Musical Memories: TV Themes
Edge of Darkness was a TV drama made by the BBC in association with Lionheart Television International. It was originally broadcast on BBC2 in six parts in 1985. A mixture of crime drama and political thriller, it revolves around the efforts of a policeman played by Bob Peck to unravel the truth behind the murder of his daughter, played by Joanne Whalley, a great favourite of mind. Peck's investigation lead him into a murky world of government and corporate cover ups and nuclear espionage, pitting him against dark forces that threaten the future of life on earth.
Writer, Troy Kennedy Martin, was greatly influenced by the political climate of the time, dominated by the Thatcher government and the aura of secrecy surrounding the nuclear industry – and by the implication of the Gala hypothesis of environmental, James Lovelock, these combined to his crafting a thriller that mingled real world concerns with mythic and mystical elements.
Edge of Darkness swiftly earned critical acclaim and was re-run on BBC1 it won numerous awards and is often cited as one of the best and most influential pieces of British television drama. A remake starring Mel Gibson appeared in January 2010 set in America.
As well as the gripping nature of the content material, there was a supberb musical score provided by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen, which added another dimention to proceedings. He made a CD of the music The Australian Broadcasting Corporation used the music to illustrate stories of the Chernobyl Disaster the following year. Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen performed the main theme for the 24 nights album recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in 1990/91.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eteUUZ8U4Bs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UxyFuhc9A
David Buckley, born in 1976, is a prolific composer for Film, TV and Computer gaming.
His first introduction to music was as a choirboy performing on Peter Gabriel's score for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. He studied music at Cambridge and moved to Los Angeles around around 2006. He now lives in Santa Monica.
He has collaborated with Harry Gregson-Williams, Danny Elfman, Hansd Zimmer and Rupert Gregson-Williams and also scored many films solely. His films number over 33, TV themes 10 and video game scores at least 5.
He received an Emmy for his music for an American drama series called The Good Wife and the later sequel The Good Fight. This clip is the opening theme music to the Good Fight and I have chosen it for three main reasons, the music, the graphics and the calibre of the drama.
David Lynch was perhaps the first big-name director to bring cinematic production values to the small screen when he launched his TV show ‘Twin Peaks' in 1990. The episodes were scored by his long-time musical collaborator, Angelo Badalamenti. They met on the set of ‘Blue Velvet', where Badalamenti had been employed as Isabella Rossellini's singing coach, but he ended up scoring not just this film, but just about all of Lynch's subsequent films.
The theme tune for ‘Twin Peaks' was said to have been written in 20 minutes. It won the Grammy that year and helped to define the mood of the show, a little nostalgic, a bit off-centre and unsettling: Twin Peaks Intro High Quality - YouTube . Lynch said of it: "It's the mood of the whole piece. It is Twin Peaks". The show is perhaps best known for its surrealism and the dream sequences of the "red room". Here's the American jazz vocalist Jimmy Scott singing ‘Sycamore Trees' in the show (with music by Badalamenti and lyrics by Lynch: warning , flashing images): Jimmy Scott-Sycamore Trees (Twin Peaks) - YouTube . And to illustrate how the musical score works so well with the images on screen, here's a scene from the very first episode when the parents of Laura Palmer first hear that their daughter has been murdered: Twin Peaks - Leland gets the news that Laura is dead - YouTube . I don't think there's ever been such an original TV series and Badalamenti had a lot to do with that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7d0Lm_31BE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vOg0HyJpvI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzL-LC1oTC0
I have chosen ‘Staccato's Theme' composed by Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004) for the American television series ‘Johnny Staccato' , which ran on NBC in the United States from 10th September 1959 through to 24th March 1960 and by the end of 1959 was being shown on British television on the ITV London Rediffusion network.
Elmer Bernstein's ‘Staccato's Theme' , the title music for ‘Johnny Staccato' , proved popular in Britain and, after being released as a ‘single', it reached No. 4 in the UK's Official Singles Chart on 15th January 1960. I remember that my older brother, John, bought the ‘Staccato's Theme' record. The ‘B' side carried ‘The Jazz at Waldo's' , another piece of music from the ‘Johnny Staccato' television series, again " composed and conducted" by Elmer Bernstein .
