As for my discovery of Goldsmith... 1979 would also be the year I figured out that there were people behind the camera responsible for creating and crafting the movies and television programs I was watching and, more often than not, enjoying. It was when I started to pay closer attention to all the names listed in both the opening and ending credits.
I had not seen Star Trek The Motion Picture, but was a big fan of the show, which is no doubt why my parents chose to give me that particular soundtrack album. Alien, however, had been one of the most impactful cinematic experiences of that year for me. (John Carpenter's Halloween would be the other one. But that is yet another subject for another post at another time...)
I do not know if it was on Christmas Day itself, but I do remember the jolt when I first noticed that the very different sounding scores for both Alien and Star Trek The Motion Picture had been composed by the very same man. Whoa.
Film editor Terry Rawlings temped his working cuts for Alien with as much of Goldsmith's past music he felt would communicate the kind of mood he and director Ridley Scott wanted for the film. The composer, who disliked temp tracks, did not appreciate Rawlings efforts. Goldsmith would also be infuriated and insulted at Rawlings and Scott's decision to retain the temp music for three sequences and the end titles in the finished film. Those three sequences utilized pieces taken from Goldsmith's Oscar-nominated score for Freud (1962), while the end credits were accompanied by a section from Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2.
That is why the first time I listened to the Alien soundtrack, on that Christmas Day way, way back in 1979, hearing music that I did not recognize at all was a disconcerting and disappointing surprise.
12-year-old me was confounded and frustrated by all this unrecognizable music. Especially the Main Title. Where was the weird and haunting music that had played over the opening credits in the movie? I wanted to hear what had been in the movie. I did not know that this was the music Goldsmith had composed for the movie and, for a variety of reasons, had not been used.
Even though Goldsmith liked to grumble about his scores being collected as if they were bottle caps. About said collectors wanting each and every note of music, regardless of its quality or meaning. What he might not have realized, or understood, was how something he might have found unimportant, or unrepresentative of what he was doing with the score, could be very important to a listener, or fan, such as myself.
What imprinted on me was the Main Title used in the film. Which is included in this 2007 release from Intrada that contains every note Jerry Goldsmith composed for the film.
While the film version's inclusion was appreciated by adult me, and would have been adored by 12-year-old me, I now understand Goldsmith's frustration with how his subtle approach to the opening of the film was dismissed and discarded. That he was made to do something obvious. In the liner notes Goldsmith laments, "The original one took me a day to write, and the alternate took me about five minutes."
Now that I have had the chance to listen to them side by side, adult me can hear the difference. There is real craft and passion in the original version, while the alternate is a professional, albeit passionless, work-for-hire piece.
Having each and every note can offer quite the education and I consider this 2-disc set to be one of the Crown Jewels of my soundtrack collection.
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