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FILM SCORE MONTHLY – May 2013
Reconstructing Goldsmith: The Salamander
Bringing back to life a classic score to a non-classic film.
By Chris Hadley
Throughout his legendary career, Jerry Goldsmith was known for his music for some of
cinema’s finest and most well-remembered films, includingPatton, Planet of the Apes,
Alien, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Omen, just to name a few. Yet, despite
those successes, the composer is just as known (at least in film music circles) for his
scores for movies that never quite achieved the lofty standards of those
aforementioned classics. More often than not, Goldsmith con ributed music that rose
well above the otherwise lackluster qualities of the films themselves. His action-packed
score for the 1981 film adaptation of Morris L. West’s best-selling novel The Salamander
is such an example.
The novel was originally adapted into a screenplay, first by Twilight Zone creator Rod
Serling (who passed away soon afterward), and then by screenwriter Robert Katz.
Filmed on location in Italy, and directed by Oscar-winning film editor Peter Zinner, The
Salamander revolves around an Italian police detective, Dante Matucci (played by Italian
cinema icon Franco Nero) who, with the help of Polish agent Lili Anders (Sybil Danning),
wealthy industrialist Bruno Manzini (Oscar-winner Anthony Quinn), and his older
brother, Officer Steffanelli (Oscar-winner Martin Balsam), investigates a series of
murders, each linked to a plot by neo-fascists to overthrow the government. The
perpetrators leave behind a card, featuring a picture of a salamander, at the scene of
each crime.
The film also features Eli Wallach as General Leporello, the leader of the fascist coup
attempt. In addition, horror legend Christopher Lee portrays Dante’s superior, director
of counterintelligence Prince Baldasari, while Italian bombshell Claudia Cardinale plays
Wallach’s estranged wife, Elena. Cleavon Little (best remembered as Sheriff Bart in
Blazing Saddles) also appears as Dante’s old friend, U.S. Marine Carl Malinowski.
Rounding out the cast is character actor Paul Smith, who, as before in 1978’s Midnight
Express, plays a malevolent torturer, known in this film as “The Surgeon.”
Despite being based on a best-selling novel, and featuring an all-star cast, the debut of
the film was fraught with difficulties. Originally, it was to be released by United Artists,
which went bankrupt after the disastrous performance of that year’s Heaven’s Gate.
Eventually, the movie was released overseas by Lord Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment,
which itself was bankrupted by two equally colossal flops, both premiering, and then
disappearing, within a span of six weeks in 1980: the post-disco fiasco Can’t Stop the
Music, and the disastrous production of Raise the Titanic. Incredibly, The Salamander
won best picture and screenplay honours at the 1983 Avellino Neorealism Film Festival
in Avellino, Italy.
In May of that year, the film was finally released in American theatres, only to be
lambasted by moviegoers and critics, primarily for its slow pace and heavy reliance on
exposition, not to mention a lack of the biggest thing an action film can have—action. In
his review of the film for the New York Times, noted critic Vincent Canby called it “a
comatose melodrama,” saying that despite the entire film taking place in Italy, it was “so
completely without character, national and individual, that it could have been produced
on the Isle of Wight,” and said of Zinner’s direction, “It’s not exactly a feather in his cap,
or, for that matter, anybody else’s.”
While the movie itself has mostly disappeared into obscurity, the action-packed
orchestral/synth hybrid score has long been a favourite of film music fans. Originally
recorded in Rome, Goldsmith’s score for The Salamander came at one of the most active
periods of his career. That same year, he provided memorable music for four major
theatrical releases: the sci-fi thriller Outland, the romantic drama Raggedy Man, the
World War II flop Inchon (yet another example of an excellent Goldsmith score that
deserved to be attached to a better film), and the final chapter of the Omen trilogy, The
Final Conflict (ditto). In addition to those films, Goldsmith also composed the powerful
Emmy-winning score to the four-part TV miniseries Masada, a project he departed after
he scored the first two episodes, due to prior commitments on other projects. (The
remaining two parts were scored by his friend and colleague, veteran composer Morton
Stevens, who also won an Emmy for his work on the final episode.)
