THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN FILM MUSIC 1960s -1990s – Wayne Byrne

It’s said that America’s favorite pastime is…Baseball. However, I believe one of America’s favorite pastimes, if not the favorite, is…going to the movies. For over 100 years, society has looked to the movies for entertainment, relaxation, storytelling, and, for some, an escape. There are many elements of a film that make it enjoyable: directing, acting, storytelling, special effects, and, of course, music. Music in film has taken simple stories, and in some cases, ones that may seem uninteresting, and brought them to life.

In the early years of film, it was not unusual to see someone sit at a piano as the film played, accompanying each scene on the movie screen. Of course, as the film industry evolved, sound was added, which included music. Big orchestral scores by well-known composers eventually led to a new category of films as well, which we know as “Musicals”. Singing and dancing were the exclusive highlights of these features. Soundtracks would later become so popular that record stores would further advance music in the movies by offering complete albums of nearly every film made. Soon, the soundtrack of a film would become nearly as important as the film itself.

The 1960s through the 1990s were significant in that they were a springboard for what would follow with the technology used today to enhance the viewers’ vision and hearing experience further. The deals that are made behind closed doors.The fight for the rights of a song and so much more.

That’s where acclaimed author Wayne Bryne comes in. Wayne and co-author Amanda Kramer have brought the making of music in film to the forefront. In their newly released book, they cover everything you may have wanted to know about when music began in film, musical scores and composers, musicals as film, soundtracks, and the technical side of how these soundtracks were made. There are numerous people in both the film and the music industry who create music for films. In this book, you truly feel as though you’re privy to sitting in on a recording session with the technicians and musicians themselves.

I loved the behind-the-scenes stories, the drama, and the rise of the movie soundtrack from its early beginnings forward. The pivotal era of the 1960s through the 1990s is the main focus for Wayne and Amanda. They captured my interest and made me want to put on a couple of my favorite DVDs and some of my own favorite scores and soundtracks. This book is not only interesting and educational, but entertaining as well.

In short, I’ve always been a fan of the music in films, and have many soundtracks of some of the most enjoyable accompaniments to some of the most impressive films from the 60s through the 90s. This book was a great way to enlighten my understanding and also realize just exactly what lengths are taken to perfect the music that is so vital to bringing a film to the forefront, especially when it comes to the awards from those in the film/music industry for best music score.

I rank this book as one of the most informative and one of the most entertaining reads on this subject. I highly recommend this behind-the-scenes treat to any film and music enthusiast of music in film.

Here is my exclusive interview with author Wayne Byrne discussing the new book, The Evolution of American Film Music ,1960s -1990s

Anthony W. Northrup – Thank you, Wayne, for being with us today. Let’s begin with a recap of what you’ve been working on (books, events, awards, etc) recently.

Wayne Byrne – Thanks for having me back, Tony! Well, in the past twelve months, I have released three new books – last June, McFarland published Roy H. Wagner: A Cinematographer’s Life Beyond the Shadows, and then in September, Bloomsbury published You Can’t Kill the Boogeyman: The Ongoing Halloween Franchise. And just last week, The Evolution of American Film Music, 1960s – 1990s came out. So, I have been extremely busy.

AN – Tell us how this new book came about and what inspired you to write about music in cinema?

WB – It came about quite naturally. It wasn’t a subject I had in mind as something that I really wanted to write about; it came about in a spontaneous moment of inspiration during a late-night chat with my friend Amanda Kramer. We were talking about this period of music and movies that we love: the New Hollywood era of the 60s and 70s. That inevitably led us to talk about how the sound of cinema and music changed in the 80s because of the emergence of the synthesizer. Amanda had personally experienced the rise of electronic music in the 80s, first in college and then in her career as a professional musician. She is a keyboardist and was in the dance-pop band Information Society, so she worked with synthesizers when it was still a relatively new technology. We had just released our book Hired Guns: Portraits of Women in Alternative Music, and we really enjoyed the process; so, as we were talking, I was thinking, “This would be a fascinating topic to write about!” And I said to her, “Why don’t we turn this discussion into another book?” She was up for it, and so I set about getting us a publishing deal, which I did within a couple of weeks.

AN – Amanda has toured with many bands and was a member of the 80s New Wave band, The Psychedelic Furs. How did you meet, and how did you get her involved with this new project?