‘Staccato's Theme' composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ToPDJjfrY
Johnnny Staccato was an American-made television series which starred John Cassavetes as the titular character, a jazz pianist who doubles as a private detective. Unlike most private detectives on television, Johnny Staccato does not operate from an office but instead works from a Greenwich Village jazz club belonging to his friend, ‘Waldo' (Eduardo Ciannelli). Although set in New York, ‘Johnny Staccato' was filmed largely in Los Angeles and the featured musicians were from the West Coast jazz scene. The music supervisor on ‘Johnny Staccato' was Stanley Wilson (1917-1970), a conductor and arranger who had produced music for many American TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s.
To get a flavour of ‘Johnny Staccato' , I suggest that you watch the title credits and the filmed sequences from the TV show featured in the following YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laHRBNLcovw
In this video clip, the jazz musicians on display are Pete Candoli (trumpet), Barney Kessel (guitar), Red Norvo (vibes), Johnny Williams (piano), Red Mitchell (bass) and Shelly Manne (drums). At the start of the jazz club sequence, ‘Johnny Staccato' ( John Cassavetes ) is seen playing the piano with the group, but when he is called away to the telephone, his place on the piano stool is taken by a real musician, Johnny Williams – better known as John Towner Williams (1932, New York) the American composer who is famous for his film scores for the ‘ Star Wars ' movies and his music soundtrack work with the film director Steven Spielberg (e.g. Jaws , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial , the ‘ Indiana Jones ' and ‘ Jurassic Park' films, Schindler's List ).
I believe the TV series Johnny Staccato (1959-1960) with the ‘jazz club' theme music by Elmer Bernstein represented my first exposure to modern jazz. The first proper modern jazz record of which I was probably aware was ‘Take Five' by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (a track from the 1959 album 'Time Out' ) when it was reissued as a single in May 1961 when I had just turned 12 years of age . I recall that my brother, John, bought Dave Brubeck's single ‘Unsquare Dance' , which in the summer of 1962 (like ‘Take Five' , a year earlier) entered the U.K. singles chart. So you could say that the Johnny Staccato television series, together with Dave Brubeck's hit singles, began my life-long love of modern jazz.
Elmer Bernstein, the composer of ‘Staccato's Theme'
Elmer Bernstein (born New York City, 1922) was an American composer and conductor who is today best known for his scores for films such as The Ten Commandments (1956), The Magnificent Seven (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The Great Escape (1963). Elmer Bernstein's score for the film ‘The Man with the Golden Arm' (1955) has been described as " one of the finest jazz soundtracks to come out of the '50s ". Modern jazz also featured in Bernstein's film scores for Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and Walk on the Wild Side (1962).
John Cassavetes and his association with Modern Jazz
John Cassavetes (1929 -1989) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. His career began as an actor on television and in film but in the late 1950s and during the 1960s Cassavetes became a pioneer of American independent cinema. Starring in the television series ‘Johnny Staccato' gave Cassavetes the opportunity to try out his skills as a director - he directed five episodes of the series. Cassavetes made his directorial debut with his independent feature film Shadows (1959) which concerns two struggling jazz musicians and has a music score by jazz bassist Charles Mingus and jazz saxophonist Shafi Hadi . His next film was Too Late Blues (1961) centred around a jazz musician (played Bobby Darin) and his relationship with his fellow band members and an aspiring singer (played by Stella Stevens).
I have always enjoyed London cops and robbers shows. (One of my favourite films is the Long Good Friday with Bob Hoskin). The dubious methods, the drinking, the clothes and the bad guys molls, I can only say they do not and could not make them like that anymore.
The theme is clangy and brash and just fits.
The theme for this series was written by Harry South.
He seems best known as a jazz musician with a big band.
My choice is Maggie Bell singing the theme for Hazell , a detective series that appeared on Thames Television in 1978-1979. I did not watch it at the time, but it is currently being re-run on Talking Pictures. James Hazell (played by Nicholas Ball) is a cockney private detective character created by journalist and novelist Gordon Williams and footballer-turned-manager Terry Venables. The first book, Hazell Plays Solomon , appeared in 1974.
