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Bertolucci's conceit to structure the film loosely around the erotic duel that's at the heart of the Tango led him to seek a non-traditional musician to score it (Tango legend Astor Piazzolla was rumored to have been an early consideration). Once selected, the then-largely obscure Barbieri originally produced a series of brief, Tango-jazz fusion cues that functioned more as emotional punctuation than traditional underscore. Those musical snippets were later re-arranged and re-recorded by Oliver Nelson for the wildly successful soundtrack album; it would be another quarter century before Barbieri's own recordings were issued, albeit briefly.