WB – I first met Amanda 21 years ago at a Psychedelic Furs concert in Dublin. I was a fan of The Furs, but I was also a fan of Amanda because I knew her work with The Golden Palominos and 10,000 Maniacs. I absolutely love the Maniacs’ album In My Tribe, and I had seen footage of Amanda playing those songs and just adored her style and presence. The Golden Palominos are quite obscure in Ireland, but I was a big Bob Mould and Husker Du fan, and because of that, I knew the Golden Palominos album that he guested on, Drunk on Passion, which is an incredible record, and Amanda is the singer on that. I was also aware of the Golden Palominos from one of my favorite songs, ‘Boy (Go)’, which was a single that featured Michael Stipe on vocals. Amazing track. So, I was very aware of Amanda and was excited to meet her. So, after we met in Dublin, we stayed in touch and would meet up whenever she played in Ireland with either The Psychedelic Furs or Siouxsie Sioux. Little did I realize on that day in 2005 that Amanda and I would become close friends and co-authors. I’m deeply proud of what we have achieved together.

AN – How long was the process for this book? Were there any challenges while writing it?

WB – As with all my books, I set the temporal parameter of a year to get all the work done. I think a year is long enough to get one’s ass moving. I don’t recall any challenges; it was one of those books that went smoothly from start to finish. Some books present certain challenges, but this wasn’t one of them. There were no difficult interviewees, and it was a joy to revisit the films that we discussed throughout the book.

AN – There are a lot of amazing interviews and quotes in the book from famous musicians, from composers to band members. Tell us about that part of the process for this book.

WB – We were very fortunate to gather a great lineup of people to contribute to this book. Some of those I brought in myself, having known them from previous books or through mutual friends, and then Amanda was able to secure interviews for us with a lot of people, too, either because she knew them personally or professionally. And then there were a few people that neither of us had met before, but we reached out to them, and they responded kindly to our subject and our request. The thing is that in any book that Amanda and I work on together, we have to get the interviews done within a certain timeframe, as Amanda is on the road with The Psychedelic Furs for a lot of the year. If we need to, we can book interviews around Amanda’s days off if she is in a hotel room, but that limits the times and dates available, so ideally, we try to arrange the interviews within the time that she is at home. There was only one occasion where this became an issue, which was the interview with Steve Dorff. I did the interview myself because Amanda was still stuck on the tour bus; she hadn’t made it to the hotel yet, but because we only had a small window of time with Steve, I went ahead with it myself. Likewise, Amanda interviewed Richard Butler from The Psychedelic Furs herself because I couldn’t do it due to some personal circumstances, which meant I became unavailable at the last minute. Of course, we prefer to do the interviews together, but things like that happen, and it’s fine because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which of us does it or how we do it as long as we get the information that we need.

AN – Were there any contributors you tried to get for the book? And, who was your favorite contributor you enjoyed speaking with the most?

WB – It is hard to pick a favorite. I really enjoyed them all, but I loved that we spoke to someone who was so important to the downtown New York underground No Wave movement, like John Lurie, and then someone from the mainstream Hollywood establishment, like Steve Dorff. It meant we were able to hear from both sides of the filmmaking world and understand how film composers navigate those, respectively. We got pretty much all the people we wanted to speak with, but there were a few that we reached out to who weren’t part of it in the end. We had hoped to get Jimmy Cliff because in the book we discussed the importance of The Harder They Come and its soundtrack, but we never managed to successfully make contact with it. Tarquin Gotch and Doreen Ringer Ross, whom we both interviewed as people who worked behind the scenes (who were a music supervisor and record label executive, respectively), were both wonderful in offering to introduce us to people. So, through them, I reached out to members of The Police – Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers – about contributing because in the book we talk about the fact that in the 80s a lot of rock musicians became film composers, and Stewart and Andy did that. Unfortunately, they were both very busy at the time of contact, so due to scheduling conflicts and pressing deadlines, it meant we didn’t get them on board. But we did manage to get people from the rock world in there, like Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo, David Mansfield from Bob Dylan and Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Richard Butler from The Psychedelic Furs, Anton Sanko from Suzanne Vega, and Thomas Dolby, who is a solo electronic pop artist. And we brought in some guys from the jazz world who became notable film composers: Terence Blanchard, Mark Isham, and John Lurie. So, I’m thrilled with all those people who are now part of this book.

AN – Tom DiCillo wrote the Foreword for this book. Tell us how you and Tom met and his involvement with this book?

