Magical Musical Tour

Rock and Pop in Film Soundtracks

Kevin J. Donnelly

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781628927146
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Storia e critica del cinema

Winner of the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association's 2016 Peter C. Rollins Book Award in the category of Film/Television The popular music industry has become completely interlinked with the film industry. The majority of mainstream films come with ready-attached songs that may or may not appear in the film but nevertheless will be used for publicity purposes and appear on a soundtrack album. In many cases, popular music in films has made for some of the most striking moments in films and the most dramatic aesthetic action in cinema, like Ben relaxing in the pool to Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence' in The Graduate (1967), and the potter's wheel sequence with the Righteous Brothers' 'Unchained Melody' in Ghost (1990). Yet, to date, there have only been patchy attempts to deal with popular music's relationship with film. Indeed, it is startling that there is so little written on subject that is so popular as a consumer item and thus has a significant cultural profile. Magical Musical Tour is the first sustained and focused survey to engage the intersection of the two on both an aesthetic and industrial level. The chapters are historically-inspired reviews, discussing many films and musicians, while others will be more concentrated and detailed case studies of single films. Including an accompanying website and a timeline giving a useful snapshot around which readers can orient the book, Kevin Donnelly explores the history of the intimate bond between film and music, from the upheaval that rock'n'roll caused in the mid-1950s to the more technical aspects regarding 'tracking' and 'scoring'.

1

Introduction

I am always surprised that there is not more writing about films and rock music, and in particular, the point where the two form a union.¹ To date, there have only been patchy attempts to deal with popular music’s relationship with film, and perhaps this will patch up some holes or merely supply another patchy narrative. It is startling that there is so little written on subject that is so popular as a consumer item and thus has a significant cultural profile. This book attempts to engage the intersection of the two on both an aesthetic and industrial level, dealing with a wide range of material running from Elvis and the Beatles involvement with film to more esoteric intersections of popular music and film. While some chapters are historically inspired reviews, discussing many films and musicians, others are more concentrated and detailed case studies of single films. This book does not aim to be a systematic study of all areas of rock and pop music and film but aims to provide some analytical snapshots of notable instances and issues.

International popular music has been dominated by the United States and Britain since the turn of the twentieth century. The advent of rock’n’roll in the mid-1950s reinforced this dominance and was embraced by films that wished to add energy, show youthful credentials and make money. On one end of this spectrum, there have been forgettable exploitation films aimed at a quick buck, but on the other, there have been films that remain perennially popular and critically acclaimed, some of which even have credentials as ‘serious’ works of art. This book focuses on films using popular music since rock’n’roll in the mid-1950s, a relationship which grew from insalubrious exploitation origins to one of the dominant axes of contemporary culture. The categories of ‘pop music’ and ‘popular music’ have been challenged since the late 1960s, particularly by the development of more ‘serious’ (or rather more self-serious) rock music and some of its extreme forms of differentiation, such as progressive rock. The advent of ‘concept albums’, for example, tested the boundary of ‘pop music’. Particularly though their pretensions and referencing of high art, concept albums manifest a rupture with ‘pop music’.²

An important consideration is the relationship of the music and film as industries which have retained ties closer than most other industries and engaged in constant ‘synergy’ of cross-promotion. Indeed, the popular music industry has become completely interlinked with the film industry. The majority of mainstream films come with ready-attached songs that may or may not appear in the film but nevertheless will be used for publicity purposes and appear on a soundtrack album. Copyright has become one of the fundamental concerns of the modern music industry. While the merging of media companies has allowed some films to use a readymade roster of recordings that already belong to the company, in other cases, the rights for the use of particular songs have to be secured for a film, and in many cases, this does not extend as far as using the song on the film’s soundtrack album. Indeed, there are some notable examples of the reuse of certain songs across a number of films. For instance, Cockney Rebel’s Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) appeared in a series of different films and over a relatively short period of time (The Full Monty [1997], Velvet Goldmine [1998], Best – The George Best Story [2000], Saving Grace [2000] and Blackball [2003]).

Apart, but not totally disconnected from industrial aspects, is the relationship of aesthetics between the two media. Sensual and kinetic matters drive the commercial impetus. In many cases, popular music in films has made for some of the most striking moments in films and the most dramatic aesthetic action in cinema. Examples of some of the most memorable moments in cinema would include Mr. Blonde torturing a policeman to the strains of Stealer’s Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle with You in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1991), the montage of Ben relaxing in the swimming pool and meeting Mrs. Robinson accompanied by Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence in The Graduate (1967) and the memorable potter’s wheel sequence with the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody in Ghost (1990).³

These days, it is wholly unremarkable to hear rock or pop music in a film, just as it is not uncommon to hear musical underscore in a film that has incorporated elements from popular music. However, analysis can still often spend a great deal of time and effort pulling apart ‘the music’ and ‘the images’, but we should always remember that the two do not work as the sum of each added together. Instead, the fused elements redouble effects and create new configurations and significations. In actuality, music and images in film should never be considered ‘two discourses’ but a merged unity. This makes music an element of film and makes other film elements a part of music. In such as manner, an image can ‘finish’ a musical move, like a cadence, the same way that music can provide a comment or particular cast on an image.

