One day, (May 11, 1987 to be exact) shortly before Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was due to ship, I realized it didn't have a theme song. (Remember, back in 1987, most games only had music on their title screens, if there!)
Gosh, maybe I'd better slap something together?
I happened to hear a story on National Public Radio's All Things Considered that day about how it was Irving Berlin's 99th birthday that day. When they played his 1929 song, Alexander's Ragtime Band, it sounded so unusual, so, different, so fresh ccompared to most computer game music, that I decided to write something with the same pep, simplicity, humor, and out-of-sync attitude. I sat down at the piano, and within about 20 minutes, I had finished the Leisure Suit Larry Theme.
I didn't spend a lot of time polishing or perfecting it. What the hell? It was only for a computer game, where most people would never hear more than a few beeps and boops of the melody, and that only through those horrible IBM-compatible tweakers. Why bother?
Little did I know that over the next decade my silly little ditty would be heard by millions of gamers, many of whom have sworn revenge against me for making it so "whistle-able" that they can't get it out of their heads!