WB – Tom DiCillo is one of the most important people in my life. I wouldn’t be doing this interview if it weren’t for him and his films, which are among my very favorites. He is the reason I wrote my first book, The Cinema of Tom DiCillo: Include Me Out, because I wanted a book on Tom DiCillo but couldn’t buy one, so I wrote it. I met Tom during the making of that book because I approached him with the idea of doing the project, and he invited me over to New York; he said he would be happy to spend a week with me going through each of his seven films as the core of my research. So, I visited Tom at his Upper West Side apartment and spent many hours together talking about his career. We ended up becoming very good friends, and I even recorded some music with him. I played guitar and piano on the demos for what would become his first solo album. So, when it came time to ask people about doing the foreword, Amanda and I agreed that Tom would be ideal for many reasons – the first being that he means a lot to me, but also because he is important to our subject, being one of the originators of the American independent movement of the 80s and 90s. And he has also worked on the music for some of his films, so as a director and composer, he understands those roles intimately. So, it has kind of come full circle in a way in sharing another book cover with him; the first time was when he was my subject, and now it is as my collaborator. Totally surreal and thrilling. I love Tom.

AN – You have a wide variety of topics in this book about music in cinema. I was very impressed. Let’s begin with the early years. Do you think music told a better story in the years of Silent films, Talkies, and the black-and-white years of cinema?

WB – I think the role that music played in those years was very different from what it became in the New Hollywood era of the 60s and 70s. In the silent era, the films had to rely on music to say everything that the actors couldn’t, and it is absolutely riveting to look at the films of D.W. Griffith, for example, and see (and hear) how music contributed to the feeling that you were experiencing a real spectacle. And then, as sound-on-film came along and ushered in the Golden Age of Cinema, the composers were working around the additional emotion provided by the spoken word; that changed the dynamic of the relationship between the music and the audience. In the silent days, film music had to carry a greater weight on its shoulders to convey so much emotional information, more than it needed to when dialogue came in. But there were times, even after talkies had long been established, when music had to perform the same role again, especially in more conservative and censorious moments. For example, in the book, we discuss the ingenuity of composer Alex North, who used certain instruments that were played in a very particular way in order to suggest and convey to the audience the steamy sense of sensuality and sexuality that Elia Kazan and his actors couldn’t literally express and depict in A Streetcar Named Desire. Such were the times in the film industry and in American society.

AN – The chapter on music in film in the 1960s was extremely interesting. Do you feel that music in film evolved with the times of the psychedelic era, as well as the war that was happening at the time?

WB – Yes, I definitely think that all those elements of the counterculture era informed the sound of cinema in the 60s. The studio system had changed, they were giving younger filmmakers the keys to the kingdom to make more politically and socially charged films, some of which were mainstream and some were experimental and avant garde, but they appealed to young, engaged, sophisticated, or simply stoned, audiences who were open to a new form of cinema which was being soundtracked by artists of their generation – you had Cat Stevens doing Harold and Maude, Leonard Cohen doing McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Simon and Garfunkel doing The Graduate. Then, with the emergence of the Blaxploitation genre, you had Isaac Hayes doing Shaft, Curtis Mayfield doing Superfly, Marvin Gaye doing Trouble Man, all those great soul soundtracks, which were musically amazing but also highly socio-political in their messaging, so they were important for numerous reasons. And you also had concert films like Monterrey Pop, Woodstock, and Wattstax. But perhaps the most crucial of all the soundtracks, and films, of that era was the one most definitive of the defiance of the counterculture: Easy Rider, for which Dennis Hopper put together a pioneering example of the needle drop compilation soundtrack with a brilliant array of bands and singer-songwriters. It captured the sound of a generation. The seismic shift in American Cinema was no doubt inspired by the seismic shift in American culture as a whole, due to those social and political eruptions that were happening, and we as writers, critics, and viewers are the beneficiaries of that because it really engendered what many consider the greatest period of Hollywood filmmaking.

AN – The soul sounds of the 1970s, I feel, were the true beginning of movie soundtracks that began to skyrocket up the record charts and truly paved the road for the hit soundtracks of the 80′s. What are your thoughts on movie soundtracks? Do you have any favorites you listen to regularly? And what was the first soundtrack you ever bought?

