: (Jerry Goldsmith) If film score disasters
could be ranked on a top ten list, then
would exist
somewhere near the top of that list. Director Ridley Scott was coming
off of two unpleasant films in the middle of the 1980's,
, and had decided to create an uplifting fantasy
film targeted towards families. The convoluted story conveyed all the
genre staples of the best alternate worlds, with incredible creatures,
demonic villains, and a sappy love story. Plagued by production cuts,
stage fires, and studio meddling, Scott's
turned out to be
just as much of a nightmare for the director as it would be for composer
Jerry Goldsmith. The veteran composer had not been entirely happy with
his experience working on
with Scott, but he was
nevertheless won over by the fantasy script and was eagerly brought in
on
's pre-production to assist in adapting John Bettis'
lyrics into songs that would fit into appropriate points during the
film. Goldsmith had just completed the synthetically jarring music for
, and he thankfully utilized his newly developed array of
synthesizers in a much more harmonious fashion with a London orchestra
and choir for
. The massive score was destined to initially
suffer the same fate as Scott's entire film, however, with the earlier,
European release cut significantly and arbitrarily in length.
Goldsmith's score experienced the same fate. With half an hour removed
from various places in the project, Goldsmith's score was ultimately
jumbled and out of place, with several temp cues remaining in the final
cut of the film. Goldsmith's frustration with this process would be out
of his hands, however, for all of the drastic changes came after he had
been paid and left the project for greener pastures (including his
famous effort for
the following year). Like many others,
Goldsmith had his scores mutilated or rejected altogether on multiple
occasions, so the event really was not considered earth shattering at
the time. Only in retrospect, with the help of a director's cut DVD that
revisited copies of the original master tapes for the score, has the
situation been deemed tragic.
Through careful reconstruction, the Silva Screen label
has, over the years, treated Goldsmith's score with great care,
reconstituting most of its cues on multiple releases. While collectors
of the composer's works assume that his music would have been better
suited for the picture in its original arrangements, this is a case in
which even a casual observer could say the same. Goldsmith's score is
lyrical and thematically beautiful, a relative rarity at a time in his
career when he was using his music in a variety of more abrasive
applications. Sensitive in its attitude and fantastically evocative in
its use of melody to soften the characters at the heart of the faerie
tale, his music for
Legend is rich with texture and choral
majesty. The thematic battle between good and evil is masterfully
matched to the attempts by the Dark Lord to reign in the film. Instead
of resorting to several completely separate motifs throughout the score,
Goldsmith establishes a central faerie tale theme and simply elaborates
on different sections of that theme to represent other characters and
locations in the story. The performances of the National Philharmonic
Orchestra are dynamic and precise, with the endless electronic
supplements integrated with skill. Goldsmith had always stated that he
wanted to treat his synthesizers like a fifth section of the orchestra,
and this score is among the composer's best such merging. Many of the
techniques he employed with the electronics in this score would directly
inform his music of the next fifteen years. The dynamic range of
emotions in
Legend extends from cute, dancing interludes for
innocuous creatures to deep brass explosions for the Dark Lord. The
latter representation culminates in "Darkness Fails," the last three
minutes of which present harsh, lower range brass performances of the
kind of satisfying resonance that bridges
Poltergeist and
Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier. The score really doesn't feature many
extended action sequences, content to meander through contemplative
territory of an airy fantasy atmosphere. At several points in the work,
Goldsmith transitions into lyrical female vocal performances of "My True
Love's Eyes" and other material, some of which is vaguely Celtic in its
tone, and these are always fully integrated into the orchestral
recordings.
The only major detraction from Goldsmith's
Legend score is a crashing glissando, or wobbly electronic pulse,
that jabs at the listener several times near the beginning of the score
as dark events are suddenly foreshadowed in the film. These "oiya-oiyu,
oiya-oiyu" noises (as opposed to the hard "doyng!" noises heard courtesy
the Blaster Beam in the original
Star Trek score, though just as
metallic in general tone) often interrupt Goldsmith's best thematic
statements and nearly ruin the integrity of a few cues. Aside from those
bizarre blasts of the synthesizer, Goldsmith's electronics match the
eerie setting well. They are slowly removed from the equation and
replaced with the choir almost completely in the last twenty minutes of
the work. At the outset, though, the rolling synthetic effects are so
alien to the ear that they may be considered to be the score's weakest
element by some listeners. Such folks will gravitate back to the soft
vocal performances of the angels and central female character. The "My
True Love's Eyes" lullaby served as proof that Goldsmith was young at
heart and could, conceivably, have made an entire career out of lyrical
children's film scores. The score is completed by a suite-like
restatement of all the extended components of the title theme in the
remarkably enjoyable "Re-United" at the end of the film. Unfortunately,
as the studio distributed the film around the globe, more sorrow was in
store for Goldsmith's score. The earth shattering event that was avoided
in the European release of the film was experienced by Goldsmith
collectors when the score was entirely dumped for the film's subsequent
American release. The single man at Universal responsible for this
decision was then-executive Sydney Jay Sheinberg, who is the idiot known
for making some of the most disastrous decisions for the studio in the
1980's (also replacing Michael Kamen's score for
Brazil and
blessing the production of
Howard the Duck). Sheinberg decided
that
Legend needed more appeal to teenagers and thus oversaw
editing of the film himself (in MTV style) so that it included more
kissing and other sexual material. He commissioned the German electronic
group Tangerine Dream to rescore the film in haste, figuring that their
score for
Risky Business had enhanced a previous Tom Cruise film
and the same could result again.
What Tangerine Dream provided was electronically and
thematically inferior compared to Goldsmith's symphonic/synthetic hybrid
effort, and the members of Tangerine Dream themselves became frustrated
when Sheinberg would mutilate their score in the final edit as well.
Ironically, when the film was extended in length for American
television, scenes with Goldsmith's score from the European version
ended up alongside scenes with Tangerine Dream's music, making the
ultimate experience a musical embarrassment. After Sheinberg's foolish
actions,
Legend was a total failure in America, seizing neither
teenagers nor families, and part of this failure was no doubt due to the
removal of Goldsmith's score. On album, all of the music for
Legend music is widely available. The Tangerine Dream score was
released by Varèse Sarabande on an early CD in 1985 and re-issued
in the same form in 1995. The Goldsmith score has been released several
times on CD as well. An original German CD was pressed in 1986 with
contents identical to the English LP release (which contained ten tracks
and about 45 minutes of score). When the Silva Screen label returned to
the project for a CD release in 1992, their original intent was to just
re-issue the same content in remastered form with better packaging. But
upon a mix-up with master tapes and the discovery of superior sounding
alternative master copies, Silva produced a full, 70-minute album in
excellent quality. This album remained in circulation (as an import in
the United States) until it began becoming difficult to find around the
year 2000. Varèse Sarabande originally advertised that they would
release a "Deluxe Edition" of Goldsmith's
Legend in December,
2000, but then backtracked when Silva retained the rights (Varèse
only distributed the score at that time through its European branch).
Then, in 2002, Silva finally re-issued the album once again (with new
artwork, but the same contents as the 1992 product) for total commercial
circulation and this album remains in print and readily available. While
the 2002 edition claims to have better sound quality than all the
others, the 1992 pressing has a very good balance of clarity and
resonance itself (either product will satisfy Goldsmith fans). Overall,
Legend was a fascinatingly doomed project from which an excellent
Goldsmith score has emerged and lived a healthy life apart from its
disgraced film.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
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(in 113 reviews)
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