Maggie Bell has had little success in music. She was co-lead vocalist with Les Harvey of the blues-rock group Stone the Crows that was formed in 1968. Harvey was electrocuted onstage in front of a live audience at Swansea's Top Rank Suite in May 1972. Wires to the group's equipment were reportedly damaged by the audience and although the road crew attempted to repair the damage, they overlooked a loose ground wire. Harvey received a jolt of electricity as he reached for a microphone while his fingers touched the metal strings on his guitar. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Stone the Crows was disbanded in 1973 and Bell attempted unsuccessfully to have a solo career and in recent years she has sung with the great Zoot Money.
It is unusual for blues-rock song to be used for TV theme music. It also captures the personality of the lead character James Hazell who represents the working-class, anti-authority figure that emerged in the late 1960s. Terry Venables, who was born in Dagenham, was himself very much like Hazell and was seen at the time as a "likeable rogue" and along with Bobby Moore, was close friends with several East End villains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0sy0D9EhYQ
Helen and I listened to the "Sound of TV" with Neil Brand on BBC4. A feast of nostalgic music, and the second episode started with The Prisoner which was on my short list for a musical item from TV. You may remember that The Prisoner was a 1967 TV series starring Patrick McGoohan and created by McGoohan and George Markstein. Wikipedia describes it as "avant-garde social science fiction" and highly influential. Patrick McGoohan is "Number Six", the prisoner, an intelligence agent unable to escape from a strange village.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
At the time of the original broadcasts, my friends and I were great fans of "The Prisoner", analysing each of the 17 episodes for its meaning and significance! The memorable theme music was by Ron Grainer with a team of composers, and I have chosen the music from the opening and closing sequences ("one of the greatest set-ups of genre drama" – Wikipedia) plus a third soundtrack item between them. As these three pieces weren't available as a group online, I've put them together on Vimeo (link below).
I've enjoyed a couple of trips to Portmeirion village in North Wales where The Prisoner was filmed; it is a strange but attractive place. The Number Six cult from The Prisoner was well in evidence.
My first thought was "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds which featured in most episodes of "Peaky Blinders". I particularly enjoyed the music in the various series, although I felt the series went on too long, but . for me, it was held together to the end by the central performance by Cillian Murphy as Thomas Shelby.
I am not a fan of background music on many TV programmes and I decided to choose something quite obscure that I expect not many people will remember or perhaps ever have seen. My choice is the "Johnny Staccato" theme, composed by Elmer Bernstein, and starring John Cassavetes as a private detective who also worked as a jazz pianist.
John Cassavetes was an American actor and prominent independent film maker. He acted initially in the theatre, on film and on TV. "Johnny Staccato" was a 27 episode (for NBC) series private detective drama starring Cassavetes. It was set in a Greenwich Village jazz club where Staccato worked as a piano player. It was actually filmed in Los Angeles and also featured a number of jazz musicians who were closely associated with the West Coast jazz scene. It was broadcast, in the US, between September 1959 and March 1960. I saw several episodes on UK TV, but I cannot remember when. I believe it was the only series that Cassavetes starred in and he did not always appear in his own highly regarded independent films.
My Silver Lining: First Aid Kit
This time I decided not to go for an all-time favourite. There have been several pieces of music associated with recent TV programmes that have particularly appealed to me and which I thought about choosing for this month's category. These include Faith's Song (Written and performed by Amy Wadge for the TV series "Keeping Faith") and Guy Garvey's My Angel (from the BBC series "Life")
However both these songs have been included in recent email exchanges on MM threads. So instead I chose My Silver Lining. It's a piece of music that jumped out at me and which I found quite haunting when I heard it; but I admit I may be stretching the boundaries of this month's remit a little as I first came across it as the accompaniment to a TV ad for American Express's "Points are Worth More" campaign. Since then I've discovered that the song has been used on other UK TV advertisements, including ads for Mercedes Benz vans and the Renault Kadjar. According to Wikipedia the song was also used in the soundtrack of the 2016 Australian TV series "Wanted", so I guess it does meet the "associated in any way with TV" criteria.
