St. Elmos Fire (Man in Motion)

David Foster and John Parr wrote this song specifically for the movie St. Elmo's Fire, but the song itself is about a Canadian athlete named Rick Hansen, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a car crash when he was 15. On March 21, 1985 Hansen began his "Man In Motion" tour, traveling about 70 miles a day to raise money for spinal cord research. At first, Hansen had trouble getting media attention and donations, but when this song was released with the movie in June, it became his anthem, and as the song rose up the charts, interest in Hansen's journey grew. By the time the "Man In Motion" tour was completed on May 22, 1987, Hansen had put over 40,000 Kilometers (24,856 miles) on his wheelchair in 34 countries on four continents, raising $26 million. He became a national hero in Canada, where he is closely associated with this song. Foster, like Hansen, is from the Canadian Province of British Columbia. He is a very successful songwriter and producer who also wrote "Glory Of Love" for Peter Cetera and After The Love Has Gone for Earth, Wind & Fire. Parr is a British singer-songwriter who had a hit with "Naughty Naughty" in 1984 that got the attention of Foster, who asked him to work on the St. Elmo's Fire theme.

John Parr told us how this song came together: "I wrote the lyric when we were working on the movie. David showed me a video of Rick Hansen and I was inspired to write the story of his planned epic journey to circumnavigate the globe in his wheel chair. I wrote the lyric ambiguously, so the film company would think "all I needs these pair of wheels" referred to Demi Moore's jeep when actually I am referring to Rick's wheelchair, or "for once in his life a man has his time" actually refers to when Rick would end his journey wheeling back into Vancouver with a million people lining the streets - not when Emilio Estevez finally kisses Andie Macdowell."

In the movie, St. Elmo's Fire is the name of a bar. A group of young actors known as "The Brat Pack" starred in the film: Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy. The phrase "St. Elmo's Fire" refers to the spectral light sometimes seen around a ship's mast.