One of the most recognizable and most-heard pieces of music of the past 40 years was written by Koji Kondo. You may not know his name, but you know his work: Kondo is a composer for Nintendo, and his best-known piece of music is the original Super Mario Bros. overworld theme song. It’s an inescapably catchy tune, so much so that it even has an admirer in one of the greatest songwriters ever: Paul McCartney.
A new Washington Post feature on Kondo tells the story of the time Kondo and the former Beatle met in Japan. It explains:
“Super Mario Bros. released in 1985, and just one year later, Paul McCartney was humming the tune. The Beatle was on tour in Japan when he learned that Kondo and Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, were in attendance. He asked to bring the two game creators backstage. He and wife Linda McCartney approached the gentlemen, and the first noises that escaped their lips were those same six notes. Kondo recalls it as an ‘incredible moment.’”
McCartney was clearly a big Nintendo fan, even beyond this one meeting: A 1996 Time feature on Miyamoto notes, “Shigeru Miyamoto, 43, has reached the top in the rarefied world of video-game designers by consistently creating games that kids can’t resist. As a result, he’s as revered as a rock star — and not just in Japan. Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and movie directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have all traveled to Nintendo’s famed E.A.D. (Entertainment Analysis and Development) lab in Kyoto to meet the man known as the Spielberg of video games.”
There’s also the time that Miyamoto visited The Tonight Show and performed the Mario theme with The Roots:
Source: https://uproxx.com/indie/paul-mccartney-sing-mario-song-koji-kondo/
