 I'd like to back up now to the beginning so we can get the full context of, do you all know that Bruce was the recording engineer for The Doors? I still think this game remasters all the original albums and they're having to think carefully what you wish for. The work is absolutely amazing. You went from doing that to taking a job at CBS, is that correct? Yeah. And then that in turn led to meeting Jerry. Yeah, I was always into the newest technology coming down the pipe and thought that digital was great. It is, but it isn't. Anyway, the head of ANR, Don Ellis, who has passed, became maybe said, I'd like you to represent Columbia Records as our producer as we have financed the entire recording of the score. Star Trek The Motion Picture. The Motion Picture. So that's how, and then Jerry and then that became this, became E.T., became Temple of Doom, became color purple. And then 25 years of working with Jerry. Do you remember the very first meeting with Jerry ever? No, I went to his house and I had just come back from Hawaii. And it was all in white. I had a very long ponytail, which Jerry... Did not yet. Not yet, but he moved there. And I think I've been off the plane no more than a day. And I went over and sat with him. And we talked about Star Trek and what I was going to be bringing to it. And I mentioned Digital and he was, he was always a huge fan of anything new. So we had a good relationship from that standpoint. And he was like my brother in some respects. We could yell at one another and nothing was personal because it was all art. So this would have been 1979. Yeah. So Digital at that time, you still were not actually looking at when we think of... Yeah, looking at computer screen waveforms on it. No. It's just the tape itself was a digital format. And there were challenges in actually trying to get everybody's mind wrapped around that. Were there in recording that? Well, there were a little bit of a problem that happened in the middle of recording Star Trek. I would say in the middle of about two-thirds of the way through. Where the first chair of the French Orange section decided that because we were recording digitally, we were going to put the musicians out of work. That it was an instrument, it wasn't an instrument, it was a recorder. So he got the musicians' union to come down. I met with the head of the music department at 20th Century Fox, Lion Newman, who was actually conducted most of Star Trek, the motion picture. And the union said, we're going to shut the picture down unless you take this equipment out of here. Which was completely crazy. And I mean, I had the power because I had the purse strings to do it. But I just acquiesced. I called New York and said, we got a problem and the only solution is to just continue recording it in analog and I'll get it on to digital and we'll finish it, which is what happened. But there was a, I told this story in print a few times. But basically, the record company wanted to do a big deal about the fact that it was Star Trek and we were recording digitally. And I had the Audio Engineering Society Convention in January of 2000, no, 1980. I went there and they had, excuse me, it was October of 1979. They had a digital editor that they had built. It was the first one in the world. It was hand-built and somehow another convinced them to let me have it so we could edit Star Trek. And it worked great. Jerry and I, at my office at Columbia Records, put the album together and we were having a great time. And they decided we wanted to change the sequence of what Q was where. We wanted to take out a little repetition. The jury didn't feel that on the record there should be more than we needed to be. Because a lot of times there were repeats built in to cover a sequence to stretch it. So we set about doing it and the damn editors stopped working. And the next morning I had to cut lacquer masters before CD. And we had to have a half a million pressings eight days later. In the stores? In the stores? Shipping? Getting ready to go and as party favors at the premiere at the Space and Science Museum in Washington, D.C. And they were kind of counting on it being mastered off of digital and all that. Well, my life was truly over because I saw getting fired and everything. So I had taken all the equipment down in Capitol Records. My master engineer was named Wally Traugat, which is German Traugat for Trust in God. And I got it in there and I was preparing to transfer it all to analog. Do the edits and then master off them. Because I had no choice. I go to dinner with my wife and I'm trying to eat. It's like the scene from Young Frankenstein. You haven't touched your food, do you know what I mean? I had to touch my food. It was like, you know, hanging by a thread and somebody's going to cut it and you're going to die. So I come back in the Capitol and walking down the hallway in this very large gentleman. Not much different from Dave. And he comes up to me and he says, hi. Hi, I'm John. And he says, you don't know me, but my wife is a psychic. He says, you're working with some new equipment that's doing something strange and I think I can help you. And I looked at my senior kid. He said, no. So I said, okay. So I put all the gear back in the car and went over to Columbia Records in Century City. Sent it all up. He got his wife on the phone. We had her on the speakerphone. And he proceeds touching all the equipment. And he says, everything's good. Everything's good. And she's over the phone saying, yeah, this is okay. There's nothing wrong. She says, make an edit. So I put the tapes back in, recall the edit, the boards. And she said, what are you recording on? I said, well, it's on tape. She said, so I eject it because these are on videocassettes, three quarter inch pneumatics. She ejected them. She held the source tape, which is the one that Jerry and I had done the night before. Nothing wrong with that one. Took the one in the recorder. She said, it's got a defect. And I went and looked at it. And sure enough, there was a time trial interruption. And right where I was doing the edit is exactly where the interruption was. So I put a new roll in, quickly reedited it, and about two hours later. Because everything in those days was linear. It's not like how we work today in hard drives, like this editing system. Yeah, in real time. In real time, everything is in real time. So if it took an hour program, it could take you a couple of hours to do it. And then you had to QC it to make sure there were no dropouts before it went. Anyway, we got over the capital, got it done. And I'm still alive. Now, in those days, so this was the digital, it was all direct, just two channel stereo. Two channel? Yeah. So this would be a live mix? These were live mixes. Yeah. You also did, there's also a multi-track as you went a few years ago. Right. So the movie would be mixed analog. Yeah. This was a digital live two-track stereo mix. Right. And when we went and remixed Star Trek The Motion Mission, we transferred everything off the original 16 tracks, a two-inch tape, and discovered that it was running 30 ideas, which was incredible. And the tapes were in incredibly good condition. But when we got into it, I was really surprised because all I had ever heard up to, when did we do this? Four years ago. 2011 and 12, right? Okay. I had only been listening to the stereo all these years. I never had my hands on the multi-tracks since then. And it was amazing because of Jerry's insistence. And he even did it with all the movies that I did. He wanted to get live mixes. I mean, a lot of the films we did, like Gremlins and The Sure thing, everything was live to four or six-track magnetic film for the film. Poltergeist was this way. E.T. I mean, it was a majority of the film. Didn't go back and remix later. We didn't go back and remix. We got it live. And when we got into it, I was really surprised because the tracks were actually kind of minimal. We didn't have as much control as we thought we did. It was basically the