SEPT/OCT 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM SEPT/OCT 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM

n the 1960s and early ’70s, pop musicians tend to come from a guitarist Wayne Kramer rocked wider range of life experiences,” says audiences across America as Mothersbaugh, whose recent scores part of the legendarily raucous include this summer’s Ramona and IMC5. The Detroit band’s aggressive Beezus. “There’s something to be said brand of proto-punk remains influential about opening up the film composing for its intensity and rebellious spirit. world to people who didn’t necessarily In the last few years, Kramer has receive their training at Juilliard.” settled into a very different musical Hollywood’s classic orchestral occupation: composing music for scores, written by trained masters of films and television. “It incorporates their craft, are a rich part of film history. the best parts of being in a band,” says What would Jaws be like without Kramer, who is currently scoring the John Williams’ menacing, two-note second season of the HBO comedy “ba-dum,” or Psycho without Bernard series Eastbound & Down. “You get Herrmann’s stabbing strings? But to be a part of this mosaic art form.” like the shift from black and white to Kramer is only part of a growing color or the recent forays into 3-D list of rockers who have lately turned filmmaking, the methods used to tell a their talents toward film music story inevitably evolve. The notion that composition. Many of the artists movie scores should always derive credited with giving today’s movies from a symphonic tradition is simply their musical voice didn’t get their start not true anymore. in a cavernous orchestra hall writing for “There are always attempts to the philharmonic but in sweaty clubs make film music more modern and playing rock ’n’ roll for excited fans. current, and other times it falls back The phenomenon isn’t entirely on traditional patterns. It’s always new—George Harrison scored the swinging back and forth,” says movie Wonderwall back in 1968, composer Paul Haslinger, a former Pink Floyd composed the soundtracks member of the electronic group for several movies in the late 1960s Tangerine Dream, which first made and early 1970s, and artists like Peter its mark with the heavily synthesized Gabriel, Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder scores to Michael Mann’s Thief in and Mark Knopfler have periodically 1981 and Ridley Scott’s Legend in turned to film composing over the last 1985. As a solo composer, Haslinger several decades. Randy Newman long has brought a rock ’n’ roll sensibility ago established himself as a movie to the gonzo action films Crank and composer of note, and it’s no wonder— Shoot ’Em Up. “It’s been shown three of his uncles were in the same that musicians from different genres line of work. can come and have a tremendous But the modern model for impact on film,” says Academy Award- the rocker-turned-film-composer is nominated composer Mark Isham former Oingo Boingo frontman Danny (Crash, A River Runs Through It). Elfman, who rose to fame in the late “Constantly returning to Late Romantic 1980s creating music for movies orchestral music is not necessarily the like Batman, Beetlejuice and Pee- greatest thing to propel film music into Wee’s Big Adventure—all directed the future, and the fact that different by Tim Burton, to whom he remains a experts in different genres can take valued collaborator. Elfman has scored an interest in film music and convert dozens of movies over the last two their knowledge of those genres into decades, including recent hits like effective film music is fantastic.” Alice in Wonderland, Wanted and all three Spider-Man movies. His GETTING INTO THE PICTURE success opened doors for everyone It wasn’t always like this. For from Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh the industry’s first several decades, (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) the studio system ruled Hollywood and the Art of Noise’s Anne Dudley with an iron fist. Movie executives (Black Book) to Jon Brion (The controlled the entire moviemaking Other Guys), Jonny Greenwood of process, from scriptwriting to casting Radiohead (There Will Be Blood) and to distribution. But the collapse RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan (Ghost Dog: of the studio system in the 1960s The Way of the Samurai). “Rock and allowed for a new wave of young,

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