks in the vaults? Wouldn’t some official liner notes be awesome?
The Gold Edition version of the soundtrack bootleg appears to be the audio source for at least four other subsequent CD bootlegs as well as the digital downloads found on the internet. The history of the bootleg, however, is muddled.
According to a now defunct website with information about the various bootleg releases, one rumor says that some of the film’s crew were responsible for making copies of the soundtrack:
“This information was sent by an anonymous source claiming to be on the sound crew of Buckaroo Banzai. According to this source, several members of the sound crew received soundtrack reels as a bonus for working on the film. Word passed down to them was that there was a possibility that no soundtrack would be released officially by those owning the rights. So, one night these sound editors got together and ran the reels onto audio cassette. This was the closest thing there was going to be to an “official” release of the title. Later on, a few of them got together again. One of them had connections to a small recording studio. With the cassette copy of the soundtrack and some of the archived sound effects, they spent a few days making this copy of the soundtrack. About 100 copies were pressed by this group on an 'in-house cd recorder.”
While this rumor sounds plausible, there is no way to verify the anonymous source.
I received an email in 1999 that discussed how the Gold Edition bootleg may have gotten out into the wild. The author of the email said they acquired this information firsthand from the owner of a company called SuperCollector while visiting the store. The email claimed that SuperCollector themselves made the Gold Edition. They discontinued distributing the bootleg after Boddicker visited the store and asked them to stop. The owner of SuperCollector is said to have offered Boddicker $10,000 for permission to put out the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack officially but Boddicker declined, saying that it was worth $30,000 to him. There is no way to verify this rumor now that the company is out of business.
Ironically, some of the music found on the Gold Edition bootleg isn’t even from the film. As reported on the Perseverance Records FAQ, “According to Michael Boddicker himself, the first bootleg, the Gold Edition, actually contains two demos he did for a Honda commercial, music that wasn’t in the movie at all!” I wish he’d said which two tracks.
“Hold on, what does Perseverance Records have to do with the soundtrack?” you ask. An excellent question.
Airstrip One
I reached out to owner Robin Esterhammer, who agreed to talk about his efforts to get an official soundtrack released. He also put me in touch with Chris Landry, who first attempted to release the soundtrack on his now defunct record label AirStrip One.
According to Chris, “In the late 1990s I started my own mini- label, Airstrip One. After my first release, Nineteen Eighty-Four, I was looking for something to follow it up with and a lot of people suggested Buckaroo Banzai. As with my other releases, I wanted to involve the composer as much as possible, rather than just use whatever the studio had. I forget who connected us, but I got a meeting with Michael Boddicker in the autumn of 1999. He was very pleasant and seemed very interested to see the music released.”
Chris continued, “Michael was in the process of moving his office/studio in the Valley, so our initial enthusiastic meeting led to a series of less and less frequent phone calls until finally, after a lack of headway, I decided to pursue other projects. I understand that when Robin [Esterhammer] approached Michael for Perseverance almost a decade later, he was still moving, so maybe it was just an excuse; I’m not sure.”
I discovered in my own discussions with Boddicker that his studio location fell victim to Eminent Domain, the law by which the government can appropriate private property. He was subsequently forced to pack up and move his entire studio. This has been a long, drawn out process and some of his equipment is tied up in storage. This may have been what he was talking about to Robin and Chris when he discussed moving his studio.
Perseverance Records
Robin picks up the story from his conversation with Boddicker in April, 2007, “When I contacted MB initially, he was very enthusiastic and all gung-ho about working with me on the soundtrack. Releasing the score actually seemed like a reality.
He had been looking for a label to release the music on, but for whatever reason, couldn't find one that he was happy with.”
Unfortunately the outcome was similar to Airstrip One. “I didn't get very far [in the process]. Michael wanted a sample licensing agreement, which I gave him. We had a couple of meetings but every subsequent attempt from my side to set up a follow -up was shot down by MB.”
