THE ARTS:From Goldfrapp to Badly Drawn Boy, from Karen O to Nick Cave, more and more big names from the world of pop and rock are lining up to write music for films. What makes the process so appealing to musicians?, asks GRAEME THOMSON
‘WHEN YOU’RE writing a song, it’s like you’re the director, scriptwriter, cinematographer, everything. You’re trying to create this little world, and although that’s liberating, it’s also a real head scratch. When you’re just coming up with one part of the process, it’s liberating in another way.”
Alison Goldfrapp is trying to explain, I suspect to herself as much as anyone else, why she and her musical partner, Will Gregory, spent most of the summer frantically writing the score for Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor-Wood's biopic of the young John Lennon, when every shred of common sense suggested they should have been finishing the next Goldfrapp record instead. "It's enjoyable and fascinating to try and complement something that already exists," she continues. "You're doing something in parallel. It's a weird space to get into, but really interesting." Not only is the space "weird", it's increasingly full of pop stars taking a busman's holiday. Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O composed the music for Spike Jonze's forthcoming adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have composed the score for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, while Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough) has written the soundtrack to Caroline Aherne's new full-length feature The Fattest Man in Britain. Even Jarvis Cocker made a humble offering to Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox.
THE DUO BEHINDGoldfrapp initially got involved in Nowhere Boyas a favour. "Sam asked if we could help," says Gregory. "They were tearing their hair out trying to get the edit right, so we gave them a scattering of little things on the proviso that if it worked, great, if not, no problem." Their involvement grew until they found themselves completely committed to the film: "We were slightly freaking out because we were in the middle of our own album, but it seemed too good an opportunity to miss." Karen O, meanwhile, used to go out with Jonze, and the two remain friends, but "in the end I was there for one reason", she says. "To make music for a beautiful movie based on a seminal children's book." Gough - who was specifically targeted by Aherne and her collaborator, Jeff Pope - says he was "chuffed" to be asked to contribute to the story of a tragically obese man who hasn't left the house for 22 years. He recognised an affinity with Aherne's work. "Sad but uplifting is my genre, too . . . I cried halfway through the script. I stopped, picked up my guitar and wrote the first theme." Although there's next to no money to be made in writing for film, and all along the line the musician's vision is subordinate to that of directors, editors and producers, the chance to be a mere cog in a much larger machine seems to offer welcome relief from the essentially solipsistic nature of songwriting. All that autonomy, freedom of expression and relentless self-analysis can be burdensome.
The call from Aherne rescued Gough from a three-year period of acute self-consciousness following his last record, Born in the UK, during which he had avoided the studio entirely. Writing for film was a way to escape the inside of his own head.
“One of the hardest things as an artist or musician is that you’re expressing yourself, and you sometimes feel you’re not ready to do that,” he says. “When something like this comes along, you can detach yourself from it emotionally. I felt attached in many ways, but when you’re writing music for someone else, you can step back. Basically, it’s not about me – that’s what makes it easier. Trying to please other people is different and enjoyable.”
The compositional process is often less about literally matching each note to the action on the screen, and more about capturing a sense of the underlying atmosphere and emotion. Karen O and her collaborators, a scattering of US indie-rock alumni, would convene each day in a “rundown studio in Echo Park, LA, and more or less improvise music based on my gut reaction to raw footage we were given by Spike”, she says. “The process was all over the place, orchestrated in a free-form, very informal way. The best music came out of working towards a specific emotional theme – say, Max’s longing and isolation – rather than a specific scene. It’s the closest thing to method acting, getting to dangerous and vulnerable feelings.”
Nowhere Boy, on the other hand, was "very much about understatement," says Goldfrapp. "It's an intense drama, and we tried to underscore the moods and tensions of this dysfunctional family in a way that didn't get in the way. My personality isn't present. There are vocals, but used to give femininity to the character of [Lennon's mother] Julia." A vital aspect of getting the music right was pointedly ignoring the elephant – or rather, the walrus – in the room. In the case of Nowhere Boy, "we wanted to avoid [The Beatles] at all costs," says Gregory. "Some chord sequences came out and it was like, 'Oh no, that's All You Need Is Love, isn't it? We can't have that!' It's not about The Beatles, it's very much about an adolescent who is the young John Lennon but doesn't have that clear musical identity yet."
The democratic necessity of film-making may be a worthy and rewarding one, but it brings major creative compromises. “The most beautiful piece of music, if it doesn’t fit the picture, bye bye,” sighs Gregory. He recalls one memorable screening when “suddenly we were face-to-face with all the strange bods, executive producers, and they all had opinions”.
