NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Patrick Swayze, actor, dancer and multi-talented man, will be featured Thursday, April 14 on ABC’s hit show Superstar.
Swayze scored a chart-topping hit with his film dirty dance. What you might not know, the co-writer of the hit song featured in the movie “She’s Like the Wind” lives in the Nashville area.
News 2’s Neil Orne spoke with Stacy Widelitz about his memories of doing the song with Swayze.
“What was actually interesting was a way of telling who knew him and who really didn’t know him. If someone called him ‘Patrick’ then you know they knew him to some extent. But if they called him ‘Buddy’, it was family and friends.
For Widelitz, it was always “Buddy”. It was a friendship that began in the Los Angeles acting class of 1984 and became legendary when Swayze showed up at his house with a guitar in his hand.
“The first two lines were intriguing, which were ‘She’s like the wind through my tree. She writes at night next to me. And then I didn’t like the third and fourth lines he had, which I told him and he got a little defensive and said, ‘Well, what would you say?’ So I, right at the top of my head, said, “Well, you know, thinking of the imagery of nature,” I said, “She guides me through the moonlight just to burn me with the sun.” And then he said, ‘What does that mean?’ And I said, ‘I don’t care. Just write it down.
The song almost made it into two other productions, but as fate would have it, the song landed on the soundtrack of dirty dance – a film that no one thought would mean much.
Shortly after, Widelitz said he had gone gold, but “a week and a half later I called him and said, ‘Hey, you know, when do I will get the gold record? Does it come by post? How it works?’ And he said, ‘you’re not going to get the gold record.’ And I said, ‘why did you tell me I am?’ He said, ‘because now you’re getting platinum.’
It was a lifelong friendship that was cut short when Swayze died in 2009. But the two friends still visit each other.
“Yeah, I miss him. He pops up occasionally in my dreams, which is a really interesting thing. And I’ve told Lisa about it. His wife. And you know, he was a really fun guy and he was a kind of a prankster. Almost clumsy, but had a good sense of humor and just an interesting person to be around too. I mean, just the many abilities he had were amazing.
Widelitz plans to watch the special alone tonight remembering his friend and the story behind the song they wrote so many years ago.
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You can watch the special right on News 2. Superstar: Patrick Swayze airs at 9 p.m. CST.