three-track mix and some sweeteners and things like that here and there. And that would have been amazing because it was all John Neal's call about how many mics and other places. Well, yeah. But Jerry made them shut stuff down. Okay. So he decided he wanted to... It's one of the last films that Lionel knew and conducted for Jerry. I mean, there was a history because Jerry was Lionel's favorite boy. He loved Jerry. And... Back to the 60s he was conducting. Oh, yes. And he used to conduct... And that was one of the things. I mean, politically it was convenient and Jerry also was not a good conductor then. He used to go... When I first started working with him, I remember on Grounds. I mean, we had a stack of towels because he perspired so much. I mean, because he was like this. He thought he was going to take off and fly. But later on, and I'm trying to think what movie it was, a Paramount that we were doing, he decided to become a real conductor. And he started taking lessons from a gentleman named Sam Crack moments. He was the main conductor of the opera. Which one? Bascala. I think it was the Bascala. Anyway, so this man was beautiful. He always dressed in a brown suit. And he was very robust and very bushy red hair. And he had a smile. He looked like a Cheshire cat. But he was... But good teeth instead of... And he would sit there during the sessions in the middle of the orchestra with a score and make notes and watching Jerry then correct Jerry as he wanted. But Jerry realized that in order to get more out of his scores, he needed to conduct. And even John Williams like that. But John always conducted his own music. Whether he was a good conductor until he became a good conductor. You have to go to school to learn this stuff. Even David Newman was taking conducting lessons. What was working with him? Wow. Was that the explorers? Huh? Did that mean explorers or paramount? Oh, it couldn't. I thought maybe it was over there. Oh my God. No. I don't know about that. What's the back to just button up that story about the psychic because you missed one point about it? Is that you actually never found out who that was? Yeah, I never again find him or his wife. Wow. And it's one of those things that happens in life that are kind of cool. I mean, I've tried since 1979 to find him. Wow. No one knows the capital. I mean, going way back. So working on as many soundtrack projects as I do and getting no other engineers. There's this unique relationship between a composer and engineer. And sometimes a composer tends to stick with Sony. You've got John now for many, many users. John Murphy. Alan Sylvester with Dennis Sands. You know, James Horner liked Simon Rhodes. Before that. Before Sean. Yeah. So, you know, Danny Wong was always with Lalo. So what is it about that relationship? Is it just a matter of trust or just a matter of there's a shorthand? Or, you know, what is it about? I can only tell you from my standpoint. And I probably, if Dennis was here or Sean here, they probably answered the same way. That there's a communication between the composer and the mixer. Unsaid. Where I know that Jerry would write a score and walk in. And somehow or another, I knew what it was to sound like. And I hadn't heard one note of music. It was just one of those things. And then as it developed, you know, then I would start to come clear in my head as to what my body is to what it was supposed to be like. But, you know, there was a kind of thing. Jerry and I heard a lot the same. And there was one time I said to him, foolishly, I said, ah, so you're getting to hear this as you imagined it. He said, I already heard it in my head. You know, you're just, you know, taking it to another level. What, going from the doors and working in the pop music, what was it about, what drew you to actually go into film scoring and being around an orchestra? Oh, well, my parents were both musicians. My mother was a music copyist for Frank Sinatra, and I came cold. A lot of stuff on cable wings. And my father played violin. He started out as a violinist. And he was a rock star in the 20s and the 30s. There was a band called George Olson and Ted Fiorino Orchestra. And he used to play all the solos. So, and even then he told me that the guys were always stoned out of their minds. He'd spoken a lot of pop. He didn't, but they did. Were you particularly looking for an opportunity, or did this happen to you? No. I just used to go to, I used to go to sessions with my dad or my mom. And I was very intrigued by what happened. I even tried playing an instrument. And I played it reasonably well, playing it in saxophone. But I knew that wasn't my calling. My calling, you know, it was a little kid. I remember my dad took me to a session. And I wound up in the control room. He'd let me push the button and say, take one. And the power of pushing the button. But it was something there. It's like being a cinematographer in some respects. Where I visualize in my head, what I hear in my head, in my body, is what comes out. I think that's one of the things. I was able to understand what Jerry was trying to say, even with John and other composers that I've worked with. It's just being able to relate to know where they're going. And you don't have to ask, say, did you want this? Do you want that? You know, could you say, hire you for what it is that you bring to it? And is it anything that we do? Even if you're washing a car for a woman, if you do it a certain way, that is better than more different than other people do. You know, people come here for that. So it's my visualization. So now you actually were not the scoring engineer of credit on either poltergeist and ET, but you were with Jerry from Star Trek and then interim scores like the final conflict, the secretive NIM night crossing under fire. And then, but you were basically always producing digital recordings. There were a lot in the early days, like in the case of poltergeist and ET, I think after that, this twilight zone of the movie you actually became. Yeah, correct. But at that time, the unions were very, very strong and especially at the studios. And guest mixers were not allowed, even though I was a member of the union, you know, the IM is still in. So in the case of poltergeist and ET, a Lyle Burbridge, lovely guy who is the head of the sound department there and you've got to understand he was still MGM. So it was, it was real. I brought some photos, but I think that you've got them you want to share. We also have some... Do you want to look at them? No, why not? I can talk about it. How ET came about. I imagine you're going to tell me this because I was doing poltergeist. The second film I did with Jared was poltergeist and I couldn't work the console, but I could bring microphones in and set it up and stand behind Lyle and say, start with this, add a little review, a little reverberation, bring this up. Okay, you know, it's basically dry. There's a lot. And there's Frank Marshall. And this is the MGM. And now you can see, but this console is right up against the glass. And the loudspeakers were behind you and it was set up six track because that's what they used to do. You know, movies like Exodus and Spartacus and, you know, anything like that. Do you have any other photos? Oh, yeah, I can let it go to the next one in a second. Oh, yeah, I can let it go to the next one in a second. I've just been pausing between them. Oh, okay. These are the ones that I took. This is the machine room. We were, even though this was a six track, we were recording on four track. And what you see here is probably our reels of dialogue and a click track. The Cannes Hall. I don't know if you guys know who Cannes Hall is, but Cannes Hall is, in my estimation, the best music editor for film ever. And he was with Jerry and John at Fox in the 60s. Yeah. And basically part of this group of people. Right. So, in fact, let me just interject. You know, I always imagined that it's like you and Kenny Hall and Arthur Moore were kind of like three points