My Silver Lining was written and recorded by Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg who perform as the duo First Aid Kit. Their music is described as country-folk (there's that none-too-subtle attempt to win the group over to country music again.) But, sometimes preferring to invent my own musical genres, I would describe it as Swedish Americana - not entirely inappropriate as, although the sisters come from Enskede on the outskirts of Stockholm, they record a lot of their music in the States.
The song was released as the first single from the band's 3rd studio album Stay Gold and in 2014.
I have attached 2 links: the first is to the American Express Ad "Points are Worth more", which includes a minute from the original recording. I probably prefer the studio version of the track as it has a little more echo, which contributes to that haunting atmosphere I mentioned earlier. (The full studio version is available on Youtube.) However I have also included a link to a live performance on "Later With Jools Holland" in 2014. This allows you to see the band playing and shows you what they are capable of performing live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB29bnJU7ME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHCwGkyjfZQ
Lettice Maltravers
I've chosen for my TV theme tune "Hollow Talk" by the Choir of Young Believers, which is the theme tune to the Danish/Swedish thriller series "The Bridge".
I was intrigued by this unusual, tentative and tremulous music played over the opening credits to the series. Something about it conveys a feeling of alienation. The repetitive notes on the keyboard at the beginning, the minor key and the dark tones of the cello when it swoops in: all these prepare us for a lead character with a very individual experience of life. Saga, the detective working on the Swedish side of the bridge, demonstrates behaviours on the autistic spectrum which make her appear strange to others but give her some remarkable observational skills which make her very good indeed at her job. The atmospheric theme tune sets the scene for many bridges: the bridge between Sweden and Denmark, the empathetic link between the two detectives from their different cultures, and the thread between Saga in her world and the world of ordinary people, less obsessed and perhaps less gifted than she is.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0A1r9Jk9UC8
Lyrics
Echoes start as a cross in you
Trembling noises that come to soon
Spatial movement which seems to you
Resonating your mask or feud
Hollow talking and hollow girl
Force it up from the root of pain
Never said it was good, never said it was near
Shadow rises and you are here
And then you cut
You cut it out
And everything
Goes back to the beginning
Silence seizes a cluttered room
Light is shed not a breath too soon
Darkness rises in all you do
Standing and drawn across the room
Spatial movements are butterflies
Shadows scatter without a fire
There's never been bad, there has always been truth
Muted whisper of the things she'll move
And then you cut
You cut it out
And everything
Goes back to the beginning
Never said it was good, never said it was new
Muted whisper of the things you feel.
I expected to find this difficult. Although I love (some sorts) of music I also value silence. I hate the music that is intended to enhance my retail experience. I detest going into a restaurant and being unable to eat a solitary meal, and perhaps read a book, in silence. Or to talk to my wife when we are together without shouting in competition with all the other diners to be heard over the music. Are our lives so dull, alone or together, that we need the titillation of somebody else's carefully chosen banalities to distract us from our emptiness? Is the food itself so lacking in savour that it needs the extra relish of ‘easy listening' to spice up our gustatory experience? I put most of the music I hear on television at about the same level.
I conscientiously recorded and have watched Neil Brand's programmes on television music with low expectations that he managed to meet. Part of my irritation was with the presenter himself, whose bonhomie seemed to cover only slightly an immense self-regard. It was like spending three hours being smirked at by Alex Salmond. Beyond that I found that his claims for the music to be increasingly over-inflated and implausible. According to him television themes were a fundamental part of the tapestry of our lives. Well, up to a point Lord Copper. Perhaps, if one's life has been spent watching soaps, being sucked in rather by rather than irritated by commercials and binge-watching boxed sets of long running American series that may be the case. But I last watched Coronation Street when Ena Sharples was still in the snug with Minnie Caldwell, I silence or fast forward through the adds and the last American series I watched was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I couldn't tell you what the theme tune was. So I was stoney ground. As he dipped into his Box of Delights (serialized 1984: theme music by Victor Hely-Hutchinson; not featured) things occasionally stirred but these were latent memories, briefly recalled but as soon forgotten again, not ever-present joys. Interesting no doubt as social history, and to briefly indulge nostalgia, but as music, usually hardly at all. There was technical skill required and a sort of inspiration, but as much can be said for ‘Go to Work on an Egg' yet it is hardly a haiku.
