For a generation, (my generation)Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach will always be associated with Rollerball. It has been my favorite classical piece and I had the enormous luck of hearing it played in an honest pipe organ by a good performer and it rocked my sorry musically untrained ass. The only other musical experience that surpassed it was Queen in concert and only by a little bit.
And the remake of the movie was a POS.
Odd.
IIRC I’m about a decade behind you, and my mental association with that tune leans toward the classic 1925 Lon Chaney film version of Phantom of the Opera…some fifty years earlier!
I never saw “Rollerball,” but the association of classical music with movies always reminds me of a great line from the cultural icon “Hee Haw:” A highbrow is someone who can hear the “William Tell” overture without thinking of “The Lone Ranger.”
The remake of Rollerball wasn’t all that great either.
Never seen Rollerball ’75 but now my curiosity has been piqued.
The ONE and ONLY “Rollerball” was the original with James Caan and John Houseman [we EARNNNNN it guy]
I was in 7th grade when “Rollerball” came out and I spent forever trying to get the music name and THEN finding it on cassette ! ! [was never an album guy]
That’s an amazing piece of music. Turn it up loud for better effect. Best of all is hearing it live, played on an adequate pipe organ. Your whole body gets rattled by the bass notes.
It does take a skilled player; that piece is HARD. (So is a lot of Bach’s music, actually.)
I always associate “Tocatta in D” with James Mason as Captain Nemo in “20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea”
That is funny, I saw that movie too first, but never associated it. I may have been too young I guess