The Unlikely Soundtrack Of Spider-Man (And My Childhood)

Looking back, I guess you could say I was obsessed with it.

(Yes, I know that many of my articles could start with that sentence…)

The first incarnation of Spider-Man on screen was an animated television series that lasted three seasons, from 1967-69.

I was too young to have caught its original run. But the reruns were on TV every day in the mid-70s, and I watched them religiously. The show is probably least regarded amongst all versions of the beloved web-spinning hero.

And most people would know it for one thing only: its snazzy theme song. 

Recently, I wrote a piece for tnocs.com that sang the praises of the soundtracks from the spy and crime dramas of the late 50s to the mid-70s:

I have a great love for the special blend of swanky jazz, surf-rock guitars and other trademark sounds of the day that can be heard on these themes and soundtracks.

Being that I have never watched a Bond film in its entirety, and have seen little of the genre in general: from where does my love of this music originate? 

Look no further than your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

That riveting theme song was the first thing to grab me. But I became equally captivated by the music playing in the background as Spidey would spin his webs and fight baddies, and J. Jonah Jameson would rant about how he was a menace to society.

After I wrote my last article, in a seemingly unrelated development, I started thinking about the music from that old, beloved cartoon. I found a YouTube post that featured a huge amount of it, all spliced together. Whoever did that is a hero:

It made sense now. 

It all started with Spider-Man.

This got me thinking about just how deep it went. I was in the habit of recording all sorts of things with a portable cassette recorder in my youth.

And one day I recorded my little sister Elise and I singing the theme song, with one of us on the melody and the other singing an improvised chromatic descending line as an “ooh” backing vocal. 

I also began recording the audio from episodes of the show. When I would listen back, I started keying in on the music playing in the background and learned how to play some of it on the piano. 

My father remarried when I was in junior high, and his wife, whom everyone called Muzzy, had a small house organ at their condo.

I played it pretty much every time I was there. I eventually started working out the soundtrack music on that as well, using all the various sounds and percussion to replicate what I was hearing as close as possible. 

They both liked what I was playing and when they asked me what it was, they were a little befuddled to hear it was incidental music from a Spider-Man cartoon.

One would assume I would have outgrown this childhood love of mine at some point.

But being the wonderful nerd I was, I never did. 

I remember singing the entire theme song by memory in my freshman year of high school, while crammed into a hallway waiting for the bus with some fellow students. 

This revealed that I had always misheard the line “Can he swing, on a thread” as “Can he swing, drama thread.”

Someone in that group corrected me and said: “It’s not drama thread.  What kid would even know what that means?” 

I could have told them exactly what kid. The same one that was laughed at for climbing the chain link fence around the school’s tennis courts saying, “uh oh, spider-sense is tingling.”. The guys that saw me do it started calling me “Spidey” in the hallways, one of about a dozen nicknames I was to acquire in high school, and by far not the most problematic.

Flash forward back to the present day: 

In my sudden nostalgia for all things Spider-Man, I decided I needed to find that recording of my sister and I singing the song.

I borrowed an old tape recorder/player from a guy at church who I knew would still have such a thing, and pulled some boxes filled with audio cassettes off the shelf. 

I found a cassette labeled “Magneto,” which was a Spider-Man episode I had recorded. But it wouldn’t play. 

I found another tape with no specific description that I was able to listen to just once before it stopped working. 

For a brief moment, I had the surreal experience of having a slice of my childhood come alive right before me.

Including such things as-

• My sister Elise and I being unintelligibly goofy.

• My mother randomly blurting out “Cuz I’m a wild and crazy guy!”, in an attempt to mimic Steve Martin.

• My brother Greg as an on-air deejay, announcing songs and giving a news report. I made many recordings of him. Hearing him on the radio was magical.

• Me in turn, pretending to be a deejay both covering and performing a “live piano concert” on the “radio.”

• At one point, my pre-pubescent Mickey Mouse voice says, “we’ll be back after these messages” and I begin playing a Bubblicious commercial (the one that’s ripped off of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”), singing along in a shockingly high-pitched, squeaky vocal. 

• I then launch into a heartfelt version of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy”, singing an octave higher than Barry. It gets ugly after the key change.

• Me calling in to a sports talk show on the radio as a 12 year old, asking the host why the Bulls weren’t playing their rookies more (Steve Sheppard, Mark Landsberger, and Tate Armstrong) and saying how much I missed back-up forward Jack Marin.

Sadly, the recording of Elise and I singing the Spider-Man theme was nowhere to be found. I will keep looking.

But even if I never find it, that song will always be with me. It was routinely part of my live set in the 00s, albeit a swing/bossa nova version, and I could still sing it from memory today, word for word, at the drop of a hat. 

“…life’s just a great big bang up. Wherever there’s a hang up, you’ll find the Spider-Man”

So true. So true.

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