of a triangle holding up Jerry. Yeah. And Joe Sandy took over. Joe Sandy took over. Alexander Karash. Yeah. There's the stage. You know, it really hasn't changed much. The only thing that I've noticed, and I'm going to try and push, if somebody, it depends on how much many scores I get to do there, if you can see these boxes there all around, those were in the room. And the room, to me, sounded better then. I mean, they're even up high. It had more reverberation, for some reason. And when you walked in the room, you almost thought you were in a, you know, concert hall that had a short reverb time. And this is, of course, very hallowed halls where all those great MGM musicals. All of them. Alexander Karash wrote most of the arrangements for all the songs. Can you make them move faster? You can see my M50 microphones up above there on top. These are microphones that were devised by the Germans for German radio broadcasts. And they're just suburb. Ah, the digital recording. This is the four track digital recording we were doing for E.T. And the older guys. And the older guys. They would lock them up. So that you could get three channels. So I could get three channels. And here are the loudspeakers. And there's a Elvis Presley film by actually Doug. And they were hers in this room. This is part of the control. This still exists. It's a gigantic space. And these were the same loudspeakers that they have in the W. Stader theaters. So it was really cool. You recorded through these things. And when you went on the W. Stader, you didn't have any surprises. Right. It was the same. And it was really cool. I think that's all. If you have questions, we'll wrap it. Go ahead. That's all I was doing. So the only photos you guys are more. No, I think you have a couple more. He doesn't have a digital record. Well, I mean, I've got a record. But the thing about poltergeist is that there was an interesting thing that happened with regard to actually booking the orchestra. Yeah. Because other than every... Oh. The session musicians were booked. So what happened with that? Well, there were... There were too many sessions going on. Those days, the orchestras were... They were busy at Fox. They were busy at Paramount. They were busy at Warners. You know, and there were a few small independent places. And we could get into MGM. And we didn't have an orchestra. So Jerry said, well, let's hire the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Which we could get. And that was spectacular. Because that was a unit that played with one another daily. They paid attention to the dynamics that were written on the page. It was... I mean, Jerry... I remember he came in after the first cue. And he says, this is phenomenal. It's like being in London. Because that's the way they were in London. In London, they have six full-time practicing symphony orchestras. And you can hire an entire orchestra. So you saw the Los Angeles Philharmonic trucks. Yeah, they came in and they loaded it up. They set it up. They didn't touch anything. We set up our cables afterwards. How much time would we spend on a particular score, whether it be a particular cue or the whole score? How much time? Normally it was three and a half days. It's not a lot. Two sessions a day sometimes. The third day usually was one session. Star Trek, the motion picture. On the other hand, it was the 22 sessions. That's because we had lots of time on that film. Plus the 20 minutes of cue to score the first bunch of gigs in a while. They got thrown out. Right. Robert Weiss and Jerry were very close. Yes. I remember, you go, son, that was the Christmas that you had. Also, the Black Hole from Disney. Do you know if that was reported here with the opposition? That was also a digital. They did that on 3M32 tracks. They did that at Disney, which is the scoring stage is now a W theater. How was that not a threat to the union whereas what you were doing was a threat? Well, Sean Murphy was the mixer on staff. At Disney. So that was no threat. Okay, okay. I got it. You've got to understand that movie studios generally insisted that the scores had to be recorded there. Right. And posted there. And later, Stephen had enough cred that he could go elsewhere. When we did Poltergeist and ET, his offices were on the lot at MGM. That's where the first Ambulance Office was. That's where Reverend Goldberg's office was. Yeah. And, yes. When you mentioned this before, the thing that really surprised me is what was the threat that they were? What were they afraid of? Well, you don't want to usurp somebody else's jobs. But I remember you also saying that for digital recording, I think they were interpreting digitally recording as somehow replacing... Yeah, they thought it was an instrument. Right. They felt that it was going to take their costs away. And we could take the individual notes out of there and make an orchestra. That was impossible. But then it was impossible. It was truly impossible. And so that's why in the park, we done digitally that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Did you guys continue to hire the L.A. Phil? No. That was the one and only time. But Kieran and I talked about it a lot. But through working with the contractor, he was able to actually put together an orchestra that he really thought was going to be great. And it was. I mean, they really got... And he was on. And the better he got as a conductor, the more he started saying, you know, I put those dynamics there for a reason. And John, I've seen John do that too. He just said, hey, what do you see in Bar 32? Do you see a diminuendo? Play it. You know, I mean it nicely. But basically, I mean, we got down to even doing it with the orchestras in London of we have 32 violins. And orchestras sometimes can get lazy if they don't like you. But they orchestra love Jerry and John. And we'd always say, I say, Jerry, let me hear the violins. Let's hear the back section. So they had to play. They had to learn to know that we're listening. You know, things like that. Any time that Pauper Geist is discussed in any way, the one subject that has never gone away for 35 years is the second different director. And by the way, the blood is for Mike. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. But God rest the soul of Toby Hooper, very, very talented man who we just lost this year. But was he around at the sessions? No, Toby Hooper was not there. He was totally Stephen. And I mean, you know the scene where the father looks in the mirror and starts pulling the space out. Oh, the assistant. Yeah. And that's Stephen's hands. So where do you come down? What do you mean? I mean, if you go back in the history of Hollywood, not sexually. But historically, directors used to make six features a year directed, and they didn't post them. They went and shot them, the producer took and edited them, took them into the demonstration. That was the role of the director. He went onto the next film, or she did. So, you know, in this case, I didn't think anything strange about it. Right. You know, either Toby went onto another movie, or there were disagreements about stylistically, or how the film was to come out. But also Stephen was kind of launching his production company with this thing as a model for what Amlin was going to do. So he had a lot right about it. So, Stephen, turn it over. Are you all up for a kind of longish clip from Hooper? That's with no music? Yeah. You follow those things with it, and maybe we'll go step in the back. Again, this is a cue called Let's Get Her. And the interesting thing about it is that it's basically a speech followed by a three minute, unbroken tape, instead of hallway, with people just standing and talking. And so it's a seven and a half minute clip we're going to show. The amazing thing is that that's all there is. It's just a speech and an unbroken tape of people talking. And so you've never seen this before. It's an opportunity to really see what you've really got before if a composer comes in. So let's say I take