Magical Musical Tour: Rock and Pop in Film Soundtracks.
Justice, Andrew
Magical Musical Tour: Rock and Pop in Film Soundtracks. By K. J. Donnelly. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. [vii, 207 p. ISBN 9781628921281 (hardcover), $100; ISBN 9781628927481 (paperback), $29.95; ISBN 9781628927146 (e-book), $25.99.] Notes, bibliography, index.
While recent scholarship has given due individual focus to film soundtracks, rock 'n' roll, and popular music, a volume examining their intersection is certainly a welcome addition to the canon. K. J. (Kevin) Donnelly, a Reader in Film at the University of Southampton, discusses several areas in this vein; overall, the book is a cleanly written survey of topics that (in this reviewer's experience) are all generally familiar, yet Donnelly regularly includes a sub-discussion or reference that entices the reader to pursue further study.
The book's introduction provides an overview of some larger concepts within the discourse of film soundtracks, including the basic notion that music and film images should not be thought of as two distinct areas, but rather a merged entity . Hollywood-produced musicals reached an apex in the late 1940s through the early 1950s, accompanied by a decline in the sales of show songs, in direct contrast to the emergence of rock 'n' roll records. The success in the 1960s of Cliff Richard's films in England and beach movies in the United States eventually gave way to an "art mode of production" (p. 5) that transitioned rock music away from its status as a niche genre toward recognition as an official branch of pop music. By the 1970s, rock music was considered different from "show business," and the evolving counterculture served as impetus for rock documentaries, with rock musicals and operas solidifying that artistic status. Pairing films with pop songs became (le rigueur for marketing in the 1980s, tapping into younger viewers with high school movies and expanding techniques learned from MTV; the 1990s saw more films concerned with rock's (relatively recent) past, and the early twenty-first century enjoyed a renaissance of dance movies.
Donnelly spends some time addressing subtler issues (such as the advent of the music video) that rejuvenated music (and video), while noting how rock and pop are epitomized by the strain between creativity and commerce. While studio technologies behind the production of classical musicals resulted in idealized products grounded in recognizable sequences and using well-known actors, creators of pop and rock musicals were challenged with negotiating the dual modes of realtime performance (where on-screen images show the simultaneous production of sounds being heard) with lip synching. Citing the work of Rick Altman (p. 11), Donnelly discusses the concept of "audio dissolve" and how the emergence of music into the fore ground-a development that influenced movements and images, much the opposite of traditional filmmaking-combined with audiovisual aesthetics to create a convergence of pop and rock with traditional film scoring. This development tends toward a lack of subtlety, with emphasis on drumbeats and a domination of sound over image as it becomes more autonomous from pictures on the screen.
Donnelly devotes each chapter to an artist or trend within pop film soundtracks, beginning logically with The Beatles. For movies that followed, A Hard Day's Night provided several models, including focus on live performance, a parade of personalities for the artists, use of a strong title sequence, and a climactic conclusion (in this case, the concert broadcast). Help! offered the distinct additions of color film and exotic locations; however, the movie was still constructed around framing the songs. Donnelly touches on two of the film's most memorable sequences: the skiing "music video" for "Ticket to Ride," and the outdoor recording session (with military protection) on Salisbury Plain. Both films share the tension between creation of a dramatic narrative, in which the band members evolve from simple pop stars to songwriters composing for their own art, to simple showcasing of the band and its music.
Exploring psychedelia and the silver screen, Donnelly surveys American efforts (such as Roger Gorman's The Trip, Psych Out starring Jack Nicholson, and of course Easy Rider) as well as British films (Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour, and Performance starring Mick Jagger) without delving too deeply into any of them. The exception is Wonderwall, which boasts a full score by George Harrison, praised by Donnelly as a paramount example of psychedelia on film (p. 40). The chapter on Pink Floyd's interaction with film-soundtracks to More, La Vallee, and Zabriskie Point; material from Dark Side of the Moon that was originally scored for a movie; and The Waifs status an album that subsequently inspired Alan Parker's film-primarily discusses the band's early stage shows and extended musical pieces with accompanying psychedelic light design. Donnelly notes that Adrian Maben's Live at Pompeii serves as an example of images accompanying live music performance, while the interspersed studio interviews and sequences (filmed during the recording of Dark Side) represent the band's ability to occupy both environments.
