June
2
'Harold & Maude' Soundtrack Becomes An Instant Collector's Item
Soundtracks to 37-year-old movies on LP are generally relegated to the dollar bins if not a box in the attic. The soundtrack to “Harold & Maude,” though, has been available for only a few months, and in that time become one of the hottest collector’s items currently in Internet auction sites.
Cameron Crowe, an aficionado of Hal Ashby’s film and the Cat Stevens songs that form its soundtrack, issued a vinyl-only soundtrack in December through his Vinyl Films imprint, quickly selling out the limited edition run of 2,500 through the Internet and mail order. At the end of May, copies could be found for between $100 and $150.
“It’s all about celebrating the film’s legacy quietly — just kind of luxuriating in a tribute to Hal Ashby,” Crowe says of the labor of love that took two years to assemble. “It’s a bouquet for fans of the movie, which was a pure, simple statement about love.”
As much as he is a fan of the film and the music, Crowe was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm the post-college generation has shown for the material. Visceral evidence was supplied at an Eddie Vedder concert as the Pearl Jam front man performed “Trouble” and “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” a track that was never released until Universal issued a box set seven years ago. Rather than react mystified, Crowe says, there were fans who started requesting “Don’t Be Shy,” the other “H&M” rarity.
Vedder’s appreciation of the film dates back to his youth and he made his own cassette of the soundtrack when he was young, Crowe reports. (Vedder and Crowe worked together when Vinyl Films issued the vinyl version of Vedder’s soundtrack to “Into the Wild”).
It’s rather logical why no soundtrack existed when the film came out. When “Harold & Maude” opened less than a week before Christmas Day in 1971, Cat Stevens had a top 10 single in “Peace Train,” the first hit from his third A&M album, “Teaser and the Firecat.” His star was ascending.
Seven months earlier Stevens’ “Wild World” helped push his 1970 release, “Tea for the Tillerman,” into the top 10 and generated a pinch of interest in his debut for the label “Mona Bone Jakon.” For A&M, there was no reason to release nor license the songs for a soundtrack to “Harold & Maude,” which contained only two new tracks in addition to songs from “Tillerman” and “Mona Bone.” It would have been Cat clutter.
Yusuf Islam, the name Stevens took 31 years ago when he converted to Islam, wrote for Crowe’s blog, “What was interesting was, I’d done that project, I’d kind of put it behind me. Over the years it’s just taken on so much importance. … Other things disappear or assume smaller proportions. ‘Harold and Maude’ just gets better and means more and more. It’s the rarest thing. A film that gets better with age.”
Contacting Isalm was Crowe’s first gambit on the project and the singer’s brother proved instrumental in bringing together alternate takes and other goodies for the album. The result is a gatefold album that contains a colored vinyl LP, a piece of celluloid from the film, a 45 of the single “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” b/w “Don’t Be Shy,” a poster and a booklet.
“You’ve really got to tip your hat to Ashby. The guy knew how to use music. Look at ‘Coming Home’ – a crazy list of songs by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Dylan (as well as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens and Simon & Garfunkel) and for some reason it doesn’t come off like a K-Tel sampler.”
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Harold and Maude is my favorite film of all time. To have the soundtrack to it would be so sprcial. Thanks to Cameron Crowe for doing this.
Posted by: Diann Anderson | June 20, 2008 at 06:19 AM
Cameron Crowe please rerelease this. So many people miss out on this because we where unaware, despite that we are all great fans of Harold and Maude and or Cat Stevens.
Somehow, a few greedy animals bought allot of these copies only to profit by selling them on ebay and the like, at 4 to 5 times what they originally sold for. How'd this happen??
Please rerelease this, Or Make some slight changes so that the ones who got ripped off don't feel cheated. ~~~~~~~~Please Do A Rerelease~~~~~~~~~~
Posted by: Paulette | February 21, 2009 at 05:22 AM