I’ve always been confused about the provenance of the St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) song, and wikipedia isn’t helping.
I’ve heard that the song was written about Rick Hansen, a Canadian wheelchair athlete. But so far as I know, there is no connection between Hansen and St. Elmo’s Fire, and the lyrics had to be rewritten to accommodate the movie. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the movie, and from this thread it does not sound like something I would enjoy.)
Was the song ever released or even recorded in its original form? Were the original lyrics ever published? If not, why not? Why was the song bowdlerized and attached to a completely unrelated, mediocre movie before release? What, if anything, did the songwriters (David Foster and John Parr) say to Hansen?–“Sorry, big guy, we wrote a song that was supposed to be about you, but Hollywood producers offered us more money to rewrite it about angst-filled yuppies?”