We’re talking about the “Nero Wolfe” mystery TV series, which you’re scoring. You’ve taken a light touch to the main title theme. Why this as opposed to a mysterioso, detective theme usually heard in a mystery show? The style is a mixture of baroque (to use a rather fancy word) and modern. After all, Nero Wolfe is no ordinary detective. He is highly intelligent, never goes out, he reads books; all his tastes are very cultivated, he only likes the very best food, he grows orchids – in fact he’s a specialist in orchids. His language is never colloquial. For a detective as intellectual as this, a theme with quasi-Bachian touches seemed appropriate. However, since it is a modern series I gave it an injection of pop rhythms as well. It’s a mixture of these two elements. There is a touch of humor in it, too. The stories are not meant to be taken too seriously. I notice that you don’t usually score the dialogue scenes with William Conrad… This is because Conrad has an exceptionally strong personality, and when he holds forth it’s usually in the kind of language you don’t normally associate with detectives. Music is unnecessary in those scenes. I prefer to write a link when the dialogue ends; as the camera tracks in to a close-up of Conrad I’ll use some little phrase of Nero’s theme, and then change to something else on the cut to the next scene. While Nero stays at home, his assistant, Archie, is always active and rushing about. I wrote another theme for him. There is also a little motif for the police inspector who is always a step behind Nero Wolfe; one of the things he does to irritate Wolfe is to get up from a chair without using his hands, something Wolfe cannot do because of his enormous weight. When the inspector does this, the music accompanies him with a little phrase on a muted trumpet. These are the three principal ideas: Nero; Archie; and The Inspector. You’ve said in the past that you don’t want to become involved in a TV series. Why then did you become involved with the “Nero Wolfe” series? What happened was this: I was not involved in the pilot, which, I believe, didn’t work out too well. But then the network (NBC) decided to run the series, the producers started all over again with a different script approach, new writers, and so on. They decided to look for a new composer, and when the head of the music department called my agent (Carol Faith) for suggestions, she said I might be interested. As you know, we’d had a musicians’ strike and I hadn’t worked for some time. I liked the show, so I thought, why not? I’ve done everything else you can think of. When I first came to California I was, as they say, ‘in-between movies’, so I started taking television assignments, mainly two-hour films and ‘prestige’ shows like “Centennial”. One of the mini-series I did was “Black Beauty”, produced by Peter Fischer. Since Peter liked what I wrote for “Black Beauty” he said, “I want you to do my next pilot.” And the pilot was “The Eddie Capra Mysteries”, which was a totally different kind of thing. So that was the first time I became involved with a series but I only did the first segment and the title music; after that John Cacavas took over. On “Nero Wolfe” I wrote six episodes, and the remainder were ‘tracked’ from those six. My involvement in television has been the reverse of most composers. Usually an aspiring composer starts out after leaving college by working in radio or the theatre, maybe writing some commercials, and later gets a chance to go into television, helping out on segments. If he’s lucky, he eventually gets a shot at a series of his own. And then, one day, if he’s very, very lucky, he gets to do a film. In my case, though, it was the other way around. In England I did very little television but many theatrical films. Later I worked in the theatre. In England I did score “Hamlet” with Richard Chamberlain for TV. However, it was not until I came to live in Hollywood that I became heavily involved in American TV. Could you explain your schedule, like on the “Nero Wolfe” series? When do you first see what you are supposed to score? How long do you get to work on it? The problem is that the people shooting the show are working to a very tight schedule which leaves little time for writing the music. Sometimes to give me an earlier start they show me a rough cut which they tighten after I’ve started writing. This means altering the music later to make it fit the film. If there isn’t time to make these alterations, the music editor cuts the track after it had been recoded. However, some segments of “Nero Wolfe” were completely locked in before I had to start writing and in these cases the music did not have to be altered. Usually the schedule was like this: we’d look at the episode on a Sunday, and I’d get a few timings that night. I’d get the rest – the timing sheets to work from – the next day. They’d also provide me with a video cassette of the film (which I seldom need to look