WB – Those soul soundtracks were very important and hugely popular. One could argue that some of them were better than the films themselves. But most of the Blaxploitation films weren’t produced as high art; they were low-budget genre B-films, often gangster dramas and crime thrillers, but what the music did was to highlight the themes of social injustice that were sometimes secondary to the onscreen selling points of sex and violence. The music of Isaac Hayes in Shaft or Curtis Mayfield in Superfly acted almost like a Greek Chorus, singing to us the social and political themes that the films were trying to convey to us, and it was through those songs that the message of the films hit most powerfully and effectively. The first soundtrack that I bought was the one for Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. I wasn’t quite into music until I was a teenager, but when I loved a movie, I wanted to own everything about it that I could, and one of those things was the soundtrack. Then, around the same time, my future brother-in-law gave me a CD copy of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, and that was really influential in terms of the kind of music that I would go on to love. Putting that album on is like stepping into some surreal state, and I just never tire of slipping into that rich artistic realm that David Lynch created with Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. The earliest score that had an effect on me was Jimmy Page’s one that he composed for Death Wish II, and it’s the simplest piece in the whole thing that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up – that eerie two-note harmonic thing that he does on the guitar. It is so unnerving, and was especially so when I saw that film when I was very young. That piece of Page’s Music is more effective and haunting than anything depicted on screen, and that’s saying something because that is an intense and shocking exploitation film…and brilliantly so.

AN – My personal favorite soundtracks were from the 1980s. Hit after hit! Do you feel that 80s soundtracks were in such high demand because of the MTV generation of music videos? Back then, did you prefer the fun soundtracks from films from John Hughes or Fast Times at Ridgemont High type films, or do you prefer immaculate musical soundtracks from composers such as John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Jerry Goldsmith?

WB – Oh, I’m definitely more of a pop soundtrack guy than a classical music guy. John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith are great, but I don’t buy their scores or listen to them outside of watching the films they are in. That’s just my taste; I’ve never been into classical music. Amanda is the opposite, as she is a classically trained musician and lives for classical music, but it’s not for me. I discovered music in a different way, and quite late in life. I started playing music when I was around 17, but I never took a lesson; from the moment I picked up my first instrument, I found that I could play by ear. I don’t know how that worked, especially for someone who was never into music growing up. But when a friend introduced me to punk music, that was it. I discovered this whole other art form, and I have since fallen in love with all sorts of genres from different decades. But the soundtracks that affected me the most were the pop and rock compilation soundtracks of the 80s; they really dictated the kind of bands and artists I wound up loving, and the kind of music I would write and want to perform. You mentioned Hans Zimmer, and he is an interesting composer in terms of considering the contrast between electronic and classical scores – I loved Zimmer’s work in the 80s when he was working almost exclusively with synths. His score for Black Rain is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, but it is entirely electronic, with some embellishments of exotic instrumentation to reflect the Japanese setting of the film. Very similar to his brilliant music on Thelma and Louise, where he scores mostly with synthesizers but adds some subtle southwestern guitar sounds to ground it in its location. It works exquisitely. But then I think he started to lose that identifiable sound somewhere in the 90s after True Romance, which is also fantastic. But once his scores started to sound more classical and orchestral, they started to sound very bland to my ears. I began to lose interest. Classical orchestral scores started to come back in the 90s, I guess because the synthesizer sound very specifically belonged to the 1980s, so it sounded dated very quickly, and filmmakers wanted something more timeless, which classical music is.

AN – A lot of people don’t think about the technical side of making music for films. There’s a lot of hard work, dedication, and long hours to making the perfect soundtrack or musical score for a film. In your book, you discuss the technical side. What did you enjoy most about this part of the music in the film process?

WB – It was certainly an education for me. As I say, Amanda is a musician who has experienced many changes in technology and approaches to recording, so she was able to have some great discussions with our interview subjects, and I learned so much about what goes into the process of writing and producing film music through those conversations. My favorite thing about it all was hearing of the different educational backgrounds of the composers we spoke to and how that informed their work. You had people who were classically trained, and you had people who came from the rock world who were not formally educated. I always find it so interesting when musicians like Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and Danny Elfman from Oingo Boingo make it into the industry on their own terms and with their own distinct aesthetic. Sometimes people resent it when outsiders like that come along and do things their own way and become successful at it; a lot of people didn’t like the way Elfman became huge, and he angered orchestrators and arrangers because his compositions, his melodies, and rhythms were so unusual and not formulaic in the way most scores are composed – just think of his music for The Simpsons or Beetlejuice; those rhythms and melodies are insane and ingenious, and are so identifiably his. And of course, his score for Batman was incredible in its scale and scope; how an unschooled composer created something like that is quite unbelievable. So, I have found that musicians like those who didn’t come up through formal conservatory or classical education composed the most interesting scores because they broke the rules and conventions, and that resulted in scores which are wholly unique within the context of American film music. I just love unconventional stories like that. And part of that is because my path to becoming a writer was quite similar.

