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Paul
Tonks talks to John Barry
Interview
conducted 21/10/97
@ Hyde Park Mandarin Hotel
Where
are you right now on The Beyondness of Things?
We
recorded the orchestra on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Then
rhythms and voices on Saturday. Then mixed it Sunday and Monday.
The London Chamber Orchestra is the basis, but we’ve augmented it
to a 90-piece orchestra. We brought Tommy Morgan the Harmonica player
over from LA who’s terrific, and an English Sax player called David
White. I think it’s a very interesting album.
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But it’s not a soundtrack?
It’s
a tone poem. But it’s not one piece - it’s 12 separate tracks. Individual
pieces.
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Have you been thinking towards something like this for some time?
Yes
I have. Chris Roberts at Polygram I met about a year ago & said
he’d love me to join the label. So I have a contract with them for
3 albums – not including soundtracks which we call a ‘best endeavour
situation’. A lot of companies have their own affiliations with
record companies. Fortunately this company that made Swept From
The Sea was linked to Decca.
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So it was a wonderful opportunity to squeeze something else in.
Am I right in thinking The Americans was your last non-soundtrack
album? In 70....
Early
‘70s. I remember early ‘50s, late ‘50s, early ‘60s etc. That’s how
I block things out.
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It’s quite a gap then.
I
really love doing films & they keep coming along. I was with
Sony for a while & did the 2 Moviola albums. That came about
since they’d picked up the rights to Dances With Wolves. But I must
say I’m really happy with the whole Polygram family. I really get
a feeling they understand what I’m doing & what I’m about. Not
to knock them but I never got that feeling with Sony. I was in the
same group that handle Michael Jackson & the whole pop area.
That’s what they’re used to & then you come along with this
big orchestra piece & they don’t get it - that’s not their fault.
It’s just finding the right niche & I finally feel I’ve found
it. So maybe that’s one of the reasons I haven’t bothered recording
something like this because I’ve not felt all that happy with the
recording situations I’ve had. This is an entirely new opportunity
to set aside time & do something. Come up with an idea, present
it to them & do something.
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What does The Beyondness of Things ...
Mean?
I just thought it was a great title! I love titles. It’s very difficult
really. You’ll see from the track listing. It’s a series of thoughts.
There’s a quote from a short story by Nabakov which explains some
of it "_________________". I thought he’d put his finger
right on it. It’s just a lot of very personal thoughts put into
a dramatic context. I could go through each one and explain what
it is -- but I’m not going to! (laughs). Hopefully people will react
to it.
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So Swept From the Sea is the same label?
Yes.
It’s had marvellous reviews in the States & been very well received.
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I know that was adapted from a Conrad short, and seeing your use
of a quote on Beyondness, do you feel the need to ‘bone up’ on a
film’s literary original when it has one?
I’ll
tell you what happened on this one. The head of the movie company
called me about Amy Foster as it was then. He said he was in England
with the director Beeban Kidron (CHECK). Now I’d never heard the
name & didn’t know if it was a lady or a man! So over the phone
I’m expecting a guy, then this very charming woman starts talking
from whom I asked for a script. In America when you want something
you get it Fed-exed overnight. Here you stick it in the post and
hope. So there I was waiting very eagerly for the screenplay &
it didn’t come. So what I did was to go down to a local bookshop
in Oyster Bay in New York, and bought a collection of the Conrad
short stories. Read it. Liked it very much & I wrote 2 themes
without reading the script. There were 2 things that were very obviously
going to be there. This young man making this great journey from
the Ukraine - Yanko’s Theme which represents the heart of the Russian
background. A folksy theme. Then the Love Theme. He’s shipwrecked
off the coast of Cornwall & can’t speak a word of English. The
locals think he’s a madman, & Amy Foster is the girl who meets
and befriends him all without communication. The first scene where
they’re alone is in a barn. She goes to feed and wash him. So there’s
this whole 2 and a half minutes scene with absolutely no dialogue.
He wakes up and is cleaned. So the whole theme is a searching question
mark - not a profound Out of Africa statement of grandeur. All very
hesitant and temporary. I wrote both and recorded on piano and synthesiser.
Beeban loved them and she hadn’t even shot the scene! I finally
got the script & met with her. When I played the piano theme
to her she loved it. I usually get 2 or 3 guys together to demo
my ideas. And it worked beautifully. That’s a rare thing. But if
you have a piece of literature of that quality you just know what’s
going to be needed. You know he has reminiscences about his homeland.
There’s a dance sequence where we go back to his home. I used a
cimbalom. They had to have that in front to playback, then that
was what was used as Yanko’s Theme. It’s a great movie in the sense
that there are scenes without dialogue allowing the music to breathe.