at because in my early days cassettes did not exist and I became accustomed to working without that particular aid). So, having seen the episode on the Sunday, I’d make a start writing on the Monday and record the score the following Monday – it really adds up to about 5 days, allowing time for copying. You compose the music then hand it to the orchestratror… No. I’ve done most of my orchestration because for TV series the studios won’t pay for an orchestrator (but, mind you, when I do use an orchestrator I always write full sketches on eight or nine staves, so I’m able to put in most of the orchestral detail). It has been interesting to discover techniques for completing the music in the very limited amount of time available – much less than one has for a motion picture score. These days composer have to first learn to write fast, and later improve the quality. In my case, whatever ‘quality’ I’ve achieved came early when I was doing a lot of motion pictures, and the speed has come later, working on TV. You mentioned that on later episodes of a series (specifically “Nero Wolfe”) that they used some of the themes that you’d previously done, so you don’t actually have to score those later segments. This involves union policy. The strict rule is that if the producer cannot finish the film in time for a score to be written he is allowed to ‘track’ it – which means using music from previous episodes. This often works quite well in “Nero Wolfe” as there are two main themes for the two main characters, and I’ve composed many variations on them for a great variety of scenes. The music editor has a library of everything I’ve written, so it is not difficult for him to find something that fits most situations. When you first came over here from England, you did a theme for a series called “The Cop and the Kid”, am I correct? Well, you are very close. That was the series that preceded mine each week and the music was written by the late Jerry Fielding. Mine was called “Grady” (a spin-off of “Sanford and Son”). I forgot how many episodes there were, but it didn’t run very long. I wrote the main theme and end credits – there was no music during the body of the show. That was the first TV assignments I did here, but it was really a fill-in during a period when I was getting to know the scene here. After I first arrived I did a Disney film called “Ride a Wild Pony”. It was really a British Disney picture, but I wrote the score here and recorded it in England. After that there was a long gap before things picked up, which was a bit scary… The world had to get around that I was here to stay, not just passing through. And, of course, I had to obtain a work permit. Eventually I was asked to do “The Swashbuckler”. Since then, until the musicians’ strike, I’ve been working with hardly a break. You have worked on some of the more prestigious productions like “Pearl”, “French Atlantic Affair”, “Centennial”, “The Bastard”. How do you approach a project like “Centennial” – that’s more than any composer has had to face… it’s like scoring a 26-hour film! I wasn’t, in fact, to compose the entire score when the project was first proposed. I was only asked to do the first three hours, the first ‘chapter’ as they called it. But John Wilder, the producer who also wrote some of the scripts, took it for granted that I would do the second chapter. And then somehow I found myself scoring the third. I had read Michener’s book, and it was particularly interesting to me as a foreigner having come to live here on the west coast. I was more or less an immigrant myself. As I got more involved on the show, there came a time when I really didn’t want to hand it over to anybody else! And, indeed, if anyone had taken over, they would have to face an enormous body of research. The book covers 200 years of history and very often refers back to characters and situations in earlier chapters. An enormous number of the characters had their own musical themes and I would have hated to hear new music which didn’t tie in with what I’d already written. But a point did come when I called John Wilder and said, “Listen, I must have a break or I’ll go crazy. Do you think there’s any way this could be done?” Fortunately he said, “Yes”, and he arranged for me to take a week off; but when the time came, of course, it didn’t work out as long as that. In the end I did get a few days away – my wife and I went up to Ojai for a change of scene. But the only way I could spare the time was by writing one of those chapters in four days! On “Centennial” I did have orchestrators to help me. Oddly enough, the four-day show seemed to work out just as well as the ones I’d taken ten days to write. In all, how much music did you end up writing for “Centennial”? I did once figure it out. It probably averaged about 25 minutes of new music for each two-hour show, so the total must have been more than four hours of music. Actually, the schedule on “The French Atlantic