Barry Gray's Unique Approach to Film Music

David Raksin, composer of the classic film noir mystery/romance LAURA, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, and dozens of other notable film scores including such low-budget horror/sci fi films as THE UNDYING MONSTER and DR. RENAULT'S SECRET (both 1942), died of heart failure Monday, August 9, at his home in Van Nuys, Calif. He was 92 and had been in failing health for the past several weeks.

One of the most respected of all American film composers, Raksin began his distinguished movie career in 1935, when he came to Hollywood to assist Charlie Chaplin with the music of MODERN TIMES. Raksin's music, recycled from studio music libraries, reappeared in such genre classics as EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956) and 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957), not to mention less than classics like ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU (1957). But Raksin will ever be remembered for his score to LAURA, the main theme of which has passed into American culture as a timeless standard. His last scores were TV-movies, including THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401 (1978), THE DAY AFTER (1983) and LADY IN THE CORNER (1989).

The Film Music Society, where Raksin served as President during the 1990s, has published a detailed obituary including highlights of Raksin's life, both as a composer and educator. Visit:
www.filmmusicsociety.org/news_events/news_events.html

Barry Gray was an innovator. Not only did he compose the uniquely catchy scores to the television series and feature films of Gerry Anderson, whose [IMG7R]Supermarionation concepts brought us such well-remembered series as THUNDERBIRDS, SUPERCAR, FIREBALL XL-5, and others, he was also an early experimenter in electronic music, providing electronic effects for a number of early film scores.

In 1982 I conducted an interview with Barry Gray, one of the last of his career. Gray died in August, 1984. In celebration of his career in science fiction film music, I am pleased to include the complete, unedited version of this interview, only portions of which have previously appeared, in this week's column.

Q: What is your view of the role of music as an element of a film?

Barry Gray: I think, basically, it revolves around impressionism. Impressionism, of course, gives an impression of certain aspects of life, certain situations, certain moods, etc. I think the music in a film should really cover this and create the right atmosphere and add to the film's situations. In other words, the visual will be better with the correct type of music than it would be without.

Q: What is your personal approach to film scoring?

Gray: I try, particularly, to tailor not only to the visual,

Gerry Anderson

© Gerry Anderson

Q: Your background in songwriting has undoubtedly had an influence on your style of writing film themes. Does the writing of a popular melody at all conflict with the need to compose a dramatically structured score to match the visual action?

Gray: I've always written songs and been a songwriter right from my early days, but throughout many of the scores that I did, particularly for Gerry Anderson, I had to write quite a few songs for various episodes. In my case, the writing of a popular melody does not conflict at all, as far as I'm concerned, with the need to compose a dramatically constructed score. Many of the great works for symphony orchestra, analyzed, are very basically a simple popular type of theme, and it is the orchestration that makes it sound so classical and much more involved than the simple melody. This is very obvious in many of the great works. So, I cannot see that if you wrote a popular melody, it would affect your scoring for a symphonic score.

Q: What is your view of the use of electronic music in place of, or in addition to, symphonic music in film score?

Gray: Well, I'm afraid I think that electronic music is mostly suitable only for visuals that are concerned with things as laboratories, space, very weird, and perhaps even strange situations, astral sequences, etc. I'm not enamored of writing orchestral music and producing it on synthesizers. Much as I appreciate the use of a synthesizer today, I don't go along with scoring ordinary music for a bundle of synthesizers, and it does nothing for me at all. An outstanding example, for me, is CHARIOTS OF FIRE. A very simple musical theme, but produced on multi-track synthesizers, and although the music was very suitable to the film, because the action of the film was 'round about 1924. I did not really care for the synthesized sound. Although it had a semblance of a large orchestra, you could still tell that it was synthesized sound. Electronic music, I feel, is very suitable only for the other situations that I've mentioned.

Q: What's your opinion of the "new" style of scoring films in a pop and rock oriented fashion?

Gray: I think in the early start of pop and rock-oriented scores, a lot of the producers looked at the commercial scene of pop and rock music, especially around the early start of the Beatles in the early 60s. I think a lot of them felt that they must have a bit of this cake, and it would be a good idea to get a pop type of score and work on it commercially as the pop groups were doing by selling a whole horde of records. I think a lot of this came about through these producers wanting to have a cut of the action.

I don't really criticize the new style, I think it has a wider spread of the current trend of what has happened over the last twenty years. In many cases, certain types of films, certain types of sequences, the pop music or the pop-oriented type of score is very suitable to fit the action.

Q: You've scored a large amount of science fiction oriented series. What sort of approach do you take in providing music for these futuristic pictures?

