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The Road to El Dorado
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American Commerial
Japanese Commerial
Bootleg #1
Bootleg #2
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Conducted by:
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Gavin Greenaway
Rupert Gregson-Williams
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Orchestrations Supervised by:
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Bruce L. Fowler
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Co-Produced by:
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Gavin Greenaway
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Guitar Performances by:
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Heitor Pereira
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Labels and Dates:
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No Label (Bootlegs)
(2001)
Polygram (Japan)
(March 23th, 2000)
Dreamworks Records (American)
(March 14th, 2000)
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Availability:
The commercial albums are regular releases in their respective nations. The bootlegs circulate regularly on the secondary (and auction) market. The first bootleg number is 'HZCD-012LR' and the second bootleg number is 'RTCD-7443-02.'
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... either the commercial or bootleg albums only if you are a big
fan of the film, because both have considerable flaws.
Avoid it... the commercial album if Elton John makes you sick, and
avoid the bootlegs if five minutes of extra, relatively uninteresting score
material isn't worth it.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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The Road to El Dorado: (Elton John/Hans Zimmer/John
Powell) As part of Dreamworks' continuing attempt to steal the heart of the
animated film genre away from Disney, the studio followed up their hit film
The Prince of Egypt in 1999 with The Road to El Dorado the
following year. Despite spirited performances by Kenneth Branagh and Kevin
Kline, The Road to El Dorado would meet the same doom that
Sinbad would meet a few years later. Audiences spoiled with
spectacular leaps forward in animated film graphics and photography tend to
shun animations unless their have either spectacular new visuals or, if that
fails, fantastic songs. Indeed, The Road to El Dorado would suffer
from a lack of advancement in animation technology, and perhaps knowing this
ahead of time, the producers of the film decided to make the project a
musical extravaganza. With composer Hans Zimmer and his Media Ventures
organization established as the tested and successful score producing
entity, the producers decided to team Zimmer once again with songwriter and
performer Elton John (a la The Lion King). With the arrival of John
came the transformation of the project from a traditional animated musical
(which had been the goal of The Prince of Egypt) into a pop-oriented
one, as The Lion King and Tarzan had been. The film came at a
good time for John, who decided to make the film his own personal display of
new songs. When considering the music for the film, he said publicly,
"Instead of just having the usual five songs on a soundtrack album and the
rest of it being score, let's make an album out of this and include songs we
wrote that didn't make the movie." So out the window went the traditional
animated musical structure. John would saturate the film and its soundtrack
album with semi-relevant material, using it as a platform for his own
promotion. Not only did this push Hans Zimmer's role down to a minimal
level, but it also failed to sustain the film, which failed despite John's
vision.
This heavy emphasis on the songs left Hans Zimmer and his
associate for the project, John Powell, with less to do. Their score was
scattered throughout the film in mostly 2-minute segments, and this left
them with an inability to establish a dominant theme or stylistic
personality for the score. Thus, what little score there is ended up being
an uncoordinated sampling of different Media Ventures sounds. Hans Zimmer
wrote the "cool" sequences requiring lazy, Caribbean style rhythms with soft
percussion and acoustic guitar. The most notable piece by Zimmer,
"Chelorado," features the easily listenable, somewhat loungey guitar work of
Heitor Pereira, and has a swing (and several chord progressions) that sounds
like a page was taken directly from the song "I'd be Surprisingly Good for
You" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. Zimmer also composed the cues
that had a slight Spanish edge, and when they aren't cliche in their
reorganization of ideas from another cliche Hispanic score, James Horner's
The Mask of Zorro, they tend to be rather mundane. John Powell
contributed to the more outwardly creative cues, including "To Shibala,"
which stirs memories the vocals from the end of John Williams' Star Wars:
The Phantom Menace, "Save El Dorado," the most typical keyboarded Media
Ventures action cue complete with electronic strings, and "The Ball Game,"
an insufferably overenthusiastic Mexican-rhythmed dance number. Most Zimmer
and Powell fans base their complaints about The Road to El Dorado on
the lack of material featured on the commercial album. But the bigger
complaint should be that the mismatched styles in the highly differing score
cues don't create a cohesive whole. There is no theme, no passion, no motif,
no element to remember and take away from their contribution to this film.
The John songs are their own entity as well, with only the song "The Panic
in Me" featuring some of Zimmer's writing (from "Chelorado").
The rest of Elton John's music has nothing to do with the
score, and it has painfully little to do with the Spanish flavor of the
film. In short, it's a commercialized pop-song disaster. When you combine
this bad musical chemistry with the uninspiring visuals in the film, you end
up with a dud. The commercial album is likewise a daunting item to swallow.