Affair” was far worse. The original idea had been to adapt the book as a film, but it was too long and complicated for that. The producers then decided to make it as a mini-series. The network (ABC) agreed on the condition it was delivered in an incredibly short time. So everyone was fighting the clock. I finally did the six-hour show in 17 days, and there was in fact around two hours of music in all. I had six orchestrators working with me. It was incredible. But somehow we got it done… Much of the third episode was manufactured from the music of the first two. People always complain about the working conditions in television, but it’s been interesting for me because by the time I got involved with TV here I felt I’d done everything there was to do in films; period movies, modern ones, comedies, dramas – scored them for everything from chamber groups to huge orchestras. TV was a completely different technical problem: how to get so much music written in such a short time without compromising. I don’t know how to put this without sounding dreadfully conceited – but I was surprised that at the recordings of “Nero Wolfe” people seemed astonished that the music was actually written to fit the details of the picture and would change with the mood or dialogue. Evidently, a great deal of television music isn’t written that way. There’s just an overall mood and no detailed fitting. You’ve said there are people who score for TV who take shortcuts… I take shortcuts like everyone else. I’m not sure I’m going to tell you how it is done [laughs], but here is a clue: even if certain material is used which has appeared somewhere else in the film, it can be tailored in such a way that it works perfectly for the scene concerned. When this is done, I doubt if anyone could tell whether all the music was newly written or not. Do you have a ‘drawer’ of themes that you can tailor down to fit specific scenes of a specific film or TV show? No. Not in my case. Recently I’ve been at meetings of the Motion Picture Academy, where in the course of our deliberations reference was made to the fact that most composers do have a ‘bottom drawer’ or a notebook in which they jot down themes. As it happens, I myself have never done that. Whatever I write is for a specific project or commission. When I start a new piece I have no inclination to use material I’ve worked on previously. However, in a TV series there are themes for particular characters which recur. So when I begin a new episode it isn’t like starting with a totally blank piece of music paper without an idea in my head. That obviously is a help. Let’s get back to some of your other projects… there was that TV movie about two mentally-retarded people… Yes, the title was “Like Ordinary People”. I was really delighted to have a chance to do such a good show, and an unusual subject, too. The producer, Joanna Lee, was very anxious not to have a big, orchestral sound. It was a nice change to write for a chamber group – I think I only had about twelve musicians: a string quarter, one each of the woodwinds, one or two horns, a piano, harp… But, again, there was an appalling time problem. I was given only six days to write the score. In the end, instead of using orchestrators, I wrote concert sketches in such a way that the copyists could work straight from my sketches. This was the first time I worked at the Fox Studios where Lionel Newman is in charge. On these TV projects, do you get much input from the directors or the producers? Very often on TV projects there simply isn’t time to work in the way one does on a theatrical film. For example, I did a show called, believe it or not, “Love’s Savage Fury”, which had very, very good ratings. It was a kind of “Gone with the Wind”, except that the director shot it in eighteen days and I wrote the score in ten days! Max Steiner must have had longer than that! Fortunately I was allowed a reasonably big orchestra. After I started writing the score, Joseph Hardy, the director of the film, called me and said, “When are we going to get together so I can hear what you’re doing?” “Whenever you like,” I replied, “but the schedule is so tight that I won’t have time to alter anything until the recording sessions.” He then decided to let me get on with the composition and fortunately he was delighted when he heard the music recorded. When I’m working on motion pictures there is usually time to play over the music and discuss it with the director at the piano some weeks before the recording dates. The studio music directors are not heavily involved except with TV shows, where they keep a tight rein on the budget, even though the producer may say there is plenty of money for a big orchestra. For some reason, the heads of the music departments and the producers seem to have different budgeting systems. So, if you have any sense, you’ll try and make both gentlemen happy. And that’s where you sometimes compromise. You have to use a