a slice. Pretty amazing. But the thing is that the filmmaking is so strong, the acting is so strong, all the components are so strong. So how do you feel like when you see this without music? Well, I think it's real powerful. I more than once have seen films with Jerry or alone before we went in to record them, before Jerry had written the music. And if you can watch a film without the music, it takes on a whole different thing. I remember one Rambo, oh, Rambo Ghost. And I went to Andy Viney who was the producer in the honour of Caracol Pictures, asked me to come by and see it before we scored it. Went to London to do it. And I sat through the film. You know, it's a fair amount of comic book in the film, but it was at a time coming out of the wars and whatnot that it really rang true without the music. And I came out to the screen and he said, so what did you think? I said I got angry and he said, good. And then, you know, Jerry fed on that, not what I said, but that was his reaction as well. But it's really interesting for a composer, especially Jerry never liked to see a film that was temped. Or did he? Any he did with yours? Yeah. Well, those are the stories about Joe Dante sticking to Marconi. Well, he did that, yes. It's about Christ, Joe. And what was the Italian composer that we did in the Verbs? In the Verbs. Marconi? Yeah, Marconi. There's a sequence in there that Joe just wanted Marconi. So bad. So we're going to look at this again. With just Jerry, no dialogue on the sound effects now, but you have a choice. We can either do it with subtitles to help or just clean since you've just heard it. Anybody feel like maybe you need subtitles? No, no, no. Who wants subtitles? You want subtitles? Well, without it I was having trouble figuring it out. Is this a dub stem? It's actually, I had three track effects and mono-dialog. Okay, so it was mixed? Yeah. Okay. It's all mostly nothing going on there. Yeah, they're all whispering, so it's real hard. Right, so should we do it with subtitles? Yeah, okay. So same scene then with subtitles? Okay. And you hear the voice of Kenny Monk calling this late? Yep. And some... Kenny always did the slates for all of our tapes. I didn't have to push the button yet. On some stage chitchat. Yeah. And I believe this was grabbing one take, this performance. Just saying. There's one answer. Jerry, Jerry, ten times out of ten, if he had a long piece, he would rehearse the orchestra. Maybe for three hours. Go lunch, come back, do a take. Now. And nail it. There might be a pick up for a couple of hours where somebody had a flub and they'd get it. And he did not like to do a John did, which is six measures of this take. Four measures of that take. Then back to this take. Jerry is mostly a master taken. On E.T. and Temple of Doom, John did complete takes. Yeah. Get inserts. No, later on. Later on, he's into that now. I don't know. Is that what he's doing? Yeah, it's a lot of intercutting. Lots of... Yeah, we used to get complete takes. I remember that was Jerry like the performance. Right. Not so manufactured, but... Well, it isn't perfect. It isn't necessarily the best. Mistakes are good. Okay, let's hear the great Jerry Goldsmith. Boy, do I miss Jerry when we look at a scene like that and hear that kind of music. So, but that continued, that collaboration continued until we lost him in 2004. How many scores? Maybe fifty? No, no, I did over a hundred. Oh, right. This is a good one. But, you know, some of them I didn't record. Some of them I just mixed. You know, it depended on whether the company could afford to fly me over or whether there was like in the case of English films, but it had something called the E.T. plan. If it was financed partially by the British government, if you work with British people. If you spent so much money over there. Yeah. Right, so. You mentioned electronics, and of course, it's interesting that this score doesn't know electronics. Right. The sequel has a lot of them. A lot of them. So, in the early 80s, there was this transition where Jerry became more inadequate of them. Well, yeah, he loved electronics. He started on Lowings Run with an ARC 2500. And we utilized that on Star Trek The Motion Picture along with the Beam. And those were, that was the beginning of real electronics for him. Right. But even like the very next year, when you get to Psycho 2 and Twilight Zone, suddenly there's electronics. Yes. Or on this one, he decided none. But on Twilight Zone. Did we do Twilight Zone first in the remnants? Yes. Yes. Okay. At that time, see today, you can program electronics through what the composer can do it. And it's writing, and it'll play. Kick off the synthesizers and play everything. You know, so they don't need musicians anymore. That goes back to what the musician taking was frightened of. But he was, on Twilight Zone, we had four keyboardists. One of them was James Newton Howard, who I brought into that circle. And they played synthesizers. Parts of Jerry had written. He had found the sounds that he wanted. Played them through guitar ramps. You know, Fender Amplifiers on the stage. And they had volume pedals. So they had to play and do their dynamics according to the score. So Jerry was conducting in the room four orchestras and the electronics in the room. So not writing to a board, but actually we recorded it. Well, both ways. I give both. What he would do out into the room, I would then enhance it with the direct signals off the synthesizers just to get a little presence that I could treat it and add more reverb or whatever, depending on what the cue demanded. But that was the first time for him to really go for it. And it was really cool. Which one was that, Jerry? The electronics on the motion picture. You should listen to it. The cool thing about it is that electronics, for the most part, when you have them running with an orchestra, they're really two-dimensional. They're just there. They're either loud or soft. Whereas with an orchestra, you've got depth. I've got from here to the back row. So there's a lot of depth in imagery where you can literally walk around in the orchestra. So by having the electronics play live in the room, it could be balanced with the orchestra and we had more three-dimensionality. We did it, same thing on Gremlins. And then he went off to England to do Supergirl. And tried it there, and I wasn't part of that. Eric Tomlinson. Eric Tomlinson, who did the Star Wars trilogy. He scored the one in the Academy Award. The Omen. The Omen brilliant mixer. But somehow or another, when they hooked it up, something went wrong. And there were playing and the two of the loudspeakers in the studio that were doing it, instead of having lots of different apps and guys playing it. They had a guy there mixing on a board in the room, Jerry Goll. Morris, you know, that's why. And loudspeakers caught on fire. He was producing some wave in there that was just perfect to generate electricity. And that was the end of that. Wow. No, I wound up going to England. We were re-recorded the score. And Eric was there, but he was basically sidelined. I had to do like I did with Lyle Berberts. Stand there and do the same. Tell him what to do. Wow. The fire is really good. No, there we took the electronics back to England. And then I wound up mixing an Omen. So Pulp Your Guys being an MGM film. For the Nessent Amblin Productions located at MGN with a score done at MGN, made sense. Now, John Williams had done, he had his period with John Neil on the Star Wars albums and then the recording of... Well, he did Jaws. No, no, he didn't. He did the album. He did Jaws. But 1941, for example, was John and the Ox. No, Warner's. 1941? Yeah. The trailer was a Fox and the score was a Lord. No, I went to a story at Fox. The trailer score, yeah. For the trailer score. Right. So he got chased out. But John was doing his London period of the original Star Wars trilogy in Raiders. Then came back to his next picture with Stephen, was going to be E.T. Right. So Pulp Your Guys played