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His approach was simple, he said: ‘You try to keep it soulful, and tell the truth, and tell a story’
Will Jennings, who has died aged 80, was a lyricist who penned the words to some of the most famous film songs of the last few decades, enduring classics such as My Heart Will Go On, sung by Celine Dion for the epic Titanic, Up Where We Belong, performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes on the soundtrack to An Officer and a Gentleman, and Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton’s song about his young son’s death that featured in the film Rush and was the guitarist’s best-selling single in the United States.
The music for My Heart Will Go On was originally written by James Horner as an instrumental motif for the film, then when he decided to make it the closing song he enlisted Jennings. “He played me the theme, and I just took it from there. I didn’t see any footage or read any of the script, but he told me the story.”
Jennings drew on an encounter from two years before, he recalled.
“I had met this very vibrant woman who was about 101. She came into my mind, and I realised she could have been on the Titanic. So I wrote everything from the point of view of a person of a great age looking back.” His and Horner’s efforts garnered an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy.
Wilbur Herschel Jennings was born on June 27 1944 in Kilgore, Texas, a fading cotton town whose fortunes had been transformed when oil was struck in 1930. He graduated from Tyler Junior College 20 miles away, then taught English there for a while. He went on to graduate from Stephen F Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, going on earn a Masters and teach English before moving to the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire for a three-year stint.
But songwriting was calling, and in 1971 he moved to Nashville: “I just sort of hit the street and started trying to get my songs around.” He met Troy Seals, with whom he wrote five songs for Dobie Gray’s 1973 LP Drift Away.
The following year he moved to Los Angeles, hooking up with the composer Richard Kerr, whose song Mandy had been a big hit for Barry Manilow. The pair wrote Looks Like We Made It and Somewhere in the Night for him, while the singer produced their song I’ll Never Love This Way Again, a US Top Five hit for Dionne Warwick.
Jennings was introduced to Joe Sample of the smooth jazz-funk outfit the Crusaders, and the pair wrote the bulk of BB King’s 1978 Top 30 album Midnight Believer, as well as another classic, the Crusaders’ own Street Life, which featured Randy Crawford on vocals and reached No 5 in the UK.
His work for BB King brought him to the attention of Island’s Chris Blackwell, who teamed him up with Stevie Winwood. They co-wrote most of the tracks on the multi-instrumentalist’s hit 1980 album Arc of a Diver, and over the next decade they collaborated on four more albums.
Through Winwood he was introduced to Eric Clapton – they had played together in the blink-and-miss-it supergroup Blind Faith – who was writing the music for Rush, the 1991 thriller about two undercover cops.
Earlier that year Clapton had been hit by tragedy when his four-year-old son Conor fell to his death from the 53rd floor of a New York apartment, and when Jennings met him he already had the title, Tears in Heaven, the idea and the first verse for a song for the film. “I was really moved that he had wanted me to work on it,” Jennings recalled, and it became one of the biggest hits of the 1990s, winning three Grammys.
His other honours included an Oscar, Golden Globe, Grammy and Bafta for Up Where We Belong, while the long roll-call of other artists who sang his lyrics included Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Roy Orbison. His approach was simple, he said: “You try to keep it soulful, and tell the truth and tell a story.”
Will Jennings is survived by his wife Carol.
Will Jennings, born June 27 1944, died September 6 2024
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