little diplomacy. So there really isn’t a close relationship with a television director… Usually not. However, in the case of “Centennial”, which was produced by John Wilder, we’d take a great deal of time – more than is normally allocated – to ‘spotting’ the picture (that’s decided exactly where the music will be, and what it is meant to contribute dramatically). I would usually see the show once on my own first, then I’d spot it with John the next day. By the end of our discussions I’d know exactly what his feelings were about each scene, and I wouldn’t see him again until the recording sessions. After the first few recordings, he would usually just look in but not stay the whole time. We developed such a meeting of the minds that it became highly unlikely that I would write anything at variance with his wishes. And, obviously, if I came up with anything controversial (for instance, I used a soprano voice like an orchestral instrument during a terrifying dust storm in a desert scene) I wouldn’t use an effect like that without telling John about it beforehand. What about Tony Richardson’s “A Death in Canaan”? Did you work with him more closely than you do with most television directors? “Death in Canaan” was a true story directed in a realistic, documentary style and using dialogue taken from tapes of actual police interrogations. There was practically no music in the film, not even over the main titles. There were some scenes with source music and a montage that I scored, and there was a piece at the end. The studio was very nervous about having so little music, and I think one of the reasons Tony wanted me was that he could trust me not to go behind his back and record music for scenes where, in his opinion, it wasn’t necessary. We discussed the whole movie in detail in our usual way, and agreed on the few scenes which needed musical treatment. When Richardson was supposed to direct “Playing for Time” and then dropped out of that project, were you set to score it? He never spoke to me about it, but sometimes he doesn’t make up his mind until the very last moment. However, on “A Taste of Honey” and “Tom Jones” I was involved from the first day of shooting. Tony would sometimes play games with me! For instance, when he was directing John Osborne’s play “Luther”, I recall him suddenly saying to me, “It’s such a pity you don’t know anything about Gregorian chant.” “Look,” I replied, “you’ll obviously use whatever composer you think will be best for this particular project, but just for the record, I received my musical training at the Royal College of Music and, amongst many other things, I did study Gregorian chant!” And, in the end, he asked me to write the score. I remember that we went to a monastery and spent some time listening to the monks’ singing. I did a lot of research and worked very closely on that project with a singer who was an expert on plain song – he’d sung at Westminster Cathedral. One of my favorite scores of yours, if not the favorite one, is “Start the Revolution without Me”. A few sequences, in fact, make use of Gregorian chant to good effect. It wasn’t real Gregorian chant, just an effect used satirically for the phony monks. I did work closely with director Bud Yorkin on that film. I played and discussed all the music with him before the recordings, which I think he wasn’t expecting. On his television shows I imagine the main theme was all he ever heard before the recording sessions. Many composers here have had bad experiences playing their music to producers on the piano. It sounds totally different on the orchestra, and sometimes the piano can give a wrong impression. But I have never encountered that problem. I don’t ‘audition’ the music, so to speak: I just sit at the piano and talk and go over it in detail, explaining what instruments will be used in what way; and I ask a lot of leading questions. Often the director will be quite leery of answering, for gear of giving me a wrong line. But it’s up to me to think about what he says and interpret it. For instance, if he says, “A trumpet might be good here,” I take it simply as an indication of some idea he has in mind, and it is my job to interpret what that idea is – not necessarily using a trumpet! Working closely with the director gives you security in that, by the time you record the movie, you already have an ongoing relationship with him. One must remember that the film is his artistic property. By the time of his recordings, director and composer should be able to work together as two colleagues with the same goals. Usually I find that we agree about anything that has to be changed. So I am well aware of the danger of misunderstandings on television shows when there isn’t time to achieve a close relationship with the producer. Fortunately I’ve had no disasters so far. But then again, television producers simply haven’t the time to get involved in lengthy discussions of details concerning the music – it’s