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Article - John
Barry profile for Ritz magazine
revised 3/03
"This
feature appears courtesy of the RITZ magazine, London, published
by INK www.electricink.net"
On this site May 9, 2003.
By
Jon Burlingame
Oyster
Bay, New York, 2002, is a long way away from London's Pickwick Club
circa 1964. The man who composed "Goldfinger," "Born Free" and "Midnight
Cowboy" amidst the tumult of England's Swinging Sixties now resides
quietly some 45 miles from New York City, with his American wife
and young son.
But
John Barry, 69, is as busy as ever. He has a West End musical in
the works, is headed back into the studio with an album of original
songs for Decca, and is preparing to score his first animated film
(for Walt Disney and Pixar, the computer-animation geniuses who
gave us "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life").
"I've
got a nice variety of things," he says with obvious contentment
in his elegantly appointed living room with a view of Long Island
Sound. The Oyster Bay house, where he spends most of the year and
does all of his writing, is located on four acres of land in a secluded
spot off the northern shore.
He
still maintains an apartment in Cadogan Square, Chelsea, that's
"five minutes from The King's Road and ten minutes from the West
End," he says. And he returns there often, these days collecting
a seemingly endless series of honors commensurate not only with
his fame but with his many contributions to the soundtrack of our
lives.
In
1998, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and sold
out the Royal Albert Hall in a matter of hours for his first concert
appearance in 25 years. The following year, he received an OBE and
the Music Industry Trust Award. In 2000, he was the subject of a
BBC-TV documentary on his life. This year, he was declared an Honorary
Freeman of the City of York, his hometown.
John
Barry is, without question, England's single most successful composer
of cinema music -- and the only Brit to have received five Academy
Awards (two for "Born Free," for its title song and score, plus
one each for the scores of "The Lion in Winter," "Out of Africa"
and "Dances With Wolves"). But he's more than that. He has become
an icon to generations of music fans as well as to modern rockers
who record covers of his tunes, sample his originals and study his
chord progressions to try and replicate his winning formula.
They
can't, of course. Only John Barry writes like John Barry. The singular
melodic sense, the unique harmonies, the specificity of his orchestrations:
They infuse every memorable theme, from "The Ipcress File" to television's
"The Persuaders," and even the obscure ones, like the haunting riff
from his failed stage musical "Lolita, My Love" (penned with Alan
Jay Lerner) or the enchanting "The Me I Never Knew" from the forgotten
movie musical "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
Barry
is a very private man. For many years, he gave no interviews at
all, preferring his music to speak for him. And why bother anyway?
Writing film music is a complex process, requiring not only the
obvious musical gifts but also a high level of technical expertise
and something of the sensibility of a psychologist (trying to figure
out what directors and producers want, never an easy task). Publicity
serves no real purpose; it doesn't sell film scores and is usually
just a distraction from the real work at hand.
These
days, he grants just a few. A brush with death back in 1988 (his
esophagus ruptured, nearly killing him) and the birth of his son
in 1994 have literally given him a new lease on life. And as a revered
composer of classic pop entering his sunset years, maybe he relishes
-- just a little -- the adulation. I was at the Albert Hall the
night that 5,000 fans cheered his long-overdue return to the concert
hall. The Times reviewer called the three standing ovations "the
most devoted clappings I've ever seen in my life," likened them
to "the prayers of the faithful," and conceded that their actions
were "entirely understandable."
Is
he a dreamer, a poet? Certainly. And he likes the solitude. In Oyster
Bay, he can walk along the beach, collect his thoughts and turn
them into musical phrases before returning to his studio to jot
them down on paper, the old-fashioned way (before music-writing
software took the romance out of the composing business). To the
casual observer, his quiet lifestyle may seem light-years removed
from the fast life (including three short-lived marriages, one to
actress Jane Birkin) of the '60s; to him, it's one long continuum
of musical growth and development. He has become what few great
songwriters ever have: An accomplished creator of symphonic music
that is both contemporary and classic. While many of his colleagues
were stuck in the banal 4/4 of rock, Barry was expanding his horizons
by studying Sibelius, Mahler and Shostakovich.
No
artist enjoys analyzing his own work. But, pressed to describe what
links so many of his popular tunes, Barry replies: "I'm strongly
attracted to subjects that deal with loss: `Out of Africa,' `Dances
With Wolves,' `Somewhere in Time.' All these movies are about a
sense of loss. I don't know whether that comes from the World War.