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Vincent Perez is the central character.
Yes
and he’s very emotional and sensitive.
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Although what you’ve just described was a rare occurrence, what
I’ve always felt is your approach to scoring a film is to look at
the whole thing at once. Identify an overall message or emotion
and score that.
You’re
absolutely right. I always go for a melody first, because it’s the
most direct form of communication dramatically. It has to be versatile
though. In Swept From The Sea, the love theme is used about 4 times
without much change. But Yanko’s Theme used a number of times. He
leaves his homeland on the train from Russia through Germany. Then
the authentic dance. Then his reminiscences. Again when he dances
with a little boy. It’s that one theme being used in many different
ways. I remember Shostakovich saying about music to "keep the
emotion intact". Once you capture that essence everything else
springs from that daddy, the master file. You grow with other harmonic
material. Maybe take fractions of the melody. That starts to dictate
the rest of the score for you. I do love having a theme that works
throughout - it’s not possible on every film. Take Out Of Africa
- there was the main theme and there was Karen’s Theme. The rest
was what I call scene by scene. On Dances Kevin showed me about
20 minutes of the opening sequence. A little tease of everything.
So I got a feeling of the texture of the movie. All these things
are terribly important. Then I went away and wrote 20 minutes of
themes, knowing there had to be a John Dunbar Theme, knowing there
had to be a journey theme when he takes off across this scape. Recorded
them all with about 4 musicians. Played them to Kevin and he loved
them. I never viewed Dances as a western but a story of a man who
went out to the west. I said this to Michael Blake who wrote the
script. He agreed. It’s this very heroic story of a man getting
on a horse and riding across America. Everything I wrote in that
movie was through his eyes. I had to dramatically get inside him
and put myself on that horse. I hate writing music where I’m outside
like the camera. It’s my job to get inside the soul of the person
& react the way he must have thought getting on that horse.
Then
I was nominated for an Academy Award, & I remember meeting Elmer
Bernstein & he said "good luck but don’t build your hopes
too high. There’s been some wonderful western scores written: Big
Country, The Magnificent Seven, How The West Was Won. But they have
this thing about western scores." So I said that was fine since
this isn’t one! Theoretically then it’s the first western to win
an Oscar - & written by an Englishman. I love that score, and
I thought it was very spiritual. When he sees the slaughter of the
buffaloes it breaks your heart. Michael told me the Indians never
had a word for animals. It was another beast. I’m a man, that’s
a beast.
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So ‘tatanka’ was that word?
Yes.
Their naming of things was a literal thing based on whatever they
first saw something do. Hence Dances With Wolves. I found that very
interesting. When the Indians hunted buffalo, they only killed what
they had to eat to survive. It was a big honour to be picked to
go and kill to feed your family. The spirit behind all that action
was wonderful. I was very moved by the story. I was up early at
home watching a show that was interviewing the Pope’s personal photographer
and had just published A Portrait of the Pope. All the time he’d
been at the Vatican he’d taken these wonderful shots the official
office didn’t want used. So he went directly to the Pope and showed
what he wanted to publish and was given a direct blessing to go
ahead. The interviewer asked what the Pope reads, and then asked
about music. I’m waiting for him to say Beethoven’s 9th or something
like that. He said he listens incessantly to Dances. That killed
me. I phoned the producer and Kevin, then called the TV station
to get the tapes. I think that’s a hell of a compliment.
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Isn’t a shame that from the point in time we’re talking about there’s
subsequently been a real decline in the quality on films and their
scores.
Oh
it really is.
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Picking up on that perspective you took to scoring Dances of getting
inside the character, I honestly feel that’s something very few
other composers do, and wonder if that contributes to this decline?
But
it sure works!
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The end result seems to be that there may be great films with scores
whose albums don’t make for overly wonderful listening. Or a great
album from a film where the music was lost. But with yourself it’s
nearly always a great marriage on film followed by a great stand
alone.
In
the past 20 years I think there’s only been 4 platinum soundtrack
albums - & I’m talking about scores not song albums. I’ve written
3 of them. I think Swept From the Sea has all that space in the
movie to follow suit. A lot of that’s down to Beeban who really
knew her stuff. We had the best of times. It’s getting subject with
characters you can get inside. Sometimes you get a film in and you
think ‘I can’t get inside this guy’. This whole thing with record
companies pushing their albums, and the whole use of loud synthesised
music is in their artificial creation it all gets lost. You know
they know create horses hooves synthetically on a soundtrack? So
what happens is you get a mush from the synthesised FX and music
- they bleed into one another. It’s very difficult to find a movie
to give you that room to be heard. Very rare you pick up a script
with these qualities.
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Do you have another to look forward to?