Obviously the best source of information about the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack would be from Boddicker himself. I’ve touched base with him on and off for over 15 years. The pattern described by Robin and Chris, of repeated attempts to have discussions with Boddicker that eventually diminish over time, has been my experience as well.
Michael Boddicker
My first contact with Boddicker was in 2002, the year the Buckaroo Banzai Special Edition DVD was released. My hope was that the DVD release signaled a chance that the official soundtrack might finally be released too. Since “Hope is not a strategy,” I reached out to Boddicker and put him back in touch with Rick Richter, who had worked closely with MGM on the DVD. I wondered if the same issues that were resolved when MGM acquired the film’s rights also applied to the soundtrack.
While I had Boddicker on the phone, I asked him if the original music from the film still existed. The answer was “yes” and, coincidentally, he had just transferred the original music from the 24 track master tapes, which he owns, to a digital format on his computer. He said that everything sounded great. I was very happy to know that he had the music safely preserved.
My understanding at the time was that although Boddicker owns the rights to the actual tapes, he does not own the rights to the music. Since Begelman made such a mess of all the legal issues around Buckaroo Banzai, no one is sure who does or does not own the rights to the music and the rights to release it. This makes releasing an official version of the soundtrack very difficult. If Boddicker releases the soundtrack and someone else comes forth with a signed contract saying that they own the rights to release the music, he could be sued.
However, Robin and Chris had a different understanding from Boddicker. According to Robin, “When I mentioned to him that Columbia or Sony owned the rights he just dismissed it and said that he owned them. Apparently, he was not concerned at all about any rights issues.” Chris concurred, saying “Studio licensing never came up in our conversations, but as Robin mentioned, Michael indicated that he was in possession of the master tapes and that he owned the rights to the recordings as well. It bears mentioning that according to Michael, in addition to the score for the film he also created a lot of the sound design for the film – spaceship noises, alien sound effects, and so on. The album we talked about proposed to include not only the complete score, but alternate and unused music and these sound effects as well.” So there are unreleased tracks in the vault after all! That answers one of the questions I had about the bootleg.
When I asked them if they thought the release of the soundtrack was a legal issue or more a matter of Boddicker’s whim, Robin said simply, “It is just his whim.” Chris said, “Buckaroo Banzai was, realistically, a commercial failure on its release more than 30 years ago. And regardless of the cult following that’s built up over the years, Michael has moved on to other things, so it’s just not a priority for him. It is a legal issue as well, in that no studio is going to assign one of its expensive legal staff to research the music rights issues for weeks or months on something they will make so little money. I ran into the same thing with Turner when I tried to license the rights for The Hunger. The rights for the film had been passed around to so many studios that even though Turner now owned the film as part of the UA catalog, they weren’t completely sure they owned the rights to the music and they couldn’t be bothered to devote any time or resources to finding out.”
Back in 2002 I mentioned to Boddicker that I’d seen copies of the Gold Edition bootleg for sale for $35, $50, and even $100 in the past. I thought the information about the high prices might help motivate MGM to think about releasing the soundtrack and making some money. I offered to send him a copy of the bootleg and, when he accepted, I burned a copy and sent it to him. I was happy to do this at the time but the bootleg pricing information came back to haunt me when I heard about the negotiations with Perseverance Records and AirStrip One.
Robin said, “We both agreed that we wanted a superior product to what had been released up to that point in the various bootleg incarnations. He told me we could charge $25.00 for a single CD, because he knew that the fans were willing to pay that much. I didn't quite agree with that, so maybe that's the reason why he stopped returning my calls and emails.”
Chris agreed. “I also remember Michael being quite certain that people would be lining up to pay $25.00 or more for the album, and that this is what he would be getting – no royalties or distribution or anything. He was quite sure this album would put his kids through college. Like Robin, I didn’t think things would work out as he envisioned, though we never got that far in the discussion for me to express that. Anyone in the collectors’ soundtrack market knows that you’re lucky to see any profit at all from a limited archival release of an older film, no matter how popular it is.”