like a factory turning out a product at great speed – so they just hope the general style of the music will be O.K. Although “Tom Jones” and “Moll Flanders” were both comedies, “Start the Revolution without Me” seemed like a spoof of your scores for those films. It seems to me that you had a lot of fun scoring “Revolution”. The point is that “Revolution” was a different type of comedy to “Tom Jones”, so the music had to be different. In the former, the humor was of the tongue-in-cheek kind and there was a lot of slapstick in it. It was farce rather than comedy. “Tom Jones”, on the other hand, was more true to life, more authentic. Tony Richardson created a true approximation of England in the 18th century. “Revolution” was a fantasy and not meant to be real. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember the music very well after all this time… which is probably a good thing since I don’t have to worry about repeating myself! [Laughs] Tony Thomas did everyone a great favor by releasing the LP of “The Seven Per-Cent Solution”. It was supposed to be released on record by MCA. What happened? I think MCA felt that “Seven Per-Cent” was rather an unusual film, not likely to be a box-office blockbuster. On the other hand they thought “The Swashbuckler” (which was actually a failure at the box office) would be a big success, and that’s why they put out that record. However, at the time of the recordings I was given permission to record the extra music that I needed to make the “Seven Per-Cent Solution” into a good soundtrack album. I had it edited down so it was all ready when Tony Thomas decided to issue it. I prepared a record of “Joseph Andrews” with him, but in this case all we could edit was the cassette tape I had of the music as recorded for the film. I spent a lot of time knitting the thing together to present the music as an album that would be enjoyable in that form, and I think it’s worked out pretty well. What about all the hours of music you wrote for “Centennial” and “Pearl”? People would love to have those scores on record. Well, I’ve had some inquiries about them, but record companies don’t often put out albums of TV shows – only if there is some special reason why they think they’ll sell. Now if an enormous number of people had written in about the music, the record company might have done something about it. I had some very nice letters, but not enough to justify the expense of making an album. Unfortunately, when “Centennial” was first aired it was not given a regular time slot, so viewers never knew when it was coming on. The second time around the network did it properly, and more people watched. But by then it was too late to think about a record. Are you a frequent filmgoer? I have to be a frequent filmgoer, because I’m a Governor of the Academy and a member of the Music Branch Executive Committee. I vote for the Oscar Awards and obviously should not vote if I haven’t seen the films. Unfortunately, that means seeing some movies more as a chore than for pleasure! I don’t have time to see all of the pictures I’d like to. I assume you prefer to conduct your own scores. I know Marcus Dods conducted your score for “Ride a Wild Pony”. Do you sometimes like to sit in the playback booth and listen while someone else does the conducting? I always prefer to conduct. And these days I enjoy recording the music I’ve written more than composing it. Conducting is always a big thrill, and it’s always a great pleasure to work with other musicians; the standard of reading and playing is so high that if I hear a wrong note on the first rehearsal I automatically expect it to be a copyist’s mistake. The only reason I didn’t conduct “Ride a Wild Pony” was that I couldn’t officially work in England for tax reasons that year. I had just left the country and I would have had to pay double tax both in England and America if I had conducted those sessions. As a matter of fact, there’s something to be said for the composer staying in the booth, because he can help the recording engineer to get the balance he wants. I have my orchestrator in the booth when I conduct, and I can depend on him since he is the man who has written very note of the full score. Were there any other instances you didn’t get to conduct your scores? Only when I first started working for films. Muir Mathieson used to conduct most of the British composers’ scores – I was never asked if I’d even like to conduct in those days. The main title of “Ride a Wild Pony” had the music timed precisely to the visuals. Do you use a click track, or do you make marks on the film? When I started writing for films, there weren’t such things as click tracks in England, so I had to find other ways to fit the picture. Consequently, I learned to do it without click tracks, using streamers on the film instead. It was only when I first came to America that I discovered the usefulness of click tracks. And, as they were a new ‘toy’ to me, when