I’m
going to be starting a movie in November called Mercury Rising.
Harold Becker directs Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. When I heard
about Bruce I had reservations. You see this Die Hard image. But
they sent me script which has an action sequence at beginning and
end, but the middle is this wonderfully drawn character with a little
boy. An almost Hitchockian mystery. It’s not an action movie. The
opening sets up this guy’s response to violence and the end is where
the bad guy gets it! So that’s something I can get inside. You’re
constantly looking for scripts where you can do that.
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So is that thin script pool largely responsible for the musical
decline?
Well
- what are the movies? When you look at the nature of these movies...
These big blockbusters are for the kids.
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Hopefully the independents will get more and more popular.
Let’s
hope. I’d rather not do a film unless I can enjoy it. It’s the way
you move an audience and subconsciously they are communicated to.
If I think back to something like Lion In Winter, I had that 120-piece
orchestra and 40-piece choir. What that subconsciously did throughout
was suggest how beholden the monarchy were to the Pope. There was
this Roman Catholic presence in the score and felt the power of
the Church. I met Jacqueline Kennedy at a party. She told me Jack
and her loved the whole power struggle thing. That was the sort
of opportunity you have to find. I don’t know what that movie would
have been like if I hadn’t come up with that idea. Even Born Free
in its Disneyesque way got across on that level. Thinking of songs,
Midnight Cowboy is still shown at UCLA Film School as the best example
of song in film. We didn’t go out and buy a bunch of songs. It was
all written especially for the scenes. It was literally scoring
with songs & took a lot of care with it. The scene where he
steals bread & is spotted & is shamed just kills you. The
loneliness of that song drifting down over it had such an atmosphere
I couldn’t have got with a score. If it’s done right it can be terribly
effective. That was John’s choice & I learned a lot from it.
We spent 4 or 5 hours re-recording to film you know.
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What inspires you now.
I
love to drive around New York. You see some amazing things. It’s
full of all these oddities. I look at things and register them.
You see something and think musically. I ride around with music
on and look at things. Then for a moment you see things that coincide
that can be really obscure. If you were looking at that in a movie
you probably wouldn’t have played what you’re listening to. It’s
quite a contrast that’s an education.
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I’ve recently befriended one of your biggest fans following in your
footsteps - David Arnold. Have you heard Shaken and Stirred?
Absolutely.
When I was at George Martin’s studio doing the demos for Swept From
the Sea, George came in and asked if I knew David who was doing
a Bond album. So we met and had lunch & he played me about 4
or 5 tracks which I thought were terrific. He’s kept the true Bond
essence and given it a fresh twist. And cast it beautifully as well.
It’s been a labour of love for him. I think it’ll do hugely well.
The first single is already doing well.
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He refers to you in life and credits you on the album as ‘the guvnor’.
That’s
very sweet of him. I’m looking forward to the song he’s co-written
with Don Black for k d lang - she’s got a great voice. He’s doing
a documentary they want to feature me in.
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Yes. In fact David’s wife asked me to recommend where the documentary
directory could research your work. I recommended the redoubtable
Geoff Leonard.
Yes
he knows more about me than I know about myself!
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Do you know about the way David’s recording Tomorrow Never Dies?
He gets about 20 minutes parcelled together a month to score.
(Sighs)
It’s terrible. I had that situation. Goldfinger for instance. The
Fort Knox raid we recorded on a Monday after getting the scene Friday.
So I’ve had a few of those. In fact that’s what happened when I
did King Kong for Dino De Laurentiis. There was this problem where
there were 2 Kongs on the way simultaneously like a race. They’d
shoot 2 or 3 reels, cut them and hand them to me. It’s not enough
really. After shooting about 3 weeks, the other production gave
up. So I suggested slowing up to Dino, but he says (mimics Dino
perfectly) "No thees ees not the way wee do it John. I gotta
get it out for Christmas." Anyway I ended up doing sessions
all summer, and it went on and on. You don’t know where you’re leading
- you should be able to look at the whole. You get forced into writing
scene by scene which is a very unsatisfactory way to work.
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The result on TND is that the album’s cues need to be delivered
before the whole score will be finished recording.
That
happened to me once too on The Specialist. I did the score, then
Gloria Estefan and her husband did all that Miami stuff and they
wanted to bring out their song album way ahead. Yet in my contract
I had 2 tracks on their album. I hadn’t written any music at that
point. I was In London doing Moviola. I suggested writing 2 themes
and recording with the Philharmonic at the same time. Fortunately
he loved them. Then the instrumental album came out much later.
It’s a very difficult thing, and producers don’t understand it.
They come in and say ‘why can’t it be done?’ They don’t get it.
The business has changed a lot you know.
Paul
Tonks |
