Be Brave Tonight

In 1998, a song I wrote called Be Brave Tonight was being pushed to be the end credit song for the Kevin Costner/Paul Newman/Robin Wright movie based on Nicholas Sparks’ bestselling novel Message in a Bottle. I loved all three of those actors—Costner was superb in JFK, Wright was heartbreaking and wonderful in Forrest Gump, and I’d been a massive fan of Paul Newman from the days of Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 

As for the song, I had recorded it a couple of years earlier in the home of the parents of a friend who were travelling and needed some vagabond to look after the place, and the dog, Spencer. A lovely house in the boonies, where the Manson Family might choose to come and kill you. Yes, I’m vulnerable to ridiculously paranoid thoughts—many that make it into my songs. 

Plus I get unnerved at night sometimes, when I’m alone in a house in the countryside, away from city crime. Who doesn’t? Those unfamiliar creaks and knocks double as footsteps, all set against the relentless roar of crickets, bullfrogs and wheezing psychopaths.

Anyway, the parents left for Thailand or Taiwan or Tunisia and I brought in $1,229.63 of rented recording equipment to make my second album—and drain my pitiful bank account. I lived off rhubarb pies in the freezer, fed Spencer the dog, and, feral as a ferret, recorded my face off with fantastic musicians dropping by to add magic. 

Put another way, to get this kind of opportunity—Hollywood, dammit!—for a song produced by me for 12 cents was encouraging. This was the same year the novel Understanding Ken came out for me, and I was in love with a proper English actress (who shared my mom’s maiden name), and spending months at a time in the dreamworld of LA, writing screenplays and songs and experiencing that ephemeral summer breeze of potential (blowing through the jasmine in my mind). 

Meanwhile, the music score for the film was not only in the delicate hands of Academy Award-winner Gabriel Yared (the composer of the profoundly lush The English Patient—far from my sensibilities), it was being mixed at Abbey Road Studios in London.

You read that right. Abbey Road Studios.

I wasn’t there—I wasn’t invited—but my song Be Brave Tonight was, and being played on some console that may have been used to record Here Comes the Sun, while Paul Newman acted on the screen above the console—or at least that’s how I picture it all going down, with the ghost of John Lennon digging it.

More importantly, the song meant a lot to me. It was written in a time of seeking and doubting and longing; about holding onto one’s soul despite our own limitations, not quitting on life, and not selling out—and not giving up even if you have sold out. The refrain was to anyone in crisis: “There is a call from the light / Be Brave Tonight.”

Then one afternoon Jim Wilson, the Oscar-winning producer of Dances With Wolves, who was also producing Message in a Bottle, called me from Abbey Road:

“Sorry Pete, Be Brave Tonight is not going to be in the film.” 

I was strangely not too beat up. The process itself had been fulfilling and I’ve always been resilient enough to never stop creating no matter how little (or how much) people care. Hell, I’m still on Facebook. And what a perfect song title with that news, right? Be Brave Tonight.

The best part was the reason why it didn’t make the film? A focus group brought in to judge the film, filled out their forms, and said the ending was way too depressing. All I knew was Kevin Costner’s character Garrett Blake died at the end of the film (spoiler!) and my song was playing as the credits rolled—so one of those two things had to go. It wasn’t going to be Kevin—even if he was dead.

Be Brave Tonight. You’re out. 

So whoever was in charge pulled the song and put in Gabriel Yared’s strings—or, I don’t know, a different song maybe. I’m not even sure if I saw the film. I’m not even sure how accurate this story is. But it’s close. And it is now the official story of Be Brave Tonight, a tender, pleading dirge with Aeolian pipes and a lot of heart, that carried on despite being rejected, and thus, had to live up to its name…

And here it is, calling from the light, through an older face, 28 years later … 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3e-ryZ5xwc