The Music of Austin Powers

by Lukas Kendall

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was a spring hit due to its diverting humor and arresting Mike Myers character(s). But beneath the general '60s silliness were some very specific references: the sets, the costumes, the editing techniques, and the dead-on score by George S. Clinton. Clinton reproduced the disparate styles of John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini with uncanny accuracy and made them flow into a part-Bond, part rest-of-'60s trip—not an easy feat when you consider just how different the Barry/Bond scores were from the spy imitators they spawned.

"I definitely researched it," says Clinton, a veteran of such films as American Ninja, Platoon Soldier, Mortal Kombat, and Zalman King's late-night softcore Red Shoe Diaries. "I watched a whole lot of Bond movies. I watched In Like Flint, because that music is so unique. I watched some of the Mancini stuff; I really like his score to Experiment in Terror (1962). That's I think a really cool score and you don't hear people playing it a lot."

For the Bond homages, Clinton recreated John Barry's classic instrumentation—citing Barry's recent interview in Film Score Monthly (#75, November 1996) as a helpful starting point. "I enjoyed your article about John Barry," he says. "He was talking about the big sound, the wall of steel sound and the echo on it, which according to this article was just how that stage [in London] happened to sound. At the old stage at Warner Bros. [in Burbank], where we recorded the bulk of the score, the sound is different, but it has a very specific, almost retro quality too. You walk in there and you feel the history. It has an older console and it was fun using that, and having that be part of the score—the way it sounded and how it recorded there."

Clinton's impression of Barry's Bond sound was particularly accurate. The one score he studied in particular was Thunderball, the film which inspired most of Austin Powers' Dr. Evil-holding-court scenes, as well as its hijack-missiles-for-ransom plot. (Note the construction of the theme, which recollects Thunderball's introductory chords, and the use of chromatic strings for suspense.) For the bold, brassy parts he had five trombones and a tuba for his low end, and for the creepy woodwind passages he used "two alto flutes and sometimes bass flute, playing in unison, with the vibes in the background and sometimes harp."

For the more Flint/goofy-spy-craze parts, Clinton managed to integrate more upbeat rhythm section and electric organ licks—which astute observers will note Barry rarely did in his Bond scores, favoring a more sustained, slow- tempo brass and string sound throughout. "Finding a way to combine those two things was really a lot of fun," he notes. The love theme, in addition, was Mancini all the way, and Clinton's music contractors, Patti Zimmitti and Debbie Datz-Pyle at the Music Team, helped by finding musicians who had played for Henry Mancini, such as Chuck Domanico on bass and Mike Lang on keyboards, to lend that "Manciniesque" touch.

Clinton took his lead from the filmmakers, Mike Myers and director Jay Roach, who peppered the picture with references from top-to-bottom. Just about everything that might have seemed like random foolishness in the picture was really a dig at something specific: Bond dialogue (the "men come first" hot tub scene in You Only Live Twice, the "Plenty O'Toole" meeting at the casino table in Diamonds Are Forever), Blow- Up's photo montages, Diana Rigg's black-vinyl Avengers jumpsuit, the Laugh-In musical interludes, Burt Bacharach's songs ("The Look of Love" from Casino Royale), and much more. Even Austin's beeper sound was from In Like Flint, although slightly rearranged to avoid paying a royalty.

"You've got to be real careful in doing it," Clinton qualifies about his score. "The challenge in working in a period piece or genre piece like this is there's a fine line between ripping people off and paying homage to the genre, and to the people who were so good at it. To have it sound Bond-like but not to be specifically ripping off John Barry, and to have it sound Pink Panther but not to have it specifically ripping off Henry Mancini, was a real challenge.

"Jay Roach and Mike Myers were real hands-on in the choice of it, they were real specific," says Clinton about the film's temp score. "They had John Barry in places and Mancini in places, and when I came aboard the challenge was to make them forget about that music and come up with something that they would like better. I certainly used the energy and sometimes the tempos of the music they had chosen for certain scenes. In general, I was pretty much able to use the style I wanted to use, where I wanted to use it. It was a really nice collaboration; they were genuinely into it and that was a lot of fun."

The Austin Powers CD features a four-and-a-half-minute "Shag-adelic 'Austin Powers' Score Medley" ("I had to fight for that"), which may not seem like much, but actually encompasses all of the score's major building blocks—from the Bond-ish Dr. Evil music to the Flint-ish chase music and Mancini-styled love theme. The rest of the album combines actual '60s songs (such as "Incense and Peppermints" by Strawberry Alarm Clock) with retro- styled pieces by contemporary bands, including the instrumental "Austin's Theme" written by Clinton and performed by The James Taylor Quartet.

And yes, the album includes "Soul Bossa Nova," the completely insane Quincy Jones recording which forms the basis of the hilarious, freeze-framing dance through the streets of '60s London during the main titles. Notes Clinton, "It would be real hard to record a piece that sounds like that now. I was really glad they went for things that worked with the film, that they had the budget to go after it. John Houlihan, the music supervisor, had a lot of good input."

There have been many James Bond music imitations over the years, most of them sounding like '70s TV commercials, with vague "wah wah" brass overlaid onto non-specific schlock. For once, someone has gotten it right: Clinton's take on this music in many ways follows Barry's original philosophy, playing it straight instead of as camp. "I'm really happy for Mike Myers and Jay, they're really great people to work with," says Clinton of the film's success. "Really knowledgeable—I mean Myers is like an encyclopedia. On the one hand Austin Powers a parody and on the other hand it's an homage to that style. It was fun to do that musically, too."

For those wondering, the George S. Clinton of Austin Powers is not the George Clinton of P-Funk. Also, yes, it is true that Mike Myers's Dr. Evil character is really an impression of Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of Saturday Night Live. ("Throw me a frickin' bone here, people.")