Gray: Well, it's what I said before. If the situation is spacey or astral or weird laboratories, scientists, invaders, etc. etc. then I would produce electronic music. But of course at the time that I was starting to write electronic music for the early Gerry Anderson series, producing electronic music was a far different kettle of fish than it is today. At that time, one had to rely on tape manipulation; on using any type of instrument to get a basic sound from which to work. In those days, I used to use an electric steel guitar quite a lot, and Hammond organ, and I worked basically on tape. I also used an audio-sweep oscillator and a ring modulator, which I had specially built. With all these various instruments I would get the basic sound onto tape and then I would start working on it. I used to do things like chopping the head off a piano chord, and then reversing one side of the chord and splicing it onto itself, so that one could get a very slow-sounding approach, which rose in crescendo to the top of the chord, and it would fade out again. There's quite a lot of work, and it took a long time to do even a short section. Of course today, with the advent of vocoders, synthesizers, and what-have-you, there's no problem because one can produce these things very quickly.

Q: Had the scoring of a science fiction show like SUPERCAR at all influenced your use of electronic effects in the orchestration? In other words, if it hadn't been science fiction, do you think you would still have gotten into electronic music?

Gray: My love in music is scoring and orchestrating for large symphony orchestra. But from early days I have had an interest and a great

SPACE: 1999

© 2001 A&E Home Video

Q: Your use of electronic scoring seems to have been dominated by a melodic structure. What's your view of atonal scoring, in which melody is forsaken in exchange for weird atmospheric effects?

Gray: I am not partial to actual melody in electronic music, when it's supposed to be creating weird or astral or spacey effects. In the case of some of the electronic music, in things like UFO, I've used and perhaps done a slight melodic connection with the previous music that's gone on in the episode of the series. But generally most of my electronic music has been what I call electronic effects rather than music.

Q: Did the

SUPERCAR: THE COMPLETE SERIES

© 2003 A&E Home Video

Gray: Well, in the very early days of the Gerry Anderson shows it was virtually Gerry's idea not to write kiddie music for the puppet shows, and I should not let the fact that the shows were puppets affect the music at all. I should write as one would for a film, in the normal way, and this is what I always did. I never wrote down to the children. I scored as if I felt, in other words, I treated the puppets as if they were real people. And that was what we did more or less throughout the whole of those series.

Q: Did you approach to the THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO feature differ at all from that of the TV series, other than that it was a large orchestra?

Gray: It's a rather humorous little story that when THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO was going to go into production, Gerry called me into his office,

Gerry Anderson's classic SuperMarionation TV show THUNDERBIRDS on CD

© 2003 Silva Screen

I must say that it was a most enjoyable score to do, and mostly enjoyable sessions. We got very, very excellent recording which was done by my old friend Keith Grant at Olympic studios in Barnes, London. We also recorded the LP.

Q: SPACE: 1999

Barry Gray's Super Mariation score for CAPTAIN SCARLET

© 2003 Silva Screen Records

Gray: My involvement with each episode was very slight. Because of the musical budget, they only recorded a minimum number of sessions for the series as were required by the musicians' union. So the music editor used to lay music for different episodes either from music that we'd done before for other episodes, or he was allowed to call on library music when he was short of music. This is how the other pieces of music came into the series.

Q: For DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS and ISLAND OF TERROR, Malcolm Lockyer wrote the score while you provided the electronic music. How did this collaboration work? Were you satisfied with the results?

Gray: In both cases, I was given the sequence where the electronic music was going to be required, and I supplied the music on tape to the film editor. It was as simple as that. After being transferred to 35mm magnetic film, he laid them accordingly to each film. I think they worked quite well, though I didn't particularly like the idea of ISLAND OF TERROR. It wasn't my cup of tea at all.

Q: What's your opinion of other recent electronic film scores such as HALLOWEEN, THE SHINING and ALTERED STATES? Are you pleased with current trends in film music and the resurgence of the symphonic score?

Gray: The three films you mentioned I have not yet seen. Of course I think HALLOWEEN has only started to be shown over here. But I suppose I'll be seeing them within the next month or two and I can probably answer this question better then. As far as being pleased with current trends in film music, I would say that I am pleased with the way things have gone. I liked STAR WARS' score, I liked SUPERMAN's score. I've heard some very good film scores, and some very poor ones.

Q: Lastly, what are your immediate plans for film scoring, having been absent for so long?

Gray: I would prefer to do a meaty story rather than a space theme film. I would like to do a really good meaty film. Gerry Anderson asked me a few months ago if I would compose and direct the music for a new series that he's hoping to get off the ground in this new year [1982]. Whether he will get it off the ground, I don't know. I hope he does.