Wednesday was “Back to the Future Day”, meaning it was the day Doc, Marty, Jennifer, and Einstein visited in 2015 in Back to the Future Part II. So, in other words, we’re further in the future now than they ever were in that movie. Let that sink in.
HitFix has a great piece with some behind-the-scenes info about the iconic use of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”.
“We didn’t have an alternative,” Gale said.
The 1958 Chuck Berry song was in every version of the script from the earliest draft. (Though the first draft also had Marty transitioning from “Johnny B. Goode” to “Rock Around the Clock.”)
Gale recalls there being a period of two or three weeks when they worried they wouldn’t get the rights to the song. But Howe came through, and the production paid somewhere between $50,000 and $75,000 for the rights, as Gale recalls. “However much it was, it was very expensive in 1985 to pay that much for a song,” he said.
It ended up being worth it. The scene was a hit with test audiences in the months preceding the release and remains a fan favorite moment 30 years later.”