What was involved in creating the Broadway musical Footloose?
The movie Footloose came out 14 years before the show, so we had to take the hit songs, like “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” and make them more theatrical and still retain the qualities that made them hits. We also had to add new material that would fit. We rewrote six songs from the film, two of which were mine. Dean Pitchford [coauthor of the show] rewrote the lyrics. We changed things around and expanded the little-known song “Somebody’s Eyes,” to make it a major piece in the musical. We also wrote nine new songs. We began working on the show in 1994, and it opened October 22, 1998. It must be a herculean feat to get a show up on Broadway. It is very hard, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Writing for Broadway is a very rarefied field; not many people are doing it. You have to really love the idea of your show and be willing to go down in flames for it because chances are, you will go down in flames. It takes about five years of your life to see the show go from the germ of an idea to
