Film Score Downbeat: Trevor Jones

by Mark Wheaton

From Hell is a grim retelling of the Jack the Ripper story, a series of grisly murders perpetrated on five prostitutes during one of the worst periods in London history. Disease, poverty and murder were at all-time highs as the Industrial Revolution choked the skies above the metropolis as it rushed England into the 20th century. As if a barometer had been finally tipped in the favor of chaos, a mysterious, almost demonic killer shocked even the most hardened residents of Whitechapel, who had always been used to a certain degree of danger.

"It was a very bleak time for anyone in terms of social order. People were impoverished, and London itself must have been a dire place to live in certain poor areas," says composer Trevor Jones when speaking of his score to From Hell and his motivation to take up the project. "I found the darkness particularly intriguing, because at the end of the day, it is a whodunit. Who was Jack the Ripper? So, it's a kind of mystery-thriller as well as being a dark picture, so that aspect of it, too."

Jones is no stranger to portraying the dark side in his themes whether in a maze-like cityscape as he did with Labyrinth and Dark City, or in man himself as he did in Angel Heart and Richard III. He has also used his acumen to score dramatic moments in history, as he did most recently with Thirteen Days and before that with films such as Mississippi Burning, In the Name of the Father, and the miniseries, The Last Days of Pompeii.

Having collaborated with so many filmmakers throughout the years, Jones had no trouble adapting to working with the Hughes Brothers, the twin brother filmmakers who in the past have worked with Danny Elfman (Dead Presidents) and Quincy Jones III (Menace II Society), though they are predominantly known for filling their movies with popular music culled from the periods of the particular setting. "I just saw them as young, consummate filmmakers, and it was such a privilege to be asked to work with them really." Jones effuses. "It was over three-and-a-half years ago when I got a call from Allen and Albert Hughes saying that they'd love to meet me in London, that they'd come over and see me. We had dinner together and they introduced me to the project and gave me a script and asked me to be involved in it. They told me they particularly wanted me to do it because as little boys, their favorite picture was one that I scored. They were very inspired by it then, and they'd always promised themselves that they'd one day work with me, so I was very flattered by it all."

That picture was Excalibur, one of Jones' earliest scores done for the 1981 King Arthur epic directed by John Boorman.

"Apparently, they'd drawn some wallpaper, lining paper or something and they'd done a kind of tapestry of the knights fighting in armor with blood," Jones explains. "When they were little boys they were so inspired by it all and they used to play the soundtrack of the movie while they drew."

When it came to the actual scoring, Jones found the Hughes Brothers to be very receptive to some of his first impressions from the film. "What you're hearing (in the film) didn't undergo any change whatsoever from the first notes that I'd had with Allen Hughes," Jones says happily. "Allen, Albert and I spotted the thing and the brief came from both of them. Then, Allen and I worked in London for a good few weeks. I'd play things for him, he'd comment on them and I'd incorporate his ideas and take his direction. Those were my first sketches. After that, it went straight into orchestration."

Jones felt it was important that the Hughes Brothers not hear the score until he could put everything into place. "I tend to work on my own orchestrations, and I'm very dictatorial about the sound of the score," Jones says while talking about his dual role as composer and orchestrator. "The score's conceived as part of the sound, the instruments I use are conceived with the composition. Because of my method of using samples, I was able to mock up and give Allen a good idea of the score when he was here. Then I sent it to Albert and he heard it. When they came to the recording sessions, it was just human beings playing it after that. The difference between synthesizers and real musicians is always light-years apart."

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