I worry now that my attempts to help get a soundtrack release to happen might actually have contributed to the delay. An agonizing thought.
When it was time to work on the 20th Anniversary newsletter in 2004, I reached out to Boddicker to see if I could interview him about the soundtrack. Although he expressed an interest in doing the interview, the timing was never right for him to actually make it happen, even after multiple attempts on my part to find a good time to talk. I’d hoped that if I could interview him, I could share the information with Banzai fans and see how they could help to make a soundtrack release a reality.
The 25th anniversary newsletter rolled around in 2009 and I again reached out to Boddicker for an interview . I had thirty- three questions lined up under four topics: Creation of the Soundtrack, the Non-Release of the Music, Rumors, and How to get the Soundtrack Released. More back and forth coordinating emails occurred but there was never a good time to make the interview happen, and I reluctantly decided to let it go. Seven years is a long time to keep your fingers crossed for an interview .
I touched base with Boddicker and let him know about the Kevin Smith screening of Buckaroo Banzai in 2011. He paid me a complement by saying that he thought I should write the liner notes for an official soundtrack release should it ever happen. I was flattered and excited at the possibility. He stated that he’ll get to releasing the soundtrack someday, but that his life was busy at the moment.
As new internet distribution models sprouted up over the years, I would check in with Boddicker to see if any of them could help get the soundtrack released. I mentioned the idea of using Kickstarter to get an official soundtrack out there in 2013. He’d thought about that concept and appreciated the thought. I sent him information about Bandcamp.com in 2014 where he could distribute the music himself from the site and set the price.
The Buckaroo Banzai Blu-ray was released in August, 2016 and, to my surprise, Boddicker was interviewed in the new documentary. Unfortunately he didn’t say anything about the status of the soundtrack. I reached out again to see if there was any movement on a soundtrack. I did not get a response.
I asked Robin and Chris if they thought we’d ever get an official release of the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack. Robin said, “I don’t think a soundtrack is ever going to happen. Michael sits on the tapes, and as long as he doesn’t want to release it, there won’t be one. He had been approached by several other people and was always excited in the beginning, but that waned after a while, so the people always lost interest. My label’s name is Perseverance, but even I can’t be strung along forever.” Chris said, “Buckaroo Banzai is one of those film properties that has changed hands a number of times, so the rights issues are a bit convoluted. I wouldn’t say ‘never,’ but I think it’s unlikely we will see a legitimate release any time soon.”
Sadly, this leaves everyone patiently waiting for an official soundtrack at a standstill. I wish I had better news. I continue to be hopeful and yet I have to admit to being disappointed at the same time.
Then again, this wouldn’t be a quest if the end result was easy to obtain. I’ve kept my fingers crossed for an official release since 1996. I will continue to keep them crossed. Until then, check this out: What is the latest news on an official Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack release?
By Sean Murphy
This article was originally published in the October, 2016 issue of the World Watch One Newsletter. For the latest information about an official release of the soundtrack, check out What is the latest news on an official Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack release?
When my friend Elyse discovered that I’d never seen Buckaroo Banzai, she proceeded to drag me to a midnight showing on the big screen, telling me that the film would be totally up my alley. The year was 1996.
I was completely blown away by what I saw and I wanted to learn as much as I could about the movie. I left the theater humming the music that played over the team march. The first thing I needed was to get my hands on the official soundtrack so I could listen to that theme music again.
Imagine my shock and disappointment when I discovered that no official soundtrack existed. The reason why was discussed by the film’s director, W. D. “Rick” Richter, in an interview found in the December, 1984 issue of Starlog magazine. He revealed that “Several record labels wanted (the soundtrack), but the powers that be kept upping the ante...Then, it simply became too late. We lost a major source of publicity.”
