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I'd still like to see a version of the movie with Goldsmith's score in place as intended. There's a lot of slicing, dicing and switching around even in the director's cut and a lot of music unused.
Absolutely. Goldsmith´s score is one of my favorites, and it would have been perfect if it had been used as it is.
Although I absolutely loved his PSYCHO II score I have always been irritated whenever that track appears in LEGEND.
Good heavens, yes... I love PSYCHO II, always did, bought the original LP on the very same day I saw the movie in a theater, but the music sure disturbed me in LEGEND; it didn't fit musically (stylistically completely different music), nor was it a fitting association (Goblins, fairies... and Norman Bates?)
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Ah Legend.
I know people have issues with Goldsmith’s use of 80’s synths but I think Legend is as close to showing off the full potential of FM synthesis as the technology ever got. The way he blends synth sounds into and as a part of the orchestra was really unlike anything he got before or since. There are times you listen to synths without realizing they’re synths. Very much the “5th section of the orchestra” philosophy fully actualized. The twangy noise for the Goblins doesn’t bother me and works well in context (when cut in properly!). I find the farts in the Rambo sequels far more offensive and actually makes certain tracks completely unlistenable to me.
Goldsmith also got a magnificent performance out of the orchestra on Legend. Goldsmith got into a nasty habit of doubling his orchestra with similar sounding synth patches in the mid to late 80s, presumably to cover performance deficiencies in his scores that were [cheaply] recorded in Eastern Europe. That just made them sound small and funky. Legend does not suffer from this and so we get a large, expansive exploration of Goldsmith’s most vibrant instrumental writing.
This is about the most informed opinion on the matter of synth use in the 80s I've seen on this or any thread. Even today, it's a common practice to double parts with synths or samples to help bolster the sound. Don Davis used sampled string harmonics for the Matrix because they came through better than the real thing.
C8, methinks you speak from experience. Your observations seem very much coming from someone who works in this field.
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That was a good post, c8. I feel kind of guilty -- I can't recall seeing a post by you before, even though your bio' says you've been here since 2003 (did you change user names?).
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I do not work in the field. Its funny though. When I was in high school I bought a Yamaha DX-7II off eBay specifically because the DX-7 was called out in the Legend liner notes as being used in that score. I made that purchase because:
1) I was going to learn to play it,
2) I was going to learn to program it,
3) I was going to write music with it.
I also did a lot of reading on FM synthesis around that time and learned it was meant to be THE way to advanced digital synthesis, but it turned out to be so insanely hard to program it never lived up to its supposed potential (though there are still some contemporary applications).
Alas, in the end
1) The DX-7II is collecting dust in my parents' basement 16 years later,
2) It has enough dust in it the keys don't really move like they should,
3) I ended up in a field not even remotely related to music or filmmaking.
I guess I would have signed up in 2003 when I would have been a sophomore in high school. Sounds right. I post fleetingly on topics of interest (mainly Horner and Goldsmith) where I've done plenty of reading and low key research (though by no means an involved expert). I'm just a fanciful hobbiest. But as I noted above, Legend went A LONG way to playing to that hobby.
I've been collecting synths since 1984 when I began with a Roland Juno 106 (I wanted a Jupiter 8 but at $5000, I could not afford it). I added a DX27 the year after but it lacked the same 6 operator design of its bigger brother. However, layering it with the analog Juno helped.
And since then I've owned over 200 keyboards... the modern era is such that it's all about VIs not hardware anymore. At my peak, I used 10 rack mount modules with a Roland U20 and Kurzweil K2000r in the 90s to score films and such. Now it's a single PC3x as a controller and terabytes worth of orchestral sample libraries... I have 30 SSDs with everything from Spitfire to Orchestral Tools to CineSamples... it's a very different world. I miss the simplicity of the days where I was too broke to just buy volumes of gear but rather had to really learn and get the most of out it.
I still have an affinity for electronic music and synths. I like that Goldsmith mic'd his synths through amps on stage rather than directly into the main mixing console so they performed with every other instrument in the orchestra. Sonically the additional space and refraction of those electronic sound waves sounded different than direct input and treatment through FX.
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Listened to the TD version today, after 35 years- yes, it's been that long since I owned the album.
Utterly devoid of interest. A bunch of sounds jumbled together, almost no structure or design to that score. I like TD and they have done some terrific work but this music is flat, obvious, and trite. I think if Vangelis had tackled this, he would have brought a lushness and thematic breadth that the movie needed. As is, it's a hodgepodge of dated ubiquitous samples/sounds from the era. While Goldsmith also used FM synthesis from the DX7 which also dates the sound a bit, the orchestral range he imbued the score with far outweighs that vice.
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Listened to the TD version today, after 35 years- yes, it's been that long since I owned the album.
Utterly devoid of interest. A bunch of sounds jumbled together, almost no structure or design to that score. I like TD and they have done some terrific work but this music is flat, obvious, and trite. I think if Vangelis had tackled this, he would have brought a lushness and thematic breadth that the movie needed.
I would not surprise me if Scott asked Vangelis to do the Legend re-score. Apparently Vangelis turned-down a lot of offers he got during the 80s.
Personally, I wish Sidney Scheinberg had considered the success of Jaws and E.T. (which he'd overseen) and suggested to Scott they stay orchestral but ask John Williams to do the re-score (as Williams had a hole in his schedule right about this time). Oh well.
Trying to-tool a movie like Legend for the John Hughes audience remains one of the most insane "re-thinks" in Hollywood history.
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Comparing Legends...
Goldsmith score is fantastic. It is really great music, fantastic listening experience on CD. Also in dir cut, it works well as fantasy score should works in film like that.
But I think that American Version is better film, with better pacing, and in my opinion Tangerine Dream score works much more better in this particular film.
American version of the movie with Tangerine music is unearthly, mystical, just unreal experience for me thanks to the music.
When film ends with "Loved by the Sun" and final Darkness laugh - it is like return to real world for me.
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he simply may have felt, like he once said about his western scores, that "nobody wants to hear that!"
Thank goodness he got over that attitude enough to record Rio Conchos so spectacularly with the London Symphony Orchestra (and originally that was going to be Lonely Are the Brave, another western albeit one set in modern day).
Yavar
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