a direct role in how that was going to be handled, correct? Yeah. Stephen told him... I guess Stephen had felt that he had gotten everything out of Fox that he wanted to get out of it. And he wanted to go to a fresh place where there was no history, negative or whatever. And he was really enjoying Pulp Your Guys at MGM with what we were doing with the group. And he said, John, I really would like to do it here at MGM. My offices are here, just makes sense. So John came down and he and Jerry, they're within two days of one another, birth-wise, their birthdays. The dates, yeah. And they were very close. They used to play four-hand piano together on New Year's Eve and all that kind of stuff. They had the same composition teacher. Yeah, everybody, you know, and they were competitors, but they were good friends, like tennis players, you know. So one day John showed up and I had never met John. I knew in his jazz days when he was Johnny Williams, a new artist. All the stuff they did for Capitol Records. And he showed up and he sat there and he listened and he watched and then he huddled with Stephen. And the next thing I knew, I got a call. I wanted to do this movie and John's going to do it. He didn't tell me what it was. I found out when I got there and got a badge. And even then didn't even know what the film was about. Stephen was super secretive as he is, generally, on films. On this one, I guess that he did the first reading with the cast that couldn't take the scripts out. They had to be right then and they walked out there and they couldn't talk about it. Nothing. And it held true even to going to MGM to record this thing. And I was told it was very secret. He had guards. No guests coming out. No guests, nobody, nothing. The only guest that showed up was George Lucas. Wow. So Hulter guys started recording in January. And then we're now into March for E.T. E.T., yeah. But now you have regular sessions. Yeah, regular studio sessions. So apart from the L.A. film, basically everything was the same, including counting hall. How did that come about? That was curious. Even though he did Hart Beats the year before with John. Yeah, I think Kenny Wumber. He and Cannon Hall were the editors of Fox Music Editors. They were really a team. And Kenny Wumber had done all of it had been John's editor. Well, he was also a composer. And he was doing a movie. He had written a score. So he could not do E.T. So I guess Jerry and Kenny Wumber talked to John and said, you know, you should work with Cannon Hall. Right. Well, I mean, he had done his last film with Zid Hart Beats the year before. Yeah, but even so. John? John? They were all part of that Fox group with Lionel put together. They were all very loyal to Lionel. Yeah, including Arthur Morton was there. Herbie Spencer, who was John's orchestrator. What do you remember about him? I was certainly quite pleased with him. Not too much, except on E.T. That was the only time that I... Why would I go in there? I worked with him on 10th of June. 10th of June? Yeah. Okay, so it was in March of 82 when the E.T. scoring session was highly secretive. Highly secretive. And is this your first look at the picture at all? Absolutely. I mean, he didn't even want to do playbacks against picture. He didn't want the orchestra turning around and looking at the screen. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well, we... 35 years ago. I'm like a Star Trek The Motion Picture most of the time it said scene missing. The orchestra turned around and go, Not again? Well, we just got past Halloween so why don't we run a Halloween sequence from E.T. with no music? Oh, goodness. And see what that looks like just laying there before John Williams comes in. So just this year is when we did... Yeah. We pulled back an uncut set of mag, or a 35 million mag by 4-track mixers, right? We used to record double machine and surprisingly enough the B-reels were never cut. Then when we went to Universal together and they brought them out and I looked in the... I nearly passed out. I couldn't believe it. They had older sheets and everything was there except for one rib. Right. Which we had to get off the 4-track anthem. Right, because there was some issues with, I guess last-minute changes to the picture and the creation of the album and some things maybe got moved around and this is the thing that happens when we go back so many years later even when something's high-profile is that sometimes things don't stay together. In the case of an album for this you co-produced it with John. Right, and it was interesting because on some things like Jaws that album was completely re-recorded. Raiders use the actual film mixes for the album. E.T. was kind of half-and-half. Half-and-half. How did that come about? Well, both John and Jerry in those days it was easier to do because we had record sales at physical medium. They would schedule either one or possibly a double session and go in and they would rewrite rearrange some of the cues that they felt was better as a listening piece than to have extended areas and doing a lot of editing. So in this case we went in and recorded one evening a few cues for the album. It was two evenings. Two evenings, I don't remember. Right, and we could not find those. And we couldn't find the masters. But you recall that it might have really been done just digitally? No, no. I think it might have been done just digitally. Here's the interesting thing. The one thing. That we did from this session that wound up in another movie. Oh no, that's right. There were these two harp notes at the end of Poltergeist. When we did Poltergeist in 2010 I think could not find. Didn't really need them. I wonder where they got those from. Found them on the E.T. session. Sometimes you do little pickups. I was going to say there was one cue in the film of E.T. that had to be done at the album sessions because it was replaced so it probably was dubbed over from the digital. We probably recorded MAG for that. Okay, really. Just that? Yeah. They wouldn't have run MAG on the rest. But I think what happened was made my heart sank is that the film sessions said Universal Studios on it. The album sessions said MCA Records. And MCA Records now part of Universal Music Group. Universal Music Group is not in any way she performed connected with Universal. Two different publishing companies. Right, and two different companies. They divested their music group in 2004. A lot of times when somebody can't find something they point to the fire on the lock which is two thousand things. And it's possible that they ended up there. We looked high above and ended up finding an album. The fact that they found what they found was extraordinary. We found an album after the UK to get those things with this Grammy winning album. And it also went gold. It did go gold. My gold album was stolen. I had to get another one. Wow. So many broke into my studio in Hollywood. One of the stories that comes up about 18 ends up being something that happened on the first day. On the first day of recording was the bike chase and the goodbye scene. And we always hear both John and Stephen tell the story about how the picture was turned off and it was recorded wild. What's your recollection of that? I remember that because it wasn't and this is not uncommon at least in the case of John and Jerry where they get onto the dubbing stage even though it was very difficult to do markups in those days. Like they do today. We do four orchestral markups on the synths today in sampling. But they would be made into piano. So when it would hit the stage sometimes the director would go oh my god I didn't know that was happening. It's really great that my picture is sideways. I gotta fix that. So most probably that's my recollection is that Stephen took a look and realized that the rhythm that the way they had cut it wasn't working with the music. And he said to John I'm going to turn off the picture and you just record it and I will re-cut the picture to fit the music. And I even