I was pretty bummed out to discover that there should have been an official release but studio politics/ego/whatever got in the way.
My quest to find out more information about Buckaroo Banzai continued and led me to ask more and more questions, such as “Where can I find the novelization?” and “What is the watermelon doing there?” I eventually compiled the information I found and put up the Buckaroo Banzai FAQ on the web in 1996. I hoped that others could share in what I’d discovered and add their information as well. But...
The one unanswered question, the one uncompleted quest that nags me twenty years later is this: Will we ever see an official release of the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack by composer Michael Boddicker?
“Wait just a minute,” I hear you say. “I’ve seen the soundtrack available for download on the internet!”
Yes, you have. That soundtrack download is a bootleg.
The Bootleg Soundtrack
The sound quality of the bootleg is not great and the release raises many questions. Are the track names correct? Are there more unreleased tracks in the vaults? Wouldn’t some official liner notes be awesome?
The Gold Edition version of the soundtrack bootleg appears to be the audio source for at least four other subsequent CD bootlegs as well as the digital downloads found on the internet. The history of the bootleg, however, is muddled.
According to a now defunct website with information about the various bootleg releases, one rumor says that some of the film’s crew were responsible for making copies of the soundtrack:
“This information was sent by an anonymous source claiming to be on the sound crew of Buckaroo Banzai. According to this source, several members of the sound crew received soundtrack reels as a bonus for working on the film. Word passed down to them was that there was a possibility that no soundtrack would be released officially by those owning the rights. So, one night these sound editors got together and ran the reels onto audio cassette. This was the closest thing there was going to be to an “official” release of the title. Later on, a few of them got together again. One of them had connections to a small recording studio. With the cassette copy of the soundtrack and some of the archived sound effects, they spent a few days making this copy of the soundtrack. About 100 copies were pressed by this group on an 'in-house cd recorder.”
While this rumor sounds plausible, there is no way to verify the anonymous source.
I received an email in 1999 that discussed how the Gold Edition bootleg may have gotten out into the wild. The author of the email said they acquired this information firsthand from the owner of a company called SuperCollector while visiting the store. The email claimed that SuperCollector themselves made the Gold Edition. They discontinued distributing the bootleg after Boddicker visited the store and asked them to stop. The owner of SuperCollector is said to have offered Boddicker $10,000 for permission to put out the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack officially but Boddicker declined, saying that it was worth $30,000 to him. There is no way to verify this rumor now that the company is out of business.
Ironically, some of the music found on the Gold Edition bootleg isn’t even from the film. As reported on the Perseverance Records FAQ, “According to Michael Boddicker himself, the first bootleg, the Gold Edition, actually contains two demos he did for a Honda commercial, music that wasn’t in the movie at all!” I wish he’d said which two tracks.
“Hold on, what does Perseverance Records have to do with the soundtrack?” you ask. An excellent question.
Airstrip One
I reached out to owner Robin Esterhammer, who agreed to talk about his efforts to get an official soundtrack released. He also put me in touch with Chris Landry, who first attempted to release the soundtrack on his now defunct record label AirStrip One.
According to Chris, “In the late 1990s I started my own mini- label, Airstrip One. After my first release, Nineteen Eighty-Four, I was looking for something to follow it up with and a lot of people suggested Buckaroo Banzai. As with my other releases, I wanted to involve the composer as much as possible, rather than just use whatever the studio had. I forget who connected us, but I got a meeting with Michael Boddicker in the autumn of 1999. He was very pleasant and seemed very interested to see the music released.”
Chris continued, “Michael was in the process of moving his office/studio in the Valley, so our initial enthusiastic meeting led to a series of less and less frequent phone calls until finally, after a lack of headway, I decided to pursue other projects. I understand that when Robin [Esterhammer] approached Michael for Perseverance almost a decade later, he was still moving, so maybe it was just an excuse; I’m not sure.”