Instead of releasing a thousand different albums for The Road to El
Dorado (as had been done with The Prince of Egypt), the powerful
influence of Elton John caused the soundtrack to be packaged and advertised
as "Elton John's The Road to El Dorado," like a solo album, with no
composition credits given to Zimmer or Powell anywhere on the outer
packaging. Several of the John songs on the album aren't even related to the
picture! A few are remixes, and one in particular, the duet with Randy
Newman, is an embarrassment. The film version of that particular song, "It's
Tough to Be a God," is not presented. Twelve or so minutes of Zimmer (two
cues) and Powell (three cues rolled into a suite) are offered as an
afterthought, and are, of course, nothing that can satisfy the score
collector. The surprising thing about The Road to El Dorado --for you
score fans up in arms over this-- is that there is not that much unreleased
score from this film! Zimmer and Powell did not write a lot of material for
The Road to El Dorado. Nevertheless, with Media Ventures material
often filtering out in bootleg form (and it's tough to tell if these are
originally promos that quickly spiral out of control into bootlegs), a more
complete album was inevitable. The first bootleg was a 37-minute expansion
of material straight from the film and a few extra score cues by both Zimmer
and Powell. A second bootleg, a little less polished, then emerged at 60
minutes and offered the previous bootleg in combination with the commercial
song album (plus the Japanese release bonus song), making for arguably a
more complete presentation of music from the film. The extra Powell and
Zimmer score on these bootlegs only amounts to about 5 extra minutes of
score (most notably the cues "Spain 1519/Tulio & Miguel" and "The Gods are
Here!!!"). Even diehard Zimmer collectors should be aware that these cues
aren't worth the trouble, and score fans would best be served by simply
writing off all of The Road to El Dorado as a loss and move on.
Commercial Albums: **
Bootleg #1 (14 tracks): **
Bootleg #2 (18 tracks): ***
Overall: **
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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Track Listings (American Commercial Album):
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Total Time: 62:08
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Songs by Elton John:
• 1. El Dorado (4:22)
• 2. Someday Out of the Blue (Theme from El Dorado) (4:47)
• 3. Without Question (4:47)
• 4. Friends Never Say Goodbye (4:20)
• 5. The Trail We Blaze (3:53)
• 6. 16th Century Man (3:39)
• 7. The Panic in Me (5:40)
• 8. It's Tough to Be a God - duet with Randy Newman (3:49)
• 9. Trust Me (4:45)
• 10. My Heart Dances (4:51)
• 11. Queen of Cities (3:56)
Score by Hans Zimmer:
• 12. Cheldorado - suite of "Cheldorado"/"We Are Safe" (4:26)
• 13. The Brig (2:58)
Score by John Powell:
• 14. Wonders of the New World - suite of "To Shibala"/"Save El Dorado"/"The Ball Game" (5:55)
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Track Listings (Japanese Commercial Album):
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Total Time: 65:57
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Songs by Elton John:
• 1. El Dorado (4:22)
• 2. Someday Out of the Blue (Theme from El Dorado) (4:47)
• 3. Without Question (4:47)
• 4. Friends Never Say Goodbye (4:20)
• 5. The Trail We Blaze (3:53)
• 6. 16th Century Man (3:39)
• 7. The Panic in Me (5:40)
• 8. It's Tough to Be a God - duet with Randy Newman (3:49)
• 9. Trust Me (4:45)
• 10. My Heart Dances (4:51)
• 11. Queen of Cities (3:56)
Score by Hans Zimmer:
• 12. Cheldorado - suite of "Cheldorado"/"We Are Safe" (4:26)
• 13. The Brig (2:58)
Score by John Powell:
• 14. Wonders of the New World - suite of "To Shibala"/"Save El Dorado"/"The Ball Game" (5:55)
Bonus Track:
• 15. Hey Armadillo - performed by Elton John (3:46)
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Track Listings (Bootleg #1, HZCD-012LR):
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Total Time: 37:02
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• 1. El Dorado - performed by Elton John (1:35)
• 2. Spain 1519/Tulio & Miguel (2:59)
• 3. The Brig/Altivo (3:02)
• 4. We Are Safe (1:11)
• 5. The Trail We Blaze - performed by Elton John (3:09)
• 6. The Gods are Here!!! (3:26)
• 7. Chelorado (2:12)
• 8. It's Tough to Be a God - performed by Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline (2:53)
• 9. To Shibala (2:02)
• 10. Without Question - performed by Elton John (2:28)
• 11. The Ball Game (1:52)
• 12. Friends Never Say Goodbye - performed by Elton John (3:11)
• 13. Save El Dorado (2:12)
• 14. Someday Out of the Blue (End Credits) - performed by Elton John (4:50)
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Track Listings (Bootleg #2, RTCD-7443-02):
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Total Time: 60:12
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• 1. El Dorado - performed by Elton John (4:26)
• 2. Spain 1519/Tulio & Miguel (3:01)
• 3. The Brig (3:04)
• 4. We Are Safe (1:13)
• 5. The Trail We Blaze - performed by Elton John (3:57)
• 6. The Gods are Here!!! (2:05)
• 7. Chelorado - reprise of "We Are Safe" at end (4:30)
• 8. It's Tough to Be a God - performed by Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline (2:41)
• 9. To Shibala (2:02)
• 10. Without Question - performed by Elton John (4:51)
• 11. The Ball Game (1:49)
• 12. Friends Never Say Goodbye - performed by Elton John (4:24)
• 13. Save El Dorado (2:16)
• 14. The Panic in Me - performed by Elton John/co-written by Zimmer (5:42)
• 15. Someday Out of the Blue - End Credits - performed by Elton John (4:51)
• 16. It's Tough to Be a God - performed by Elton John and Randy Newman (3:51)
• 17. El Dorado - Short Version - performed by Elton John (1:39)
• 18. Hey Armadillo - performed by Elton John (3:45)
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The commercial albums contain lyrics for the songs, but no extra information about the score or film. The original bootlegs had no internal packaging.
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