A long shot on developments

The history of pop-rock films to a large degree is defined by the history of pop-rock. This is hardly surprising, although there are certain points in the development of rock where films have had certain, crucial roles in the dissemination and development of the musical format.

Robust traditions have built and the relationship between the film and music industries remains as strong as it always has been. Indeed, even silent films sometimes included tied-in sheet music. The ‘industrial’ relationship has developed and surmounted the upheaval that rock’n’roll caused in the mid-1950s to create a strong and intimate bond. Apparently, DJ Alan Freed coined the term ‘rock‘n’roll’ as a replacement for ‘rhythm and blues’ in his WWJ Cleveland radio show to avoid the racial denotation of the latter term. Nevertheless, it was a controversial form of music, and films had to work hard to ‘defuse’ any threat it was perceived to contain, while simultaneously exploiting its exciting possibilities. The tradition of film musicals, which arguably functioned primarily as vehicles to sell music, reshaped its traditional format to accommodate the new musical form. Examples of ‘pop musicals’ include Elvis’s films in the United States and Cliff Richard’s in the UK. In the early years after rock’n’roll, these would often employ ‘realistic’ stage performances (using the performance mode) rather than follow the ‘MGM model’ of bursting into song (the lip-synch mode).⁴ Elvis’s films such as King Creole (1958) exhibit both strategies for rendering songs. By the late 1960s, the selling of music through films increasingly had recourse to having tied-in songs appearing on the soundtrack as non-diegetic music, rather than as set-piece song sequences as were found in traditional musicals.

In the late 1950s, American films began to use rock’n’roll, either through featuring cameo appearances by groups in narrative films and backstage musicals or through building films around singing stars. According to Rick Altman, the number of musicals produced by Hollywood peaked in the late 1940s and early 1950s and peaked in terms of its creativity in the early and mid-1950s.⁵ This was due to a number of determinants, and one of these clearly was the decline in sales of show songs in comparison to rock’n’roll songs. Barry Keith Grant points to the new popular music as an emergent form that hastened the destruction of the classical musical form and musicals as a viable genre:

The rapid decline of musicals in the late 1950s seems to me more likely explained by the existence of an ever-widening gap between the music in the musicals the studios were making and the music an increasing percentage of the nation was actually listening to – rock’n’roll.⁶

The birth of rock’n’roll was closely tied to film. Bill Haley and The Comets’s song Rock Around the Clock was used on the credits of delinquency film The Blackboard Jungle (1955) and came to some prominence. This led rapidly to a film built around the song: Rock Around the Clock (1955), while Elvis Presley’s recording successes led to his immediate appearance in feature films, with Love Me Tender (1956) and Loving You (1957).

The British version of rock’n’roll had some slight differences. The culture centred on coffee bars, as evident in The Tommy Steele Story (1957), The Golden Disc (1958), Serious Charge (1958), ‘Beat’ Girl (1959) and Expresso Bongo (1959). Britain’s most successful singer in film musicals was Cliff Richard, although his film career declined after The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1963), with Wonderful Life (1964) proving nothing like the success of its two predecessors.⁷ As Cliff Richard’s fifth film, it was released at the same time as the Beatles’ debut film A Hard Day’s Night (1964). The contrast between the two films could not be starker, with the Beatles espousing action, cinematic kinesis and a foregrounding of their songs, while Cliff Richard and his cohorts attempt to reconstruct a stage musical for the cameras in a similar manner to old-time Hollywood musicals. The Beatles’ films, on the back on their music, changed the landscape of music’s relationship with film. Concurrently in the United States, there was a spate of successful ‘beach movies’, such as Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), which celebrated young people singing and dancing at the beach. In relation to the energetic Beatles’ films, A Hard Day’s Night and Help! (1965), these looked tame and juvenile. For pop music in the cinema, these films were highly significant, especially as films built around pop groups could be made relatively cheaply and were guaranteed a certain amount of success by the featured group’s established history of record sales – they seemingly had a readymade audience.⁸ The influx of American money and interest in Britain coincided with the Beat Boom, the Beatles spearheading the ‘British Invasion’ of the United States and Beatlemania signifying the power of the new pop music culture.⁹