The chapter on rock documentaries emphasizes their origins as event-based films that are more than mere musical performances, following the aforementioned counterculture aesthetic. The festivals of Monterey, Woodstock, Altamont, and the Concert for Bangladesh all helped to create a unique form that supplemented live performance footage with interviews, backstage moments, and interactions with fans, all with an increasing reliance on handheld cameras. A boom in record sales during the 1970s drove features such as Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same and Emerson Lake and Palmer's visual effects-laden Pictures at an Exhibition. A slump in the 1980s, due to the popularity of MTV and the widespread use of VMS tapes, still could not hold back the energy of films in connection with punk bands such as The Sex Pistols or The Clash. This energy is also evident in the inclusion of Los Angeles-area bands in Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style. Stop Making Sense by Jonathan Demme and The Talking Heads, and even Rob Reiner's mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap.
Turning to Blaxploitation films, Donnelly notes that, in lieu of drawing from scoring conventions, these soundtracks were situated toward showcasing popular musicians who could provide dramatic music to be placed as a frame onto the images. Rhythmic scoring in movies like Shaft, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Super Ely, and Across 110th Street employs beats and grooves that function to drive the onscreen narrative; their effect can be seen in Lalo Schifrin's scores to Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, and Enter the Dragon. In contrast, the chapter on David Bowie looks at how his attempt to score The Man Who Fell to Earth was not used in the film's final version, although material appeared on his albums Low and Station to Station. Created for "Bowie the Star," the movie ultimately bridged his Plastic Soul (Ziggy Stardust) and White Duke (Berlin Trilogy) periods; its plot can be said to mirror Bowie's life, although Donnelly notes other allusions to historical figures. Although Bowie would move on to more classically inspired film scores such as Lisztomania, aspects of his work for The Man Who Fell to Earth appear in Philip Glass' Symphony No. 1 ("Low"), and the film remains a mythic sample of culture occupying a place between the cinematic and real worlds.
Donnelly's chapter on the soundtracks for Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns as well as Joel Schumacher's Batman Former and Batman and Robin explores the interaction of composed scores with popular song. Although they were marketed as two separate soundtracks, Danny Elfman's score and Prince's songs for Batman interact with the film on aesthetic, commercial, and narrative levels, with Elfman's score resembling classic scores via the use of leitmotifs. Batman Returns features much less pop music; instead Elfman overworks traditional techniques until the effect reaches parody, which Donnelly terms a "future version of the Classical Hollywood film score" (p. 114). Elliot Goldenthal composed a new Batman theme for Batman Forever that attempted to match the film's comedic-dramatic affect; however, the songs by U2 and Seal (accompanied by other pop songs) were responsible for driving soundtrack sales. Batman and Robin features a similar palette, although the soundtrack marketed for purchase includes many songs that were inspired by the movie, but did not necessarily appear in it.
Considering rock musicians who became film composers, Donnelly includes career swapping and "classical training" when approaching the scores of Paul McCartney, Sting, Roger Daltrey, and Madonna, among many others. He also examines somewhat recent case studies where pop and rock musicians were transmuted into composers of incidental music such as AIR for The Virgin Suicides, Cliff Martinez for the films of Steven Soderbergh, and Charlie Clouser for the Saw series. He also discusses how changing aesthetics from a rigid structure of the pop album to the freedom of film scoring are enticing to musicians (even Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood participated in the film There Will Be Blood), and points to more recent practices of beat-dominant scores, including the Jason Bourne series. Run Lola Run, and Tron: Legacy (scored by Daft Punk).
Donnelly's final chapters are surveys of soundtracks that are essentially compilations of "hip songs" (The Graduate, American Graffiti, The Big Chill, Forrest Gump, Trainspotting, John Hughes and Quentin Tarantino films, etc.) and a brief investigation into the presence (or lack thereof) of Schoolly D.'s controversial hip-hop song, "Signifyin' Rapper," in Bad Lieutenant. Observing that the compilations happily partake in "cultural recycling" for commercial if not narrative reasons, Donnelly briefly delves into a contrast with that phenomenon (censorship), touching on the growing social anxiety over gangsta rap in the 1990s and the Parents Music Resource Center. While Schoolly D's song was ultimately removed from the film and most commercial copies, due to an unauthorized usage of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir," Donnelly takes care to highlight the effect of its removal on the experience of watching the movie by paraphrasing Michel Chion: if you change the music, you change the film (p. 159).
If there is a weakness to this book, it may be that nearly every chapter could be turned into its own book-length study of the subject in question. Donnelly deftly balances mention of all of the personalities and titles one might expect (or hope) to see with closer investigation of certain issues, but at no point did this reader wish he would stop writing about a particular topic. The chapters themselves may not be Dahlhaus-ian founts of dense prose crammed with postmodern meaning, but there is plenty of fodder for further research: movies to watch, soundtracks to hear, scholarship to read. Donnelly appears to have tapped into an area that excitedly awaits additional curious and passionate intellects. Let us hope that he (and others) continue in due course.
Andrew Justice
University of Southern California
