"I enjoy wine but I don't get crazy about it. That's what I feel about film music. I enjoy it but I have other things in my life that I'm enjoying also. Wine is a symbol or an expression of the enjoyment of life and I think music is a very similar expression."
- Alan Silvestri in 2002

Alan Silvestri was born to second-generation immigrants on March 26, 1950, in New York City. First experimenting with music at a very young age in Teaneck, New Jersey, Silvestri began to consider a career in music instead of major league baseball at the age of 15. He attended Boston's Berklee College of Music, but had been there only two years when he moved to Las Vegas and began touring with R&B legend Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders band. Silvestri attempted to secure work as an arranger in Las Vegas, never once considering going to Los Angeles. Enticed by an offer to do the arrangements on a friend's album, he did finally move there. While staying at the Travel Lodge motel on Sunset Boulevard, Silvestri met Bradford Craig. As a lyricist for some projects with Quincy Jones, Craig had been nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. He gave Silvestri some arranging assignments, which turned into the break he had been waiting for. A small production company had mistakenly asked Craig (only a lyricist) to score a film for them, and Craig literally put the phone on hold and asked Silvestri if he wanted to score it instead. Accepting the job at the age of 20, Silvestri's first score would be 1972's The Doberman Gang.

Having never scored a film and knowing nothing about the process, Silvestri picked up a copy of Earl Hagan's book "How to Score a Film" and read it cover to cover the night before his meeting with the film's producers. Nevertheless, his viable work for The Doberman Gang triggered a succession of low-budget film assignments for Silvestri until he landed a job with the hit TV series CHiPs in 1978. Silvestri scored approximately 120 hours of this popular show, and had just started to make a living as a composer when it canceled. After a work drought of some 18 months, Silvestri's phone rang again on a late 1984 night. One of the music editors that Silvestri had worked with on CHiPs said that a film he was working on was desperate for a musical sound that they hadn't been able to find to date. The conversation that Silvestri had with director Robert Zemeckis that night would prove to be one of the most important of his life. Zemeckis asked him if he could put together three minutes of music that would go with a South American sequence in Romancing the Stone. Based on Zemeckis' description, Silvestri stayed up all night in his home studio creating a three-minute demo for their meeting the next day.

Upon meeting Silvestri, Zemeckis was immediately sold on his musical style, and the two men, wearing identical sweaters that day by chance, would both be launched a solid collaboration with Romancing the Stone. Together, Silvestri and Zemeckis experienced subsequent success with the Back to the Future franchise, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Contact, and more. They also worked together on the TV-series Amazing Stories (1 episode) and Tales from the Crypt (3 episodes). In the years since, Silvestri has received universal appreciation for his scores, and that attention has translated into nominations for an Academy Award, Grammy Award, and Golden Globe. In between his scoring assignments, Silvestri lives with his wife and son in the Northern California town of Carmel. They own a ranch with cattle, horses, and other various livestock. Silvestri removes himself from his studio to work at the ranch and ride the tractor for long hours. He also has a large piece of ground with grape vines used for growing his own wine. With a private pilot license, Silvestri often flies himself with his own jet plane to Los Angeles for sessions and meetings.