saw that happen to Jerry sometimes. It has an effect on how the movie feels to us though when the music leads the picture rather than vice versa. One thing I have to say for Stephen is he really understands what music is all about when it comes to a movie. It's emotion. It helps put you in a place. It's like the first cue that you saw. It made you feel a different way because directors are very, very sensitive. Some are very open. Stephen is a good example. He plays the music. You listen to his movies music is played. It's not hidden because some directors do not understand music and they think it's a necessity. The studio told them they have to have and it becomes wallpaper for them. They don't allow and they don't want a lot of the new directors don't understand music to the point that they don't want a composer to have freedom to emotionally help a scene grow up. This is not in the case of Jerry and John. Especially looking at the films from this era. It's like I'm pining away for scores that good and that prominent. We don't really have them. I'm not trying to hide how they're afraid of it. They feel that they need it. They don't want some melodies. And both John and Jerry are yet they'll be okay with Walter Wall and you have two hours of music. But two hours of music that you don't remember. Whereas opposed to a score like ET which is 115 minutes that there's only maybe 80 minutes of score. Or Paton 33 minutes of music and you think there's music through the whole film. So that's how important it is. So what about spotting? Because that's maybe part of the issue here is that this music can't work unless it's absent. Yeah Well you want to Jerry was always it's very interesting. Mozart had a saying let's see what's here on the thing. And Jerry lived it. Well basically I don't know what I did with it here. But Mozart said what was most important was the space between the notes. And Jerry felt that way. And I know that John does. They believe in space allowing things to breathe. Don't fill it up. Don't telegraph every moment. And negative space in anything is so important. It's not this. What's going on around it. It's so important. That's why if you listen to Jerry and John's scores you really get into you hear that you can even get inside the orchestra. There's room to move around in there. And you hear voices, you know a lot of voices here and controversial things happening that are there for a reason. That you know how to tell your story. What do you think it is about William's collaboration is just unique in the history of cinema now. I mean it's unbelievable. They're joined at the hip. They always have a motion link. Jerry did Poltergeist and the Gremlins. Where Stephen was the director. Twilight's on the motion picture. The one episode. Did he always come to the sessions of things that he's executive reserved? Yeah. A lot of the time but it was mainly Stephen. Stephen loves to be on the scoring stage. He really does. And he sat there through Gremlins and he just had the best time. Just the best time. He loved it. Twilight's on. He just sat there as a fan. It was I guess he was happy enough with he too that she went on to Temple Doom on the purple. Very, very massive project with many, many different musical components. And Quincy Jones involved. There were 22 composers on that. Really. Or 24 I'm not sure exactly. The funny thing is that the most prominent out of all of those was Alexander Karaj, Cindy Karaj. I think he did about almost a quarter of the film. Because Quincy and I love Quincy was going through divorce at that time and he was just not there. He had come up with his themes but he didn't really write the scores per se. He told people what he wanted to do. I mean to have 22 other composers writing cues. You do this section and you do this and this is what's happening in here After that John went into his Iron Steiner Dan Wellman period and in 1991 ended up with Sean Murphy. What do you think was John's mind? They spoke the same language. This communication is like what I had with Jerry. Same thing. Intangible. You don't ask why but Sean has a very unique way of recording and mixing and he's able to interpret what John is trying to say and get it up on the screen. Typically you're going to record let's say a Jerry score and you get onto the stage and you have to get microphones set up and everything set up. What do you know before that? Have you heard mock-ups? Have you looked at the score? Very infrequently do I hear a mock-up. Only if I ever heard a mock-up because Jerry would ask me to come to the house and do some rough mixes of what he had recorded using digital performer and running his electronics and he had a console and I had set it up for him with a couple of speakers. It was pretty primitive but it worked and I would do that for him so he could present them to the director. I would pull it out hoping on basic instinct and total recall and did some cues or remember doing the ghost and the darkness that was really cool taking African chanting and figuring out how to rhythmically include it into a score and that worked. Do you have any favorites? What are your favorite Jerry scores? I know that sometimes you hear what you've done and wish you could fix it a little bit but sometimes you're very happy with it. The funny thing is like I say, even about my Doris stuff, I really don't want to go back and remix it. I'm not the same person I was then. I'm not eating the same food. I was a lot younger. My desires and what I was looking for in life were different Doris. We did Twilight Zone and you wanted to remix the song and you did a remix. You asked me what I thought and I said it was different. Yeah, it was different. We ended up getting the original. You know what, that's where we were at the time when we did it. The one thing that we did remix on that was the Overlayer Scatman. Scatman. We were also rock. We moved it. Then I couldn't do it because of time and whatnot. We didn't have the tools then and we overdubbed the orchestra and Scatman and it was never to get on. It really felt comfortable to me so my guy, we asked him. I think we moved rock also. We did rock. We moved things around to get it really right. We fixed it. Those are things that are okay to do. Like on E.T. and on Poltergeist, those mixes are locked. You don't want to screw with them. Yeah, so a lot of people asked when E.T. was coming out with a remix. It's really nothing to do with a remix. You have three channels to work with. Well, it's four. I don't know if you use the song. We use the song. But it's a matter of replicating what was there and keeping the original intent and not trying to put today's sensibilities on top of it. The idea is you know, most people listen to MP3s these days and it's streaming and it sounds like crap. And our goal here was to make it as good as we could do and represent the original ammo as possible. I have to ask you about that because a few things have happened. First of all, we have had this MP3 that everybody listens to. But we've also seen vinyl come back and you are also the proponent of the high resolution to the average listener and that's very, very challenging. One interesting thing that's happening now, there's a process called MQA which is master quality audio that's come on the scene. And it's very interesting because you can take a 192.24 file and they do what they call origami where they're literally five pieces where they're folding D and C and C and D and then it all goes into A into the noise floor so it makes a really small file. It's not baby compression. I don't know how they do it. And then if you have the property and that means you can stream it like Tidal is doing. If you have a decoder it opens it up to full glory in your house. So I have been pushing to do that on a CD because we're losing the physical market I can't put it on vinyl but you can put it on the CD which means that it wouldn't be 192.24 it would be 176.4 because everything has to be in levels of 44.1 which is 16. And