When it came to The Salamander, it seemed that a lost masterpiece would remain that
way for the foreseeable future—until soundtrack producer James Fitzpatrick, and
Goldsmith fan/composer/score re-constructionist Leigh Phillips began work on a new
recording of the score last August. It is a recording that not only does justice to the
original, but also recaptures the quirky and often complex electronics that permeated
Goldsmith’s scores throughout much of the mid-to-late ’70s and ’80s. These varied
elements come together in a stunning new recording of The Salamander, released as
the second in the Tadlow/Prometheus series of new recordings of Goldsmith scores,
following on the heels of his 1967 western Hour of the Gun.
The Producers: (left to right) Nic Raine, Leigh Phillips and James Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick was first approached by Prometheus chief Luc Van De Ven to begin a new
series of recordings of classic Goldsmith scores. In the midst of a gusher of new releases
of original soundtracks by the composer, Van De Ven focused on music that either didn’t
exist in its original form, or was previously released with fair to poor sound quality (in
this case, Hour of the Gun and The Salamander). Fitzpatrick first saw the 1981 film last
May, and explains, “I knew of the film, and that apparently it was pretty dreadful!
Despite this, I felt that Goldsmith always produced quality scores no matter the relative
quality of the films, and it was from a period when he did compose many of fine scores
for less than perfect films, to say the least.”
Fitzpatrick first met Goldsmith during one of his London recording sessions, although at
first, the two didn’t exactly hit it off. “Jerry was initially not an easy man to approach,
unlike Elmer Bernstein or Maurice Jarre, with whom I was very friendly for many years.
But once Jerry realized that I was not just ‘a fan’ and had real interest in his music, then I
think he ‘warmed’ to me. We even had a delightfully long breakfast chat at his hotel
before one of his recording sessions. Later I chaired a Goldsmith Society conference with
Jerry as main guest, along with people like Doug Fake [co-owner of Intrada] and Mike
Ross-Trevor [veteran recording engineer, who also worked with Goldsmith], and he sent
me a very complimentary note when I assembled a virtually complete CD of his score for
Legend [music famously replaced for the 1985 U.S. theatrical release, before finally
being released to American audiences in 2002].”
Phillips, in his younger years as a composition student at Royal Welsh College of Music
and Drama, collaborated with several animators on short films for the International
Animation Festival, in addition to contributing music to student theatre productions. He
also studied for his Masters Degree in Composition for Film & Television at the
University of West London. The young composer became a fan of film music, at first
because of John Williams’ legendary score for Star Wars. Yet, it was Goldsmith, and in
particular, his score to the 1979 horror/thriller Alien, that got him hooked for good. “I
was a little shocked (and maybe a bit horrified?), to say the least, as this sounded
nothing like the other scores that I’d previously heard from him! However, after
repeated listening, the unusual harmonic language, the colours and textures that he
drew from the orchestra, really began to fascinate me—I guess that was the score that
was, partly, responsible, for my future interest in avant-garde music.”
His professional career began with work as an arranger/orchestrator for composer John
Ottman, on a proposed orchestral realization of his all-synth score to the 1993 film
Public Access (his first of many collaborations with director Bryan Singer). He first began
working with Fitzpatrick on Tadlow’s award-winning 2008 recording of Ernest Gold’s
Oscar-winning score for the 1960 epic, Exodus, and has been a key element in the
reconstruction of other classic film scores, including Maurice Jarre’s Lawrence of Arabia,
Miklos Rozsa’s Quo Vadis and Basil Poledouris’ scores for Conan the Barbarian and
Conan the Destroyer (all these recordings performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic
Orchestra under the baton of Nic Raine, himself a former orchestrator for legendary
composer, John Barry).
Phillips, who only became aware of the 1981 film upon seeing it listed in Goldsmith’s
filmography, eagerly took on the challenge of reviving the score. With the original
recordings lost forever, and not even a piano reduction of the score in existence,
Fitzpatrick found a DVD of the movie at a market near Smecky Studios in Prague, where
the score would eventually be recorded. Afterward, he approached Phillips to
reconstruct, by ear, Goldsmith’s complete 43-minute score, solely from the DVD’s
English language audio track. “James approached me about The Salamander, just after
completing Quo Vadis—although, at the time, it was very much a case of seeing
whether it was even feasible. I literally sat down with the DVD and track list, labelling
each of the cues, as they appeared, ‘Okay, cloudy, 70% okay,’ etc. By the end of the
process, it was decided that there was enough musical information present to go for it,”
Phillips says.
Goldsmith’s music for The Salamander is a major example of his compact approach to
thematic writing, a style that Phillips quickly admired. “One of the things that I loved
about this score was the clear division, stylistically speaking, in his thematic material.
