Giorgio had to dub the song into the movie within 24 hours, so there was an urgency to getting in the studio. Q: Was this one of those sessions where you do 50 takes of the vocal?Ī: Much quicker than that. And if the movie flopped, no one would ever hear it. One of the things that movie songs gave me the freedom to do was to be whoever I wanted to be, because it wasn’t really a Kenny Loggins thing. ![]() I think you can hear it mostly with the way I say “danger zone” - that’s the way Tina would’ve pronounced it. Q: You write in your book that you were emulating Tina Turner when you recorded “Danger Zone.” What grabbed you about her singing?Ī: She had adopted a rock attitude that was so aggressive - the tone and where she was singing in her throat. By 2020 I couldn’t even hit the high note in “Danny’s Song.” As you get older, your vocal cords get drier. I had to relearn how to sing in a bel canto form that gets the sound off the vocal cords and up above it. I’ve been studying with a vocal coach for over a year to make sure I’m singing in a way that doesn’t tear my voice up. But I think the lawyers couldn’t come to terms on it, and that’s why it went up for grabs.Ī: I can hit them now. He just had that sort of white R&B/rock voice - and all the high notes in the world. I have a feeling that Mickey Thomas from Starship was probably the first choice. I was lucky that I could still hit those notes back then. Q: It’s well known at this point that a number of other singers were in line to do “Danger Zone” before you.Ī: Kevin told me he passed because the high notes were too high for his voice. Q: What’s that say about him from a musician’s perspective?Ī: That I was taking too long and spending too much money. We were all trying to create custom sounds, something unique, and he just plugged it in and made a s-load of hit records. This was one of the first super-popular synthesizers in pop music, and all the sounds he used were stock sounds that came with it. He was a really strong writer - a force in that era - but I didn’t know it until we got into “Top Gun.” In my world, Giorgio was well known only in that he used the Yamaha DX7 right out of the box. Kenny was in the studio recording Playing with the Boys when he got a call.Q: Were you up on Giorgio Moroder’s music before you did “Danger Zone” together?Ī: No. Kenny and Peter’s submission, Playing with the Boys, was accepted for Top Gun, and is the song you hear during the memorable beach volleyball scene. “I think we were the only ones who submitted a song for that scene.” And it kind of didn’t matter what scene you write for, as long as you get in it.” “I knew from my experience that just being a part of the soundtrack album was going to be pivotal. ![]() I nudged Peter and I said, ‘ Nobody’s gonna write for this. “I was writing at the time with Peter Wolfe, an Austrian producer. “And then about midway through the movie, comes the volleyball scene.” “So I’m sitting there seeing all this competition around me,” Kenny said. He arrived at a private studio to watch a preview of the film, and found himself surrounded by other big pop acts of the time, including Starship, Toto, and REO Speedwagon. Kenny was invited to a ‘cattle call’ where he – and others – tried to earn a spot on the film’s soundtrack.
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