I did it with ET where I encoded it put it on a CD and you could burn a CD and play in any CD player if you've got the decoder and you plug it in the digital output it opens up to 192. Very exciting because for the people that buy soundtracks the future is golden although I must say a lot of soundtracks were only ever done in 44.1 And that would be a problem had we found the digital master on the ETL we're limited to that but in this case we had the 35mm mags plus a quarter inch for being limited to the L master and we convinced the sound people at Universal to do the transfer at 192.24 I'm sorry we didn't do it at 384.32 because we can put that onto the CD as well and that's getting about as close to the original analog master as possible so it's kind of exciting the major record companies are on board, they're trying to figure out how this is going to get paid for, what they're going to charge people I'm very involved in trying to convince the people that developed MQA to at least give us a minimum of a year to try it out do these tests, put them out there and see how market is because if it works on physical media for a while they'll extend the life maybe 5 to 10 years which is a big deal because composers and artists are not making anybody anymore no physical it's all either all in concerts or concerts majority recently got also involved in the Disney legacy collecting a number of scores for Disney I did started working with Alan Makin he was really in the beast I didn't record that John Richards did the score and it's not blank songs? no no he wrote it anyway he was a scoring mixer but he was living in New York and they recorded the songs in New York he remakes the whole thing for the album then I wound up doing 32 languages for all the forums then I started doing a lot with Alan we get Beauty and the Beast musical and I wound up producing that for the New York cast recording and then in London and Germany and Japan and Australia going around the world and doing it so I've got Beauty and the Beast so one of the things we're doing now I just did Neil Balk right here helping is Disney has a legacy collection and so far I've done Little Mermaid now Beauty and Pocahontas we've got the lad in the dude next to him and go in and take the entire score remix it in most cases I just went with my mixes or the original mixes of the songs don't go near them because they are locked you know it's a period of time history but you all haven't heard the whole score beyond it in a new movie so it's open season you know I can go with it so Neil Help and which Mike does go in and take all the cues and throw it up against the movie and make sure it all sticks we've got the right piece of music at the right place, the right edits inserts and overlays all that in there so these legacy yes Disney is really going to town to do a light and it's really I might cat off to them I did one of these events with them they have a thing called Friends of Rodin and member of the figure that's the Rodin basically it's a where they have lunch people bring their food it's a big room conference room they have a big sound system in there and they get people from different trades and making music and movies to come in and talk and I did one Beauty, what we were doing and they're just the next one up I know is a lamb and I can't wait to get into that one because that one it's a funny thing because Beauty was all done digitally on Mitsubishi 32 tracks it ended all at 48K so there was really nothing considered high resolution 48K this is a Prodigy No Mitsubishi I don't know what they called it I mean the first Mitsubishi 32 tracks happened we used as a backup on Twilight so the motion picture we found that and we did mags as well the focus was on the mag 32 tracks and we did analog 24 tracks locked up and I don't know where that went that was the thing at Warners they were insistent and I was cool and I even ran a 2 track stereo digital recorder like I did on these things so we were running mag, 4 track mags 32 track analog 24 track and the stereo and the other backups were half inch so we were running out of machine so the machine room was rocking but the interesting thing is on these maybe the pictures went around you could see the pictures of the machine room I think the color was somebody sold them I don't know you could see the mag machines and there's two machines there that are playing what Can Hall had built one was a dialogue track and very rough and another was a click track and in those days we didn't have digital clicks like we do now where he could be programmed and Jerry used to do a lot of his own programming we've got new photos again so all the clicks were done optically he would do optical punches because that's where the streamers used to go across the screen were scraped into the film and then punched physically done everything now is just in the keyboard it's on the keyboard, don't have to worry about it and he this one probably or that one, I don't know if they're rewinding here but all the pops were built by hand and then transferred to mag and all and you know God bless Kenny if something changed they couldn't do it they had to work around it and do it in free time and then cut it in but also I mean to just do another take of a cue when you're talking about an actual physical reel and a projection well, yeah, projector was upstairs the same thing at Fox you have to wait for it to back up and the projector is controlled everything he fired these machines but everybody had to okay, let's stop everybody had to rewind everything and it was kind of cool actually because the rhythm of the session was a lot more relaxed you know it was kind of like bowling which I don't like how they automate the score now I used to like to take the break to sit down and write your score but now it's like you're ready to go because the machine doesn't work my mother used to copy music a lot for a lot of movies, John's stuff I mean she did copy you too and for the orchestra and you know the copies were there on the session, sitting there here for me and another part and they didn't have to write it out unbelievable everything's changed but it's cool though I think you were about to say why you were excited about Landlock oh, because it's all Landlock that was all Landlock 24 track after view, wow it would be interesting to if it has raw takes of one of Robin Williams stuff well that's the thing I was talking with Disney yesterday about there is a tape that we did when we were doing a couple of his songs where Robin did about 20 minutes just freedom and it's fabulous it's not X-rated string of consciousness grew in comparison I thought I had a copy of it but they're going to look for it at the studio cool we're going to wrap up with a clip from ET before we do that oh we were here for ET we have any questions just to set this up this is the first part of this year we're now in the hospital and since I've gone out and done things out for you this is the best thing I've done and I want to thank both of you and Mike knows this and I say this to Mike constantly the work you guys do you bring a lot of joy to people who buy what you do you brought joy to people with you my child was changed by you and when he did I'm also a huge chorus fan yeah but what you do what you're talking about with the future of physical media is just great news and the other thing I wanted to say is the passion that you put in to stuff is really rippling out amongst these younger film score fans who are discovering these composers because really today we don't have the same experience and you don't know why but my real question is just off the top of your head if you don't know you can just say no is there a modern day composer working that you really like and if you have one can you just say why I like a lot of stuff that James and Howard is very easy allowed now because he's enough success that he can start meaning he can do James he is limited I love him but I also like I just watched Logan