If rock’n’roll in the mid-1950s firmly moved the most vibrant zone of popular music into a new demographic situation: a direct relationship with youth, the following decade further changed the notion of popular music as a vehicle for the tastes of all. Indeed, the whole of the popular music industry reconfigured in the following decade:

In the mid-1960s the relationship between record companies and popular artists underwent a revolution. Rock musicians developed the capacity to act as self-contained production units. Many formed groups in order to write, arrange and perform their own music . . . The revenues that rock musicians generated from the sale of millions of albums, publishing rights, and large-scale concert tours provided them with their own economic base in the music industry. Many artists used the newly acquired power to build their own recording studios and to establish their own record labels.¹⁰

Edward R. Kealy characterizes this as an ‘art mode of production’, moving away from a craft industry and beginning a fragmentation of ‘popular music’. In the 1960s, pop music went through significant shifts in the modes of production, with popular music increasingly becoming written, performed and recorded by the same individuals, rather than having specialist songwriters, session musicians and pop stars. Of course, this traditional division of labour never disappeared, but the production process of previous decades increasingly was replaced by alternative creative procedures. Ian Ingis notes that by the 1970s, ‘rock’ was considered something distinct from ‘showbiz’.¹¹ The middle and late 1960s also saw a change in the way that popular music was conceptualized: it became increasingly the case that originality was lauded as a virtue in itself for recordings. Such a turn was concurrent with the increasing use of the term ‘rock’ to describe music that was not oriented towards immediate financial return in the singles chart. This privileging of the ‘origin’ was centred on the recording artist as an author and often (although by no means always) was dependent on their involvement with all stages of the aesthetic production process, specifically the writing and the performing.

The development of the Counterculture, from the middle of the 1960s onwards, heralded more radical developments in the use of pop and rock music in films. Large music festivals and extremely exciting performers led to rock documentaries such as Monterey Pop (1968), Woodstock (1970) and Gimme Shelter (1970). At this point, more experimental soundtracks with music by rock groups, such as Wonderwall (1968), The Trip (1967) and Performance (1970), heavily inspired by the culture of psychedelia. Easy Rider (1969) revolutionized the film soundtrack, by eschewing the use of especially written scored music for making dramatic and emotional effects. In its place, excerpts from existing song recordings were used across the whole film. This led to some highly memorable sequences, as well as some robust audiovisual models of accompanying certain kinetic images with certain forms of energetic rock music. This came in the wake of The Graduate (1967), where a few songs by Simon and Garfunkel had appeared effectively in extended montage sequences, perhaps the most notable being The Sound of Silence accompanying the protagonist’s varied but relaxed leisure activities.

The following decade developed this process further, creating strong ties between film and popular music in both aesthetic and promotional terms. For instance, American Graffiti (1973) made a significant profit from having a soundtrack album of songs that had appeared in the film. This set a model that was to become highly influential. Rock musicals, including elaborate ‘rock operas’ developed, often from lavish stage show originals. Films like Godspell (1973), Tommy (1975), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Brian DePalma’s Phantom of the Paradise (1976) all took something from classical film musicals but infused a more modern sense, sometimes embracing the grotesque. In each case, the music was rock rather than show music.¹² These films tended to have a certain pretention towards artistic status, while simultaneously disco films merely exploited the current pop music trend for music for dance clubs. Films such as the highly successful Saturday Night Fever (1977), Car Wash (1976) and Thank God It’s Friday (1978) set their narratives in clubs with plenty of dance sequences and distinctly resembled the traditional structural format of the backstage musical. An arguably less traditional approach was evident in the films that emanated from the outburst of punk rock with its intolerance towards convention. British films included The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle (1980, the Sex Pistols), Rude Boy (1980, the Clash), while American ones included the documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, Part One (1981) and Susan Seidelman’s drama Smithereens (1982).¹³

By the early 1980s, the pairing of pop songs with films was a strategy that dominated the marketing logic of the conglomerating film and music companies. Films like Footloose (1984) and Flashdance (1983) emblematized the strategy of ‘synergy’, which was also evident in the vigorous genre of ‘high school movies’, which included Rock’n’Roll High School (1979), Footloose, The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Pump Up the Volume (1990), amongst others. MTV and other music television channels began in the 1980s and gave succour to films such as these that were exploiting popular songs for their publicity, as well as an important part of their attraction in the first place. The style of music video had an influence on film, with Jon Lewis noting that ‘Purple Rain [1984] is both a vanguard movie musical (the first to exploit so systematically the techniques and narrative structures of music video) . . .’¹⁴ Similarly, a review of Highlander (1986) noted that the director Russell Mulcahy ‘. . . ...