Love on a Real Train
"Love on a Real Train" is an instrumental composition by German electronic music band Tangerine Dream, released on the soundtrack for the 1983 film Risky Business. It was also released as a promotional single in France in 1984.
History
When Risky Business director Paul Brickman and producer John Avnet arrived in Berlin to hear Tangerine Dream's music for the film's soundtrack, they found that the finished work did not suit their creative vision. Band member Edgar Froese explained:"Love on a Real Train" is a "dreamy, wistfully descending nocturne" instrumental piece featuring "ornately repetitive synth patterns, hypnotic chimes, and percussive choogling drum machines." In the film, it first appears during a sex scene between Joel and Lana on a Chicago "L" train.
Critics have noted the influence of American minimalist composer Steve Reich on "Love on a Real Train," with The Cambridge Companion to Krautrock calling the piece a "clear homage" to Music for 18 Musicians. "We stumbled upon a minimal kind of thing, like Steve Reich or Philip Glass," group member Christopher Franke said in 1995. "It was a new way of drawing a romantic theme, which we still get credit for today." Reich considered the homage to be "an out and out ripoff," saying he should have received royalties for the whole soundtrack of Risky Business, adding, "I should have sued."