It leaves its mark. I don't know how it couldn't."
Barry
attended a Catholic convent school in York, which was bombed by
the Nazis in early 1942. "Several of the nuns and many of the children
were killed," he recalls. "And nobody explained it to us. They just
came up and bombed the hell out of the place. I can remember my
father coming back and taking me out into the street. We lived just
outside the city, and the whole sky was red from the reflection
of the city burning. And I remember him saying to me, `Just get
this into your head. You're never going to forget this night.' I
had a tough Irish father, and I'm glad he did that to me. Other
fathers would have said, `I don't want you to see this.' He grabbed
me out of the air-raid shelter and said, `I want you to see this.
Remember it for the rest of your goddamn life.' Which I did."
In
recent years, Barry has shifted his attention somewhat away from
the movies, writing and recording instrumental albums that contain
musical impressions of people and places from his past. "Dreams,
memories and reflections" was how he described "The Beyondness of
Things," a Decca CD that sold 100,000 units and was timed to coincide
with the Royal Albert Hall concert. He followed that up last year
with "Eternal Echoes," inspired in part by the musings of Irish
philosopher John O'Donohue.
The
mature, thoughtful, reflective Barry of today may seem a far cry
from the brash, much-in-demand composer of all those James Bond
scores and '60s movies that put him on the map: "Goldfinger," "Thunderball,"
"You Only Live Twice," "The Knack," "The Ipcress File" and so many
others. The composer confesses: "When I look back on it, I think,
how the hell did I do all this?"
He
would hammer out an entire Bond score -- orchestrating every note
himself, often totalling hundreds of pages of music -- in four or
five weeks, working virtually nonstop. Longtime friend Michael Caine,
who temporarily roomed with Barry at the time, remembers him playing
variations on the same tune all night, working out the musical details
of some new theme. It turned out to be "Goldfinger," later to be
belted into a number-one spot on the charts by Shirley Bassey. Ultimately,
he scored eleven of the 007 epics.
Then
there was the legendary London nightlife of the young and beautiful,
the rich and famous, the Pickwick Club where Barry hung out with
Caine, Terence Stamp and other luminaries. "Let's not go into all
that," Barry says with a laugh. "It was England in the '60s. Everything
was happening. There was such a buzz, doing the Bond movies, doing
the musicals (including "Passion Flower Hotel" and, later, "Billy").
It was extraordinary."
Barry
moved to United States in 1975. He and wife Laurie have been married
since 1978 and lived for most of that time in Oyster Bay (in the
house next door to Lerner's, where they wrote "Lolita"). There,
in relative isolation -- and, geographically speaking, midway between
the show-biz madness of Los Angeles and the nostalgic pull of his
beloved London -- he composed the grand-scale romantic scores for
"Out of Africa" and "Dances With Wolves," which won him Oscars in
1986 and 1991 respectively.
And
that's where he's writing the music for "Brighton Rock," a musical
based on the Graham Greene novel about the race gangs of the 1930s.
He's wanted to do it since the late '60s, when it was briefly headed
for the West End before the deal fell apart. (It was producer Bill
Kenwright, once a member of the chorus in "Passion Flower Hotel,"
who revived it.) At the same time, he's mulling ideas for that song
album, and composing themes for "The Incredibles," the Disney-Pixar
film that won't hit theaters until Christmas 2004.
Asked
what makes him happiest today, Barry surprises by not mentioning
his music. "If there is one thing that dominates my life," he notes
with pride, "I would say my son." Jonpatrick, 8, "gives me more
joy than you can imagine. He's crazy about movies, he loves music
and he comes out with things that are frighteningly brilliant at
times."
Sounds
just like his old man.
--------
Jon
Burlingame
"This
feature appears courtesy of the RITZ magazine, London, published
by INK www.electricink.net"
We
would like to thank Jon Burlingame for his help in making this article
available to us. Jon is a writer and broadcaster on film and TV
music. Check out his excellent books, Sound and Vision: 60 Years
of Motion Picture Soundtracks and Tv's Biggest Hits: The Story of
Television Themes from "Dragnet" to "Friends", still available through
www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.com and other on-line retailers and
good bookshops everywhere!!
Geoff
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