AN – There are so many great behind-the-scenes stories from various artists in this book. from such musicians as Thomas Dolby, Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO), Ira Newborn, and many others. Is there a story you can share with us that didn’t make it in the book?

WB – On every book, there are great stories that get edited out for a variety of reasons – perhaps because your subjects realize they said something they shouldn’t have, or because the conversation veered way off topic. Sometimes you end up with a little treasure trove of material that is so interesting and yet is never published because maybe it doesn’t fit the context or support the narrative in a propulsive way. The only thing that didn’t make it into this book and yet was really interesting was some deeper discussion of David Mansfield’s work on Walter Hill’s western Broken Trail. The reason that we didn’t give a huge amount of page space to that was partly because I have a whole section on that very topic in my book on Walter Hill, and the discussion is centered around how a conflict arose between Walter and his star Robert Duvall, because both of them had different ideas on what the score should be – Walter wanted the great Van Dyke Parks to do it and Robert wanted the equally great David Mansfield to do it. So, there was a bit of a power struggle between director and star, and in the end, they made the inspired decision to have Van Dyke and David pair up to compose together, which they had done so before on several films, and the result was an absolutely beautiful score that displays the best of them both. So, because I went deeper into that in my Walter Hill book, we merely alluded to it here and instead focused on other stories of work and collaborations that were important to David’s career and which were more relevant to this book, particularly his work on Heaven’s Gate and his professional relationship with its director, Michael Cimino.

AN – What are your final thoughts you’d like to share with us about this book? Where can readers purchase it?

WB – I just hope that the book allows viewers of movies to hear the music in films differently, to hear the artistry and the intent of what the composer was trying to say, and how the director utilized that intention in helping to tell their story. And thankfully, it is available wherever anybody buys their books, from the high street chain stores to local independents. Of course, people can go to McFarland’s website and order it directly from them, but if you want to support your local bookstore, they might have it on their shelf, and if not, then they can order it in for you.

AN – Lastly, what’s next for Wayne Byrne? Which topic will you be tackling next?

WB – I’m super busy for the next two years with multiple projects. First up is my next release, which is called Reel Americans: Life, Love, Class & Culture in Hollywood Cinema of the Late 20 th Century. I co-wrote it with my friend Carolina Cioara. This will be her first book and my tenth book, so it is a bit of a milestone for both of us. It is also my most personal book to date in that it is entirely analytical, speculative, and wholly critical from our subjective perspective. We didn’t interview any filmmakers for it, and that was a conscious decision that I made because I needed a break from my regular kind of book writing, which is very intense, and also because I didn’t want this to be a “making of” book; it is literally just intellectual interpretations and analyses of films according to our themes. Essentially, I just wanted to sit and watch movies, think about them, and write about what I see in them. Thankfully, I was joined by another great writer and friend who also wanted to sit and watch and think and write about those movies with me. I’m very proud of it and her. At the moment, I’m literally finishing up another book with Amanda, which is called Instrumental Voices: The Boys in the Band, and that is a spiritual follow-up to our first book, Hired Guns: Portraits of Women in Alternative Music. This time, instead of writing about ten female musicians, we’re profiling twenty male musicians. It has been a really interesting project, and we’ve gotten to speak with some great people who have played with the likes of The Cure, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Billy Joel, Carla Bley, Iggy Pop, Cyndi Lauper, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Guns n’ Roses, Duran Duran, The Sun Ra Arkestra, Lester Bowie, World Party, Billy Idol, etc. So, that will be another book coming soon, and I’m very excited for that. Then next month I’m starting my next book, the subject of which is the career of the genius auteur filmmaker George Romero. I love his work, so I can’t wait to revisit it all within the context of discussing his art and its impact on American Cinema. And then I’ve got another couple of projects that I’m in talks with publishers about, the respective subjects being the Dirty Harry franchise and the serious 80s films of Woody Allen. So, I’m going to be busy for a while!

AN – That sounds like a pretty full plate, Wayne. I, for one, look forward to all of these fantastic projects and wish you good luck. Thank you for taking the time today to discuss this new book… and a hearty congratulations!

WB – Thank you for having me, Tony!