I have I just watched Logan by the pound and I just watched Logan in my studio and I thought Marco did a great job on that one and I like what Aaron Ziegman does Aaron's really good but there are a lot of it depends on the movie it depends on whether the composer is allowed to be next wait you didn't answer oh me? I have to agree about Marco actually he surprises me and I haven't seen that so I'm gonna go I have to give a shout out to Neil Bulk and Dave also do projects that I love and appreciate and you guys have written my thoughts well you guys you know being able to dig down and find out what's under the rocks we all forgot about you do enough in your life you don't remember and actually coming back to these movies later on it's like re-experiencing but in a different way I just bring emotionally some things I mean like the very end of this film when E.T. is playing the dark sparking and E.T. is talking I had lost my father right at that point and when I did the first home video version for a universal home video I'll throw it down six years have gone by and now they're faced with it again probably not expecting that it's amazing what Ken Hall tells a story unfortunately last year why did you roll this scene without the music at the end is this the sequence? it's amazing it's amazing also point out the original plan was that there was a scene that followed this one you may have seen it to have the old bonus features of a co-ed a triple film in which they're back in Elliot's room playing Dungeons & Dragons and now Elliot's the Dungeon Master but this is of course written in film before you know what the score is going to be when you hear the score being at the end of this film recorded wild on top of it you can't possibly know anything about it it ends like an opera it's like the end of the ring and I think in the dub they're really slammed at home Steven he knew what he said stop we're done I explore there was a lot of reverb on that one were you involved in this it was all I can say it's just depends on the score and the film did Jerry seem to get more interested in reverb? no we were more into air that it sounded open and that you could hear all the voices and all the interplay because the insurrection is like doesn't sound at all like the start of the movie yeah I know it was different my first contact was one of my absolute favorites who it is you were on your hand up earlier I was just curious who decides and how do they decide what tracks and the score and all the elements oh that? generally it's a composer what would Jerry say if he were here he'd say well I don't agree with it no true because he only wanted what he thought was best as a composition I remember we were doing Total Recall and you know the whole sequence where Arl goes through the big X-ray where they have it and it breaks through and it's a big fight and he winds up on the subway we finished we cut that we recorded that cue and Jerry listened to the playback and he said ah I've written a movement you know I couldn't get him to write a symphony yes I was surprised and sounded better and I can't concur with you about the Robin Williams thing because I actually got access to those tracks and I used them on a film my favorite martian we were doing a temp we were trying to do you have that tape? I might be able to find a backup because it was a number of years before now I say everything yeah I did too but that was one that I I might be able to get because I do work with Disney animation yeah well I've got Tony Milstone who's the guy over there he digs down he finds things I might be able to find I have a 16 year old boy who wants to get into composition for film and music and what would be the best for the education right now he plays guitar based drums that's so hard all I can tell you is he ought to listen to as much music as possible I mean Jerry Goldsmith's biggest influence was Brahms and then he got into some 12 tone and Stravinsky didn't he want Stravinsky's arrangement of the national anthem? we did use it no that's not what it is Stravinsky's version is the what's on the front sorry they ended up with the air force but I know we recorded Stravinsky's version he really wanted that check that out it's really a trip to Stravinsky yeah it's Marshall you mentioned that last few of E.T. was recorded while they turned it off for pictures oh no no no that was my picture without the music we'd never I think he's asking that was one of the ones that said I'll turn off the picture he did re-cut it too on our new release there's an alternate version of it and you can hear the tempo it's kind of like this you can slide down so he added friends in the early days he tried to keep up with how the pictures cut which requires the tempo to change and it's kind of uncomfortable you sort of feel like you're just not so turning the picture off he gives naturally feel how the music wants to be you know as a film editor Marshall's great film editor and done a bunch of films with Joe Dante and you know as well as I do they get in there and as I said oh my god that's what's going on I like what the music is saying better and I'm sure you had to go back and re-cut I don't remember ever doing that maybe I know a lot it doesn't happen that often but it does happen but that's why without the music it seems so slow because they obviously went back and added to the shots it's also like in poltergeist and that opening sequence it feels so slow until the music out it just changes your perception of everything and also creates a memory that's why when you listen to this music I'm sure you seem to feel like you were concerned I was a little kid and I went to see I can't believe this but they used to perform the Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia a live orchestra a lot and I was a little kid I remember my mother dancing and then when I saw Fantasia the right of spring blew me away and I remembered dinosaurs you know you remember some of these music and it's evocative and brings scenes to your head I don't think I remember this since we visited the very first Star Trek motion picture we were doing I wonder if you remember this too this goes back to the question about what music was selected we spoke to him about isolated music for the release of the record edition and I just remembered that he also had that point and talked about releases of music and he said whatever happened we didn't want anymore we didn't have enough people that was yeah I know he was referring to certain scores he did as bottle caps we don't really need Mr. Baseball you know there were a lot of scores that he didn't want to come out so I mean Orgi would complain that they didn't play well enough we had a couple of movies where the orchestra just was not in sync and he did not want Soundtrack plus there was of course limitations of the time during a single LP you had maybe at most 50 minutes to work with at most so if you had a 100 minute score you can't do it I mean Star Trek the motion picture we only had one disc 37 minutes interesting decisions are made the original album for Poltergeist the first thing is the end credits the next track is from the climax of the movie it sounds like it has enough but those of us who like respond narratively to the score we want to hear it more in compositionally it played as a piece that's where he was coming from but they're both valid listening experience or hearing the score they're both very valid so this was really a great time it was a great time one more time with all you guys and to be with Bruce who I love working with and I hope we do it a lot more products together thanks all for coming even stuff that I didn't do let's go for it yeah let's do it I mean it's like when do you retire? why? John Bloom just asked that he knows like retired from breathing yeah that's about it Victor Borgher comes on stage and he stands there and he goes much of smoke comes out he's holding a cigarette and he says I'm real tired I've been breathing I'll see you tonight