In the last programme Brand complained that television serialisations used to feature mere ‘talking heads', you know, like, actors spouting their lines unassisted by the art of music. How could anyone have enjoyed the Forsyth Saga without background music to tell them what to feel? I mean, as if words and action were ever possibly enough for proper drama. He then made the outrageous claim that Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown were effectively sold their scores -forget the plots, script, acting, setting and shooting- it was the music what done it. He did once contemplate that things might have gone too far, which anyone who has tried to listen to an actor or a narrator in a documentary competing with what had effectively become foreground music could have told him. (Brian Cox I recall had to allow, with ill grace, that the background music for one of his series be taken down a notch after viewers complained.)
Part of the problem is that TV themes, apart from where the composer is allowed to go feral, particularly in nature documentaries, is that they are so short winded. They are basically there to establish the basic mood of the programme and cover the opening credits, before you pick up the action. It is often difficult for them to retain attention in their own right, nor are they meant to. I did listen to my CD of Carl Davis's music and was impressed at how well he had managed to turn the theme for Pride and Prejudice into a rounded little piece (only a few minutes long) with a beginning, contrasting middle and final repeat. I was not so happy with some of the other pieces, after a while they all seem to lean heavily towards the portentous, the melodramatic or sentimental.
Not being spoilt for choice has its advantages. I will, as others have done, give optional links to things I have considered and passed over. In 1963 a school friend, whom we will call Terry, told me that a new science fiction series was starting. In the beginning it was meant to be an educational drama, with its characters moving around through various points in history- real or imagined. It's opening theme was composed reported by Ron Grainer but ‘realised' by Delia Derbyshire. Grainer wanted to give her joint credit but the BBC wouldn't allow it. The theme has gone through various regenerations none of which Derbyshire approved of. Here is the original, a perfect example of something which starts well but strains the patience before then end, because only the visual change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4
A possible contender, effectively a cover version, was rather too short:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtEbPOOu-Bw
When the Young Ones other included music it was definitely not in the background. They let it speak for itself.
Howard Goodall offered a couple of contenders, with memorable tunes and amusing lyrics:
Blackadder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egDMgJ-Xtck
And Red Dwarf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV0hwZwNQZc
Skip all those if you want; here is my final choice which was not composed television at all. It was written as incidental music for the play ‘Pelleas et Melisande' by the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, first performed in 1893. It attracted the attention of various composers, Sibelius and Faure wrote incidental music, Schoenberg a lengthy orchestral tone poem (almost a one movement symphony) and Debussy wrote an astonishing opera (almost an anti-opera with no arias or big tunes). When Patrick Moore wanted a theme tune for what was expected to be a short series of programmes called ‘The Sky At Night' he chose the opening movement from Sibelius' suite ‘At the Castle Gate'. It seems a perfect choice for the programme although as the title suggests, it has nothing to do with stars at all.
When I was a child I collected Brook Bond tea cards; particularly the set ‘Out Into Space', which started a life-long fascination with astronomy. (I once knew every constellation in the northern skies, a much easier thing to do if you lived in the country and before light pollution spread. The last time I saw a really decent dark sky I was on an island in the middle of lake Titicaca.) When I got to secondary school I discovered that another pupil had also collected the cards. We both wanted to be astronomers, which at that time we imagined entailed spending all one's time looking through telescopes. We read Patrick Moore's books, visited the Science Museum and the London Planetarium and, having seen a V2, tried to make and launch a three-stage rocket in a field near Beaconsfield. (The second stage failed to ignite). Later we drifted apart. Terry finally got a big telescope in his garden in Wiltshire but found that most of the time he was looking at clouds. He also got to meet our hero Sir Patrick; I later discovered that the more active members of Worthing Astronomical Society were going to Selsey too but I never got to make a visit because of his declining health. So there is a lot packed into this music for me, almost a lifetime. I hope you enjoy it. There are better recordings in terms of sound, but this one has the right images.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZF4qyOPrcU
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