I discovered in my own discussions with Boddicker that his studio location fell victim to Eminent Domain, the law by which the government can appropriate private property. He was subsequently forced to pack up and move his entire studio. This has been a long, drawn out process and some of his equipment is tied up in storage. This may have been what he was talking about to Robin and Chris when he discussed moving his studio.
Perseverance Records
Robin picks up the story from his conversation with Boddicker in April, 2007, “When I contacted MB initially, he was very enthusiastic and all gung-ho about working with me on the soundtrack. Releasing the score actually seemed like a reality.
He had been looking for a label to release the music on, but for whatever reason, couldn't find one that he was happy with.”
Unfortunately the outcome was similar to Airstrip One. “I didn't get very far [in the process]. Michael wanted a sample licensing agreement, which I gave him. We had a couple of meetings but every subsequent attempt from my side to set up a follow -up was shot down by MB.”
Obviously the best source of information about the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack would be from Boddicker himself. I’ve touched base with him on and off for over 15 years. The pattern described by Robin and Chris, of repeated attempts to have discussions with Boddicker that eventually diminish over time, has been my experience as well.
Michael Boddicker
My first contact with Boddicker was in 2002, the year the Buckaroo Banzai Special Edition DVD was released. My hope was that the DVD release signaled a chance that the official soundtrack might finally be released too. Since “Hope is not a strategy,” I reached out to Boddicker and put him back in touch with Rick Richter, who had worked closely with MGM on the DVD. I wondered if the same issues that were resolved when MGM acquired the film’s rights also applied to the soundtrack.
While I had Boddicker on the phone, I asked him if the original music from the film still existed. The answer was “yes” and, coincidentally, he had just transferred the original music from the 24 track master tapes, which he owns, to a digital format on his computer. He said that everything sounded great. I was very happy to know that he had the music safely preserved.
My understanding at the time was that although Boddicker owns the rights to the actual tapes, he does not own the rights to the music. Since Begelman made such a mess of all the legal issues around Buckaroo Banzai, no one is sure who does or does not own the rights to the music and the rights to release it. This makes releasing an official version of the soundtrack very difficult. If Boddicker releases the soundtrack and someone else comes forth with a signed contract saying that they own the rights to release the music, he could be sued.
However, Robin and Chris had a different understanding from Boddicker. According to Robin, “When I mentioned to him that Columbia or Sony owned the rights he just dismissed it and said that he owned them. Apparently, he was not concerned at all about any rights issues.” Chris concurred, saying “Studio licensing never came up in our conversations, but as Robin mentioned, Michael indicated that he was in possession of the master tapes and that he owned the rights to the recordings as well. It bears mentioning that according to Michael, in addition to the score for the film he also created a lot of the sound design for the film – spaceship noises, alien sound effects, and so on. The album we talked about proposed to include not only the complete score, but alternate and unused music and these sound effects as well.” So there are unreleased tracks in the vault after all! That answers one of the questions I had about the bootleg.
When I asked them if they thought the release of the soundtrack was a legal issue or more a matter of Boddicker’s whim, Robin said simply, “It is just his whim.” Chris said, “Buckaroo Banzai was, realistically, a commercial failure on its release more than 30 years ago. And regardless of the cult following that’s built up over the years, Michael has moved on to other things, so it’s just not a priority for him. It is a legal issue as well, in that no studio is going to assign one of its expensive legal staff to research the music rights issues for weeks or months on something they will make so little money. I ran into the same thing with Turner when I tried to license the rights for The Hunger. The rights for the film had been passed around to so many studios that even though Turner now owned the film as part of the UA catalog, they weren’t completely sure they owned the rights to the music and they couldn’t be bothered to devote any time or resources to finding out.”
Back in 2002 I mentioned to Boddicker that I’d seen copies of the Gold Edition bootleg for sale for $35, $50, and even $100 in the past. I thought the information about the high prices might help motivate MGM to think about releasing the soundtrack and making some money. I offered to send him a copy of the bootleg and, when he accepted, I burned a copy and sent it to him. I was happy to do this at the time but the bootleg pricing information came back to haunt me when I heard about the negotiations with Perseverance Records and AirStrip One.
