Story Behind the Song: 'Nadia's Theme'/ 'Theme From The Young and the Restless'

The subject of this "Story Behind The Song" is "Theme From the Young and the Restless."

Wait, scratch that. This installment's song is "Nadia's Theme." Or is it "Cotton's Dream?" Or is it Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama," recently performed at the Super Bowl halftime show?

Well, it's actually all of these. Whatever you call it, the instrumental composition is the most valuable copyright of songwriter Barry De Vorzon. He unraveled its twisting tale in a conversation with Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.

Bart Herbison: This thing has got a lot of tributaries, twisting turns and roads.

Barry De Vorzon: It does. My second motion picture was a movie called “Bless the Beasts and Children.” And I was new to it. I was feeling my way along, but Stanley Kramer was a great producer and director and I really wanted to make him happy. So I wrote this main title called “Bless the Beasts and Children.” I got The Carpenters into Stanley's office. They recorded it. It became a hit with The Carpenters and I was nominated for an Academy Award. I was thrilled.

BH: By the way, that should be its own episode. What a fantastic song, and we'll just take a snippet on that. I'm not sure anybody else could have done it justice but Karen.

BDV: Oh, she had such a beautiful voice. But anyway, so this picture was about a group of misfit kids in summer camp who decided they were going to save a herd of buffalo from these hunters. And they rode off into the night to do that. And in their attempt, the young leader was killed. So now I have this moment in the picture where this young boy has died, and the only thing I have to play against it is the melody I've woven through the picture, which is in a major key: “Bless the Beasts and Children.” Well, I painted myself into a corner. I said, “Oh my goodness, this is such an important scene, and I can't use the theme that I've woven through the picture.” So I thought about it for a while, and I said, “’Bless the Beasts and Children’ has a very recognizable motif in the accompaniment…what if I use that motif and just put it in a minor key?”

BH: What a genius, man.

BDV: All I would have to do is write a new melody over it, which I did, but this is so key here. You know, usually you write a cue quickly. Boom, done.

BH: Right.

BDV: (But) this one was so important, because this kid died. It was such a sad, meaningful moment. I worked on that little cue the same way I would work on a hit song because, the only way I know how to speak through the emotions is with melody. And that just doesn't come (automatically), you know…I really put that time in, and finally, I just love that little melody I came up with for that cue. So problem solved, we went in and did the score. You always name your cues, you know, so you get performances, and I named this after the kid that died, “Cotton Street.” Alright. So the picture comes out. Soundtrack album comes out. The picture doesn't do that well. Got an Academy Award nomination. I didn't win, but I got one on my second movie. I'm a happy camper. Two years later, I get a call from a producer and he says, “I'm putting out a new daytime television show called ‘The Young and the Restless.’”

BH: One of the biggest of all time, man.

BDV: "And I heard this cue on the 'Bless the Beasts and Children' album called 'Cotton's Dream.' I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “I'd like to use that theme and call it 'Theme from the Young and the Restless.' And I said, “Well, if you were here, I'd be kissing your hands. Of course! Yeah, let's do it.” So “Cotton's Dream” becomes “Theme from The Young and Restless.”

BH: So let's get this straight. A movie song now becomes a TV theme song, which I hope you were on the good royalty scale for that and got paid every time the show aired, but we're not done yet. There's a third title change. Explain.

BDV: Well, that was two years after I did the movie. Five years after I did the movie, this little 12-year-old, a girl from Romania, stole the heart of the world and got the first perfect 10 on the double horizontal bar.

BH: Let me explain this, because (now), we have two, three hundred choices for televised entertainment, streaming entertainment. There were three channels back then and, and the biggest (event) maybe aside from the Super Bowl and even including that, was the Olympics. Gymnastics in the seventies and eighties were the premiere event. She was proceeded by Olga Korbut, but Nadia Comaneci comes along, Romanian, I believe, and she got more than one perfect 10, and it stunned the world. Now gymnastics is on the front cover of Sports Illustrated, and gymnastics shops are opening up in towns like Nashville, Barry. So I want people to understand the gravity, not just in the U.S. The global eyes on her.

BDV: You’re absolutely right. and ABC aired the first film clip, and it was in slow motion. So a guy at ABC, you in the library needs some music to lay behind this film clip, and this is where luck comes in, Bart. He said, “You know, I remember on an album, ‘Bless the Beasts and Children,’ there was a cut called ‘Cotton's Dream’ that might work here.” He went in his library, pulled out his five-year-old soundtrack album and put “Cotton's Dream” behind that slow-motion film clip.

BH: My sister, Lori Herbison, my mother, Carol Harbison, yelled at us, “Come in, come in,” and we all remember it to this day, stood there and watch that montage, and I remember the music, Barry, because I don't know what else could have gone there. You're quite humble, but it was unbelievable, and the world knew that song.

BDV: Well, thank you again.

BH: You know, and again, I miss, I miss I've always thought this should be the million dollar question on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” What were the songs that Nadia performed to? She didn't perform then to “Nadia’s Theme.” It was the montage.

BDV: You're absolutely right. She never performed to that. and the reaction. Suddenly every television station was playing this film clip and the reaction was amazing, so much so that A&M (Records) took that cut. They spliced it, made it twice as long and renamed it “Nadia’s Theme,” and turned out to be the biggest copyright in my career.

BH: So let me see this. I want to get this right…May 18th, 1997. Nadia Comaneci and Bart Conner, another amazing male gymnast from the era on the season three finale of “Touched by an Angel,” did perform a brief floor exercise to that song. So, she finally did some gymnastics to it.

BDV: Better than that. We went to their wedding.

BH: I’ve got to point this out…we're not done yet. (The song shows up sampled by Mary J. Blige and ends up being MTV's doggone song of the year. I mean, this thing has got a shelf life, my friend. That was in her hit, “No More Drama,” her hit, “No More Drama.”

BDV: Yeah, this little piece of music just keeps reinventing itself, and I'm at awe of that.

About the series

In partnership with Nashville Songwriters Association International, the "Story Behind the Song" video interview series features Nashville-connected songwriters discussing one of their compositions. For full video interviews with all of our subjects, visit www.tennessean.com/music.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Story Behind the Song: 'Nadia's Theme'/ 'Theme From The Young and the Restless'