I got back to England I insisted on using them – driving everyone crazy in the process! You need an experienced music editor to handle them, and in England there were no trained music editors: the assistant film editor would do the job. Later on, two or three British editors were taught music editing by Americans. Here in Hollywood most TV scores are recorded almost entirely with click tracks; however, they sometimes make the music sound wooden. Strict tempo music (such as ‘pop’) works well with click tracks, but music in a flexible tempo is best recorded without them. What orchestrators do you like to work with? The orchestrator I’ve worked with most in recent years is Greig McRitchie. Now an orchestrator is in a curious situation. No two composers are the same and the orchestrator has to be familiar with every conceivable style, and with all the tricks of the trade. He’s got to be a diplomat, too, for there are some people with whom a composer feels relaxed, and there are others with whom he may not feel as comfortable. This is not a criticism of the latter, it’s just a personal, subjective reaction to the first person to see what you have written. Certainly Greig and I have great respect for each other’s work, and I enjoy discussing things with him. When you’re writing you’re making a myriad of decisions every hour of the day and it’s a great help to have the opportunity of discussing details with another musician who is enormously experienced, and has worked with a lot of people besides yourself. When I came out here I worked with Jack Hayes several times and with the late Gus Levine. I learned many tricks of the trade from them. Gus Levine made many useful contributions to “Centennial”. Sometimes an orchestrator suggests using a certain instrument, which you hadn’t thought of. Or a special effect which you have not come across before. And so you say, “Let’s try it!” Another film you scored for Tony Richardson was the highly-unsuccessful movie “Dead Cert” (1974)… That was the last picture I did with Tony before leaving England. Many people have tried to make films out of the detective stories of Dick Francs, a retired jockey. He has a very personal style which screenwriters find difficult to adapt. Tony ended up re-writing the screenplay himself; unfortunately it just didn’t work! Did Tony Richardson approach you about writing the score for “As You Like It” (a 1979 theatrical production directed by Richardson in Los Angeles)? No, but he did approach me concerning his production of “The Lady from the Sea” in New York. I started writing the score but had to pass it up when I was offered a big film. Tony was very understanding. What films do you wish you could have scored – what would you have liked to sink your teeth into? I know that when I saw “The Great Train Robbery”… Very much your style… Goldsmith did a great job on that, but I could see you doing it… That’s one I would have enjoyed doing. Another one which people have sometimes said was not unlike certain things I’ve done was the score John Williams wrote for Hitchcock’s “Family Plot”. I think I might have enjoyed scoring “Breaking Away”. However, although Pat Williams did a fine job, part of his music was replaced (without his agreement) by classical music. Whatever he may have felt privately about the alteration, the success of the movie increased the demand for his services! You have never scored any science fiction films, horror pictures, westerns… I’d like to do that. It would be an interesting challenge to use electronic effects. What about horror films? You’ve never done any… Well [very tongue-in-cheek now] there must have been horrible moments in pictures I’ve done. If I were to score a horror movie, I’d like to do one in which you had some sympathy for the monster – a monster you can love a little. I don’t mean this to be a touchy subject, but even top composers like Herrmann have had scores rejected. Have you ever experienced that? No. I’m almost ashamed to admit it because many of the best composers have had scores thrown out. But it could happen to me any day. If you ask me why I’ve been lucky so far, the only reason I can suggest is that I have always worked closely with directors and producers. Perhaps some composers prefer to keep to themselves and therefore run a greater risk of surprising their producers in the wrong way. On second thoughts, I remember that years ago Roy Boulting, who have me my first assignment, directed a film for one of the major U.S. studios in England. It was a rather unusual movie, and you won’t find it in my list of credits. I seem to recall that it was about a man who goes and lives in a lighthouse to escape from the world. Toy had the idea that the entire score should be written for accordion and side drum… so that’s what I did. However, when the film was delivered to the studio here in the U.S., my score for two instruments was replaced by an orchestra of 80!! That’s show business!