Music Replacement at Ridgemont High

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH holds dear to so many Americans as a portrait of high school in the 1980s in the US, not necessarily on a scholastic level, but on a social level. Following a group of students over a year of high school, piggybacking on the shoulders of films like Grease a few years before, FAST TIMES has endured its status as a cult classic on VHS and Cable TV. The television version added many scenes to the film which according to the film's screenwriter and director are now lost due to a purging of the Universal Studios vaults of all deleted scene material in the 1990s. In addition to this change, however, came a modification of the film soundtrack.

Popular music in film and TV shows can be costly. Those who work in the industry know that shows such as The Wonder Years, WKRP in Cincinatti or Happy Days on DVD or Netflix need these alterations or the cost to release a film on home video, TV, or streaming would be very expensive. In the 1980s, the same game was being played for VHS releasing. Universal Pictures rescored parts of films such as SIXTEEN CANDLES, WEIRD SCIENCE, and our example here: FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. In 1987 and 1990, the home video releases had made the following changes to the film, comparing runtimes to the 2004 DVD which reinstated all of the original music:

00:07:15-00:08:52: Tom Petty's "American Girl" has been replaced with generic music in the first scene that features Ridgemont High School.





00:25:47-00:26:40: The Christmas montage leading into Stacy and Linda discussing how Stacy's been dumped by Ron replaces Darlene Love's "Winter Wonderland" with a Christmas song my Shazam wouldn't recognize that starts "There was a bit of mistletoe, and a field of falling snow, on this little Christmas time......". If anyone knows it, please comment on what it is......







00:44:08-00:45:36: As Spicolli and Jefferson's brother are driving around recklessly, Sammy Hagar's "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" with generic rock music. Yes....infuriatingly, the title song to the film has been replaced with generic music. This replacement music with the dialogue is sampled at the beginning of the song "Dalyla" by the Phunk Junkeez, which can be heard here.






00:46:18-00:46:52: In the very next scene, as students are walking through the halls preparing for the Ridgemont vs. Lincoln game, Donna Summer's "Highway Runner" has been replaced with a generic rock music cue.





00:47:45-00:49:43: During the football game, "Fast Times (The Best Years Of Our Lives)" by Billy Squier has been removed and replaced with an unknown song.



00:50:07-00:50:33: As Stacy and Linda are sunbathing, the song "Don't Be Lonely" by Quarterflash, playing on the portable radio, has been replaced with a generic song, now with male vocals as opposed to the female vocals of the Quarterflash song.





00:51:06-00:53:09: When Mark and Damone come by uninvited and start horse-playing in the pool, followed by Brad coming in and telling them to keep it down, leading up to brad spying on Lynda, Don Felder's Never Surrender has been replaced with an unknown song that sounds similar to it.







01:27:03-01:27:44: After Stacy and Linda discuss how Stacy wants romance more than sex, when Stacy spots Mark across the way at the movie, the Timothy B. Schmidt remake of "So Much In Love" has been replaced with an unknown love song similar in theme.





01:30:49-01:36:48: The text epilogue of all the characters followed by the end credits replaces Oingo Boingo's "Goodbye, Goodbye" with a similar sounding unknown song.







There you have it, all the changes made to the initial 1987 and 1990 home video releases of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. The end credits for the home video have been altered to remove the songs that were taken out for home video, but the replacement songs are all uncredited. In addition, the titles are reformatted toward the end so that they finish when the song finishes. 1996 would mark a new home video release of the film that, according to IMDB, reinstated all of the original music except for Tom Petty, Timothy B. Schmidt, and Oingo Boingo. The film's soundtrack does make the picture, however, and having the original soundtrack reinstated for the DVD gives the viewer the full experience of the film that had been missing for many years. Interestingly enough, director Amy Heckerling didn't care for the original soundtrack of the film. In the DVD commentary, she is constantly criticizing it, saying that the country-rock songs of Jackson Browne, etc., were originally put in by studio execs, but she wanted more of a new wave and punk soundtrack, more representative of teens of that time but that the studio felt would alienate other viewers. Who knows, maybe Heckerling would have preferred the replacement VHS music?