Robin said, “We both agreed that we wanted a superior product to what had been released up to that point in the various bootleg incarnations. He told me we could charge $25.00 for a single CD, because he knew that the fans were willing to pay that much. I didn't quite agree with that, so maybe that's the reason why he stopped returning my calls and emails.”
Chris agreed. “I also remember Michael being quite certain that people would be lining up to pay $25.00 or more for the album, and that this is what he would be getting – no royalties or distribution or anything. He was quite sure this album would put his kids through college. Like Robin, I didn’t think things would work out as he envisioned, though we never got that far in the discussion for me to express that. Anyone in the collectors’ soundtrack market knows that you’re lucky to see any profit at all from a limited archival release of an older film, no matter how popular it is.”
I worry now that my attempts to help get a soundtrack release to happen might actually have contributed to the delay. An agonizing thought.
When it was time to work on the 20th Anniversary newsletter in 2004, I reached out to Boddicker to see if I could interview him about the soundtrack. Although he expressed an interest in doing the interview, the timing was never right for him to actually make it happen, even after multiple attempts on my part to find a good time to talk. I’d hoped that if I could interview him, I could share the information with Banzai fans and see how they could help to make a soundtrack release a reality.
The 25th anniversary newsletter rolled around in 2009 and I again reached out to Boddicker for an interview . I had thirty- three questions lined up under four topics: Creation of the Soundtrack, the Non-Release of the Music, Rumors, and How to get the Soundtrack Released. More back and forth coordinating emails occurred but there was never a good time to make the interview happen, and I reluctantly decided to let it go. Seven years is a long time to keep your fingers crossed for an interview .
I touched base with Boddicker and let him know about the Kevin Smith screening of Buckaroo Banzai in 2011. He paid me a complement by saying that he thought I should write the liner notes for an official soundtrack release should it ever happen. I was flattered and excited at the possibility. He stated that he’ll get to releasing the soundtrack someday, but that his life was busy at the moment.
As new internet distribution models sprouted up over the years, I would check in with Boddicker to see if any of them could help get the soundtrack released. I mentioned the idea of using Kickstarter to get an official soundtrack out there in 2013. He’d thought about that concept and appreciated the thought. I sent him information about Bandcamp.com in 2014 where he could distribute the music himself from the site and set the price.
The Buckaroo Banzai Blu-ray was released in August, 2016 and, to my surprise, Boddicker was interviewed in the new documentary. Unfortunately he didn’t say anything about the status of the soundtrack. I reached out again to see if there was any movement on a soundtrack. I did not get a response.
I asked Robin and Chris if they thought we’d ever get an official release of the Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack. Robin said, “I don’t think a soundtrack is ever going to happen. Michael sits on the tapes, and as long as he doesn’t want to release it, there won’t be one. He had been approached by several other people and was always excited in the beginning, but that waned after a while, so the people always lost interest. My label’s name is Perseverance, but even I can’t be strung along forever.” Chris said, “Buckaroo Banzai is one of those film properties that has changed hands a number of times, so the rights issues are a bit convoluted. I wouldn’t say ‘never,’ but I think it’s unlikely we will see a legitimate release any time soon.”
Sadly, this leaves everyone patiently waiting for an official soundtrack at a standstill. I wish I had better news. I continue to be hopeful and yet I have to admit to being disappointed at the same time.
Then again, this wouldn’t be a quest if the end result was easy to obtain. I’ve kept my fingers crossed for an official release since 1996. I will continue to keep them crossed. Until then, check this out: What is the latest news on an official Buckaroo Banzai soundtrack release?
This page was last updated on May 10th, 2020.
Maintained by Sean Murphy [figment@figmentfly.com]