Everything is so beautifully well defined. Add to that the mileage that he gets from
varying the musical context of those themes/motifs and we have a clear reminder of
why he continues to be such a respected and influential composer; his economic use of
thematic material is just staggering.”
It’s Raine-ing: Nic Raine conducts the Salamander sessions.
The film’s pulsating main titles, scored under a silhouetted animation of a salamander
amidst a blazing fire, begin with a bold, eight-note motif for brass, followed by an
insistent four-note rhythm, first played by timpani, then followed by low strings against
a single repeating piano chord. Metallic, synthesized percussion figures prominently in
the middle section of the cue, as the string rhythm increases in its urgency, before
orchestral percussion and strings continue the feverish pace. The piece concludes
ominously with solo timpani, building strings and synthesized percussion.
Another standout cue follows in the score’s single choral set piece, “Funeral: Requiem
for a General,” an adaptation of the Lacrimosa movement from Mozart’s Requiem
played during the state funeral of the fascists’ first victim, General Pantaleone. Here,
Goldsmith contributes an uplifting, larger than life showpiece for choir, music that
closely resembles his work for The Final Conflict in the same year.
The slithery synth percussion, signifying the movement of the salamander, dominates
the entire score. Key action set pieces include the cues “Woodpecker/Neo-Fascist
Training/Lawyers/Dead People,” plus “Dante Runs Upstairs/The Surgeon” (when Dante
witnesses another victim of the brutal doctor’s methods), “The Car Chase” (one of the
few action sequences in the film, when Dante and Lili are chased by fascist goons), and
“Island Adventure” (when Dante and Lili recover the second set of papers detailing the
takeover plot). Each of those cues serve as prime examples of the composer’s
outstanding action scoring abilities.
The main title theme repeats itself constantly throughout the score, while Goldsmith’s
innovative use of electronics, which were prominent in his mid-’70s to mid-’80s output,
are on full display. His unique instrumentation is exemplified by the surreal cue “Car
Bomb/Torture/Death of the Surgeon,” a terrifying sequence marked by the sound of an
accelerating heartbeat, combined with eerie, synthesized effects. The track ends with an
explosion of brass and percussion, heard during the film’s bizarre “jock strap” fight
sequence. Amidst all the score’s fireworks, a tender love theme (“Dante and Lili”) led by
accordion and strings, brings a much-needed break from the suspenseful nature of the
film. The theme reappears in cues like “Phone Call to Lili/The Forest,” and receives its
fullest orchestral treatment in the score’s conclusion (“Goodbyes/End Titles”), a recap of
the main themes, concluding in a final outburst of brass and synthesized percussion.
With no written or recorded music to go by, Phillips aurally reconstructed the score as
best he could, the only way he could: by listening to the DVD’s audio track, a process
that not only came with its own set of challenges, but also had its share of trial and
error. Recalls Phillips: “Each cue had to be imported into Transcribe (software that takes
the pitch of recorded music and loops selected portions of each cue) and a 5-10 sec
selection highlighted; then, that section would be played again and again and again,
until, any musical information that was needed, was taken down. Sometimes, these
portions had to be severely IQ’d in an attempt to bring the music levels up. However,
there were certain moments that just couldn’t be captured (probably about four to five
minutes worth, in total) due to the extreme use of sound FX. These snippets—the
obscured music—then had to be ‘composed’ in Goldsmith style, by extrapolating the
information either side and writing a suitable ‘link.’ Not ideal, but I tried to not make the
joins too ‘visible,’ or audible, in this case.”
Jerry Lives! The Salamander sessions orchestra.
One of the most difficult cues to recreate, according to Phillips, was the eerie
electronic/orchestral cue for the infamous torture scene, and the aforementioned,
equally infamous “jock strap” fight sequence. “Replicating the electronic timbres was
one of the more time-consuming aspects of the project. The textures that you hear, just
for a portion of, the torture cue, took an entire day to do. It was a case of trawling
through various ‘patches’ in the VSTi banks of Cubase and finding something that was
fairly close to the specific sound, from the film, that I was looking for—then, modifying
that timbre so that it sounded suitably ‘retro’ and ‘analogue.’ After the sounds had been
created, the individual parts, then, had to be programmed so that the orchestra could
synchronize with them on the recording stage—but it still had to sound relatively ‘free,’
as The Salamander is a pre-Midi score.” In many of his scores composed during that
period, Goldsmith created his own unique synthetic sounds with then-state of the art
technology. The score’s finale was equally as difficult to reconstruct, due to the complex
string writing early in the cue, but Phillips managed to pull it off.