“But they were all really bloody good opinions, and they really know their stuff,” Goldfrapp chips in. “We heard some horrendous stories, about some guy who worked on a film for two years, slogging his guts out, and then got sacked. By comparison, we had an amazing time. They could hear what we were trying to do and trusted us.”
Nowhere Boyis a low-budget, independent Brit-flick. Gough's experience writing the soundtrack for About a Boy, the 2002 adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel, starring Hugh Grant, was rather different. Packing his anorak and tea-cosy hat and heading to Hollywood, he admits he was "nearly sacked four or five times. People were like, 'Who's this weird English guy doing our music? Let's get Hans Zimmer to do it.' But [directors] the Weitz brothers were so behind me and so helpful." Even with Aherne – whom he regards as a kindred spirit and a "joy to work with" – things became tense. Near the end, "Caroline came in and criticised some of the stuff I'd done for scenes. We argued, and I won. The next day she texted me and said, 'I'm really sorry, you were right.' But it got to the point of me saying, 'Oh, let someone else do the music, then.'" Clint Mansell, former frontman of English "grebo" rock band Pop Will Eat Itself and once a Top of the PopsTV show regular, is now an old hand at turning out elegant movie scores, working regularly with Darren Aronofsky ( Pi, The Wrestler) and on Duncan Jones's award-winning Moon.
Based in LA for nearly a decade, he has experienced his fair share of tussles with the studios. “I worked on one film where the producer told me he wanted something more neutral,” he says. “Neutral? They’re frightened of emotion, basically. Compromise is a part of it, but my best work comes when it’s a very close creative team. If you find the right person and project, you end up with something you could never have thought of on your own, and that’s the kind of magic I’m looking for.”
WHEN POP MUSICIANSventure into this kind of territory, there's often a suspicion that it's because the humble three-minute symphony is no longer quite good enough. Mansell certainly regards writing music for movies as a clear step forward. "I was getting to an age where I found the format of verse-chorus-verse so dull, so nullifying," he says. "I'd been doing it for so long. Part of the thing about being in a band is: that's your sound, OK, stick with it. You keep regurgitating the same ideas. Scoring required a different impetus and a different set of requirements. After my third or fourth film I realised that, while you can have a style, it has to be different each time. What works on piano for one film might not work for another. It's very liberating."
For Gough, the freedom comes not from rejecting the conventions of song structure but from being forced to approach his music from various angles, dissecting it, changing tempos, styles and instrumentation. Film also offers the opportunity to reach beyond a musician's natural constituency. Go to Spotify and type in "Badly Drawn Boy", and by far the most popular track is Something to Talk About, the main theme from About a Boy.The album, too, is his most successful. "I've had more payback from that than anything else in terms of the music getting used on other films or on TV," he says. "You don't account for that when you're doing it, but it has an emotion that lives on."
The soundtrack album, however, can be a frustrating beast, neither fish nor fowl. Gough is releasing the music from The Fattest Man in Britain, but he emphasises that "it's no big deal, I'm not hoping for big things". Karen O, on the other hand, has also released the songs from Where the Wild Things Areand is convinced that it can be enjoyed on its own terms. "I'm happy that there's a body of work that can be appreciated in and outside of the film," she says. "It was supposed to have some pop appeal that didn't pander to little kids alone but to everyone. If people like the music and it has a life of its own, I'm happy, because we put so much f***ing heart into it. The song Hideawayis one of the best I've ever been a part of writing."
There are no plans to release the Nowhere Boyscore because, says Gregory, the music isn't song-based. "I'm not sure how relevant it is without the film. It's a lot of long, held notes and plinks on the piano." Instead, they're hoping to finish the new Goldfrapp record before Christmas, describing it as "a lot more up" than their last, Seventh Tree. They agree that working on the film brought fresh ideas and a new impetus to their day job.
Similarly, for Karen O the process of writing for her own project or for someone else’s film ultimately “all blurs together. I’m never sure why I started writing music in the first place, and the mystery of that prevails through writing for a storyline and narrative. I leave it up to uncertain gut reactions and catalysts. I thought the only way to be even remotely successful in making empathic music for the movie was to make it as personal as possible. To make it ours.” (– Guardian service)
Where the Wild Things Are Original Motion Picture Soundtrackby Karen O and the Kids is on Polydor; a collection of the film music of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, White Lunar, is on Mute. Clint Mansell's soundtrack to Moonis on Black Records
