Jabba the Hutt’s favourite disco song | Little White Lies

Jab­ba the Hutt’s favourite dis­co song

15 Dec 2016

Words by Cian Traynor

Black and white illustration showing a crowded interior space with a stage and various cartoon-like characters.
Black and white illustration showing a crowded interior space with a stage and various cartoon-like characters.
The untold sto­ry of the con­tro­ver­sial Star Wars floor-filler by the peo­ple who wrote it.

In 1983, John Williams and George Lucas dreamed up an inter­galac­tic dis­co jam to score a key sequence in Return of the Jedi. It takes place in Jab­ba the Hutt’s throne room – a nefar­i­ous den of oth­er­world­ly mis­fits – moments before a dis­guised Princess Leia shows up to res­cue Han Solo. To set the tone, a group of jizz-wail­ers’ (an offi­cial term from the Stars Wars Ency­clo­pe­dia’) known as the Max Rebo Band per­form a song called Lap­ti Nek’ for Jabba’s amuse­ment. It’s grit­ty, sleazy and shares a horn blast with Rick James’ funk clas­sic Give It to Me Baby’ – exact­ly the kind of sound you’d expect a slug-like crime boss to be into.

To help write the song, Williams called on his 22-year-old son Joseph – who would lat­er become the front­man of rock band Toto, best known for 80s hits Africa’, Hold the Line’ and Rosan­na’. It was basi­cal­ly my father throw­ing me a bone,” says Williams. George asked him for two sound cues [‘Lap­ti Nek’ and Ewok Cel­e­bra­tion’] so my dad thought that if I wrote the lyrics in Eng­lish, then record­ed them at Lucas­film, it would be a fun way to spend time together.”

Lit­tle did Williams know, the song would take on a life of its own. Once his lyrics were trans­lat­ed into the fic­tion­al lan­guage of Huttese by sound engi­neer Annie Arbo­gast, sev­er­al ver­sions of Lap­ti Nek’ were record­ed in the hope of turn­ing it into an unlike­ly hit. These include a 12-inch club mix and a cov­er by Meco, the Amer­i­can pro­duc­er whose dis­co ver­sions of Star Wars themes sold mil­lions world­wide. Williams even record­ed a more con­tem­po­rary ver­sion as Urth to cap­i­talise on the film’s suc­cess, team­ing up with then-broth­er-in-law Jay Grus­ka, who co-wrote Tell Me I’m Not Dreamin’ for Jer­maine and Michael Jack­son. Com­mer­cial suc­cess nev­er mate­ri­alised and, when George Lucas revised the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy in 1997, he replaced Lap­ti Nek’ with a more straight­for­ward R&B num­ber called Jedi Rocks’ by Jer­ry Hey.

The Max Rebo Band were trans­formed from a trio of pup­pets into an ensem­ble cast using CGI ani­ma­tion. Lucas felt this was clos­er to the big musi­cal num­ber” he had orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned for the film, claim­ing it added atmos­phere. Fans dis­agreed. Of all the objec­tions to the re-releas­es, turn­ing that scene into an in-your-face, car­toon­ish inter­lude may be the sor­est grievance.

Ever since, fans have found their own ways to keep the orig­i­nal song alive. There are hun­dreds of live per­for­mances, remix­es and trib­utes online, includ­ing a sing-along ver­sion (where you fol­low a bounc­ing Death Star) as well as an Elvis-style cov­er by Darth Elvis & The Impe­ri­als. The sig­nif­i­cance of the Max Rebo Band has even been fleshed out in short sto­ries and comics cov­er­ing the expand­ed Star Wars universe.

Yet try­ing to piece togeth­er the sto­ry of Lap­ti Nek’ is sur­pris­ing­ly tricky. For all the metic­u­lous scruti­ny of the Star Wars canon, there are still plen­ty of gaps, con­tra­dic­tions and untruths when it comes to Jab­ba the Hutt’s favourite dis­co song. Williams has nev­er spo­ken about it in inter­views, main­ly because nobody ever asked, but he’s hap­py to clear things up. With Toto, we do a VIP expe­ri­ence where 50 fans come in for a sound­check and ask ques­tions after­wards. Once in a blue moon, some­one will ask me about Lap­ti Nek’ or men­tion how pop­u­lar it was in some region you wouldn’t expect. It’s a strange thing, that song.”

Lap­ti Nek’ was intend­ed as an homage to the can­ti­na theme in the first film, where the music had a 40s feel, so the idea was to jump for­ward in style – and it was George Lucas who want­ed a dis­co vibe. Peo­ple may not remem­ber, Williams says, but that can­ti­na theme proved an unex­pect­ed suc­cess, gar­ner­ing air­play just in its orig­i­nal form. That’s why there were all kinds of attempts to turn pieces from Return of the Jedi into some­thing radio-worthy.

Ulti­mate­ly I think replac­ing [‘Lap­ti Nek’] did not help the film,” he says. I know my father thought the whole idea was charm­ing and, at the time, it worked. It was goofy but it had its place. Evi­dent­ly when George re-did the visu­al stuff, he just con­sid­ered updat­ing the sounds to some­thing else. And since it’s his baby, he’s enti­tled to do that. There was always a bat­tle against the fans who nev­er liked the orig­i­nal song,” says Nick Red­man, a con­sul­tant for Fox Music who has worked on var­i­ous Star Wars sound­tracks. Return of the Jedi ini­tial­ly drew a back­lash for appeal­ing to younger audi­ences, he explains, and the Lap­ti Nek’ sequence played a part in that.

When Red­man began pro­duc­ing a Star Wars sound­track anthol­o­gy in 1993, there was enough antipa­thy sur­round­ing the track that it was rel­e­gat­ed to a bonus disc. By 1996, when plans were being made for the Spe­cial Edi­tion sound­tracks, that crit­i­cism felt ampli­fied. The inter­net was tak­ing off and that was prob­a­bly the first time where stu­dios were tak­ing notice of what peo­ple were writ­ing online – and tak­ing them far too seri­ous­ly, in my opin­ion.” Red­man can’t speak for Lucas, he adds, but the film­mak­er would have been aware of the song’s unpop­u­lar­i­ty and per­haps saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change things.

Twen­ty years on, how­ev­er, fans are still push­ing for Lap­ti Nek’ to be restored. Now that Dis­ney owns the fran­chise, Red­man can fore­see the untouched films being re-released. When mon­ey talks, things hap­pen,” he says. And I think we’re get­ting to that point now where the fans’ desire is great enough that we’ll final­ly see the orig­i­nals on Blu-ray.”

Many still con­sid­er the updat­ed edi­tions a betray­al”, Red­man adds, but while he agrees that a grimy dis­co song suits a far-off galaxy where every­thing feels worn out, it could just be a ques­tion of favour­ing what you know.

If you first saw Return of the Jedi when you were sev­en or eight, and you loved it, then you’re going to love all of it, warts and all. Whether Lap­ti Nek’ is a great piece of music or not is irrel­e­vant. It’s part of the land­scape. So when some­one takes it away, you miss it. The debate whether George Lucas should have made any changes to the first tril­o­gy rages on and will prob­a­bly con­tin­ue for the next 20 years.”

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