The Prometheus album concludes with suites from two other action thrillers scored by
Goldsmith: 1977’s The Cassandra Crossing and the 1974 Sean Connery film Ransom (aka
The Terrorists). Despite the lack of written scores, Fitzpatrick asked Phillips to take a
different approach to these bonus suites. “Because films like The Cassandra Crossing
and Ransom were scored before the days of (the) Sibelius or Finale computer music
notation programs, many composers were not too good at retaining their original
scores, especially if recording abroad, and foreign film companies were not much better
at keeping copies of music, but for these two pieces I wanted Leigh to not so much
exactly reproduce the originals, but create concert pieces that had all the flavor of the
soundtracks, (yet) could stand on their own as pieces of music.”
With the newly transposed Salamander score now written for the 80-piece City of
Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, Goldsmith’s lost masterpiece was now ready
to be revived. Both the complete score to The Salamander, as well as the two suites
from Cassandra and Ransom, were recorded over a period of two- and-a-half days. Led
by Raine, the Prague musicians more than met the challenge of playing Goldsmith’s
music, with an incredible performance that recaptures the frenzy and drama of the
original recordings. The score was digitally recorded and mixed in Pro Tools, with seven
spot microphones and 32 ambient mics spread throughout each section of the
orchestra. When it was all over, Fitzpatrick and Phillips’ hard work paid off, resulting in a
sparkling, exciting new recording that finally fills a major gap in the discography of one
of cinema’s greatest musical masters.
“I take away an incredible amount from each project, just through watching them
work,” says Phillips. “James is a brilliant producer, and Nic is absolutely superb in front
of the orchestra. They just make everything run so smoothly, that it all seems totally
effortless, and the orchestra, themselves; they never fail to amaze me—such a talented
group of players! I’m also lucky enough to work on these scores with my partner,
Rebecca Thomas. She’s been the copyist for all of them and also does a brilliant job of
checking the scores for each cue, to make sure that I haven’t made any horrendous
mistakes!” Fitzpatrick also marvels at Phillips’ incredible abilities. “Leigh is a truly
talented arranger and orchestrator, but far too modest about this amazing talent he has
for reconstructing scores ‘by ear’ if there are no written reference points, like a score or
a sketch to study, and (he is) always enthusiastic, and great fun to have at the actual
recording sessions!”
Both Fitzpatrick and Phillips hope to continue their collaboration and their successful
series of new recordings of classic scores from many composers, including those of
Goldsmith. “I would love to do a new recording of The Blue Max, as it is one of my
favorite scores, and while the original soundtrack is nothing short of superb, after 50
years, I feel it could stand a new, modern version?” wonders Fitzpatrick. Phillips adds, “I
have no real idea what’s planned for the future, but I’d certainly be interested in doing
something like a complete Lionheart—a wonderful score that suffered, badly, in terms
of its performance—or, maybe, an orchestral realization of one of his ‘synth-trilogy’
scores. As far as something ‘non-Goldsmith’ is concerned, I’d have to say [Harry]
Sukman’s Salem’s Lot, the 1979 horror TV miniseries, based on the Stephen King novel.”
Phillips also hopes to work with some of today’s film music heavyweights in the future.
“I’d particularly jump at the chance to orchestrate for composers such as Chris Young,
David Newman or Harry Gregson-Williams; I have a huge amount of respect and
fondness for their work!”
Phillips’ miraculous re-construction of The Salamander will almost certainly be a
highlight on his resume, not to mention one of the landmark recordings of this year, or
any year. Even today, almost 10 years after his passing, the music of Jerry Goldsmith
endures. It is a legacy exemplified by a flurry of new releases, both in original and newly
recorded form, from Hour of the Gun, to the recent Intrada releases of his ’60s output,
including such classics as Shock Treatment, Seven Days in May and Fate Is the Hunter,
along with Von Ryan’s Express and The Detective. While The Salamander will never be
regarded as a cinematic triumph, it remains one of Goldsmith’s finest action-suspense
scores. Thanks to the efforts of Fitzpatrick, Van De Ven, Phillips, Raine and the City of
Prague Philharmonic, a long-lost part of the composer’s legacy has finally been
preserved.
—FSMO
Session photos courtesy of Petr Kocanda.