Golden Oldies
SOUNDTRACKS TO DIE FOR
When I was nine, my father took me to a film and then I didn’t sleep for two years.
That was down to the shark in Jaws, yes, but I was mainly traumatised by the soundtrack that accompanied the images of the 20-foot fibreglass model and the blood in the water. Even now, I can’t hear that sinister pulse of the tuba, going dun nun … dun nun … DUN NUN with horrifying urgency, without being teleported back to my childhood bedroom in Brussels, when I was too terrified to go to the loo in case a great white reared up from the bowl and bit my bottom.
Unforgettable. As it’s awards season, then, and there’s still no live music, I thought we could pause to celebrate the best film music in the best magazine in the world (© Graydon Carter) while giving an overdue hat tip to the Oscarwinning young gun (only 53) who is sweeping all before him in rock and composition. That’s even though he is called Atticus, went to Eton with at least two of my brothers, and was an exact contemporary of David Cameron.
Everyone has his or her favourites when it comes to scores. As there are so many, let us exclude music that was not composed for a film (eg Rachmaninov for Brief Encounter).
We can include Geoffrey Burgon’s music for Brideshead Revisited, Maurice Jarre’s ‘Lara’s Theme’ for Dr Zhivago (‘Tara’s Theme’ in Gone with the Wind is in most people’s top 100 too). I’d list the delicate sobbing piano of Love Story by Francis Lai, the oeuvres of James Horner, Enrico Morricone, John Barry, Michael Nyman and Rachel Portman, plus all the James Bond themes. The young Johnsons were brought up on Bond as well as Jaws and The Poseidon Adventure – that was pretty much the sum total of our cinematic and musical education.
With the Baftas on 11th April, many of you reading this will know the results – I don’t at the time of writing. Still, it’s time to add another star to the walk of fame for the aforementioned Atticus Ross. He won a Golden Globe last month, has been nominated for two Baftas and has already bagged an Oscar, for The Social Network in 2010.
Not only is he up with the greats of silver screen and orchestra pit; Ross also gigs with the happening Scottish postrock group Mogwai and is one half of the Nine Inch Nails.
I can hear you shouting, ‘But Star Wars! And The Godfather!’ I will give you those, of course. Classics, as so many of our picks are.
Films can be made on our phones these days, and scores recorded on laptops. I admit I can’t remember any recent scores, not even those composed by the talented Mr Ross.
But if anyone says The Godfather, The Pink Panther or Jaws, the opening bars dance into my head from decades back.