“Lapti Nek”: The Star Wars Disco Hit That Never Was

By James Greene Jr. on May 4, 2011 @ 12:18 pm

Today is May 4th, which in recent years has become an unofficial Star Wars holiday (MAY the FOURTH be with you, yuk yuk yuk!). In honor of this deliciously nerdy observance, Crawdaddy! has decided to look back at “Lapti Nek”, a vanished musical gem from everyone’s favorite galaxy far, far away. As any Tusken Raider worth his gaffi stick can tell you, “Lapti Nek” is the sleazy disco song Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo Band originally performed for Jabba the Hutt in 1983′s Return of the Jedi before Luke Skywalker showed up dressed like Johnny Cash to harsh Jabba’s sweet Tatooine mellow.

Although their screen time proved fleeting, Expanded Universe literature would later posit the Max Rebo Band as one of the most popular musical groups from Endor to Hoth. In real life, “Lapti Nek” was sung in Huttese by Lucasfilm sound engineer Annie Arbogast, who wrote the phony alien lyrics herself. Famed Star Wars orchestral composer John Williams penned “Lapti Nek’s” backing outer space funk and arranged the entire song with son Joseph and Hardware Wars director/producer Ernie Fosselius. The trio succeeded in giving “Lapti Nek” a grimy feel perfectly suited for Jabba’s dark and foreboding palace.

Arbogast’s spirited, Cyndi Lauper-like take on “Lapti Nek” would never see any sort of commercial release outside Return of the Jedi’s theatrical and VHS runs; Lucasfilm apparently lost that recording’s master reel before it could be included on any corresponding soundtrack albums. Luckily, around the same time, the company commissioned an extended version of “Lapti Nek” by professional session singer Michele Gruska specifically for the dance circuit. That smoother, sexier “Nek” was released on PolyGram in 1983. While Gruska’s anonymous five minute “Lapti Nek (Club Mix)” brought the Max Rebo Band to full fruition outside Jedi, the single failed to blow up disco charts like the Death Star.

Michele Gruska also recorded a version of “Lapti Nek” with English lyrics penned by Joseph Williams prior to Return of the Jedi’s completion. This “Nek” scratch track was inexplicably dubbed “Fancy Man”, even though the official line from Lucasfilm is that “Lapti Nek” translates to “Work It Out” in English (which of course means that famous Public Enemy song could be called “Brothers Gonna Lapti Nek”). “Fancy Man” can be heard below in the background of assorted ROTJ behind-the-scenes vignettes (including Warwick Davis’s never-completed or released movie-within-a-movie Return of the Ewok).

Naturally, Italian disco demigod Meco Monardo—who shot to fame in 1977 with a boogie-oogie interpretation of the original Star Wars main title theme—had to have his own go at making “Lapti Nek” a crossover hit. Strangely, Meco made almost no alterations to the Michele Gruska “Club” version when he got his hands on it, basically rereleasing the same recording with louder drums and some flourished instrumentation. Meco’s “Lapti Nek” stalled at #60 on our Billboard Charts, effectively cooling Monardo’s movie-related music hot streak. In Thailand, however, this “Nek” was apparently one of ’83′s biggest hits.

If you think the milking of “Lapti Nek” ends with Meco, you’re more mistaken than Han Solo in Cloud City. A 12″ single called “Lapti Nek Overture” was also released in 1983 on Warner Brothers by one-off group Urth. Not surprisingly, Urth was fronted by Joseph Williams, taking a break from his adult contemporary meal ticket Toto. “Lapti Nek Overture” is not only the rarest and funkiest of all “Lapti Neks”, it’s also the most satisfying. Urth was smart enough to mix in snippets of the elder Williams’ beloved Star Wars score as well as a few bars of Lucasfilm sound wizard Ben Burtt’s highly contentious Ewokese “Yub Nub” song. Variety is the spice of “Lapti Nek”!

Still, America balked, and Urth’s version of “Lapti Nek” was the third strike in George Lucas’s attempt to put Sy Snootles on the level of Blondie or Pat Benetar. To Joe/Jane Sixpack, this latest slice of booty-shakin’ space music just did not have the same je ne sais quoi as the first Star Wars film’s much-ballyhooed “Cantina Band”. Yet “Lapti Nek” made an indelible impression on scores of younger, less seasoned Star Wars fans at the time. Check out footage below of a wee Snoot wannabe lip synching to “Lapti Nek” shortly after Return of the Jedi’s release.

Indeed, “Lapti Nek” held a place in our geeky hearts, which is why it was so appalling to see the tune completely excised from Return of the Jedi in Lucasfilm’s 1997 “Special Edition.” In “Nek’s” place was an excruciating R&B exercise called “Jedi Rocks”. The Max Rebo Band was expanded to include a troupe of “sexy”/tacky extra-terrestrial dancers and a squat, furry embodiment of digital annoyance called Joh Yowza. To paraphrase Tom Bissell, “Jedi Rocks” is the most unspeakable sequence in all the “Special Edition” Star Wars films, a moment in history almost too depressing to discuss at any length. Even Greedo shooting first wasn’t this painful.

“Jedi Rocks” has remained in all versions of Return of the Jedi since 1997 (including the just-announced Blu-Ray release), forcing a new generation to come up in a Star Wars galaxy utterly void of “Lapti Nek’s” funky dance floor goodness. Thankfully, the Internet will always be able to preserve on some small scale the genius George Lucas abandoned in favor of pure insanity. Here’s looking at you, Max Rebo. In our world, you’re playin’ “Lapti Nek”—an Apex Award-winning composition(!)—all night long with no gross alien bimbos or hairy CGI abortions cluttering your landscape.

[Special thanks to Eric's Little Black Star, Wookieepedia, and YouTube for helping engineer this post.]