I’ll be forever grateful for La La Land’s epic treatment of both Elfman’s Batman scores and the sonic improvements they brought, but that first album really was perfect as a listening experience.
This reminds me: music editor Bob Badami deserves a big, hearty, decades long shoutout for all the incredible work he's done over the years, and especially for what he achieved with the BATMAN album. I love, love, love the La La Land expanded edition, and it is pretty much the only version I've listened to since it came out. But when you go back and listen to the original soundtrack: ICONIC. Perhaps the tightest, most structurally cohesive, nearly magically imperceptible editing I've come across. I first noticed his work on MFADT Vol. 1 — hands down some of the sweetest suite making ever.
Music mixer Shawn Murphy deserves a kudos beyond kudos as well, especially once you know how shittily the recording went.
Yeah. That opening of RETURNS was awesome. It was all downhill from.there .
Well, I actually don't think there's a truly perfect Batman film for me personally. None of them quite hit the spot as well as much of the Animated Series does. I did feel that the Max Shreck character in Returns was surplus to requirements much as I like Chris Walken. I also felt the whole thing was in one big studio as opposed to being on genuine streets of a city. And there's no doubt a further Burton film would have gone even further down the route of his own excesses. Question is, would they be as bad as the Schumacker excesses?
But there is plenty to enjoy across them all for most Batfans (yep even B&R), and we do get the Elfman scores.
Yeah. That opening of RETURNS was awesome. It was all downhill from.there .
Well, I actually don't think there's a truly perfect Batman film for me personally. None of them quite hit the spot as well as much of the Animated Series does. I did feel that the Max Shreck character in Returns was surplus to requirements much as I like Chris Walken. I also felt the whole thing was in one big studio as opposed to being on genuine streets of a city. And there's no doubt a further Burton film would have gone even further down the route of his own excesses. Question is, would they be as bad as the Schumacker excesses?
But there is plenty to enjoy across them all for most Batfans (yep even B&R), and we do get the Elfman scores.
Returns has more.plots than you can count! Dreadful. 7 I think BF , though is flawed by Two Face, but pretty. great!
I’ll be forever grateful for La La Land’s epic treatment of both Elfman’s Batman scores and the sonic improvements they brought, but that first album really was perfect as a listening experience.
This reminds me: music editor Bob Badami deserves a big, hearty, decades long shoutout for all the incredible work he's done over the years, and especially for what he achieved with the BATMAN album. I love, love, love the La La Land expanded edition, and it is pretty much the only version I've listened to since it came out. But when you go back and listen to the original soundtrack: ICONIC. Perhaps the tightest, most structurally cohesive, nearly magically imperceptible editing I've come across. I first noticed his work on MFADT Vol. 1 — hands down some of the sweetest suite making ever.
Music mixer Shawn Murphy deserves a kudos beyond kudos as well, especially once you know how shittily the recording went.
I wish subsequent albums were so well put together. Elf seems to just put every cue on the album with no editing( MILK)
I have albums of Batmusic from Goldenthal...Walker....Zimmer... But not Elfman - I have suites on the 2 DARKENED THEATER collections - I love those suites!
I had heard about Elfman's release from, of all venues, a news piece on Entertainment Tonight, when Elfman planned on taking legal action against Warners for not releasing his score in favor of Prince's album. One of the (thankfully) few cassette soundtracks I bought before converting to CD.
What a gothic experience. Still as inseparably indelible to the Caped Crusader's escapades as William's work was for the Man of Steel. I was just three years into soundtracking when this arrived, and it's still one of my most listened-to scores of all.
I had heard about Elfman's release from, of all venues, a news piece on Entertainment Tonight, when Elfman planned on taking legal action against Warners for not releasing his score in favor of Prince's album. One of the (thankfully) few cassette soundtracks I bought before converting to CD.
What a gothic experience. Still as inseparably indelible to the Caped Crusader's escapades as William's work was for the Man of Steel. I was just three years into soundtracking when this arrived, and it's still one of my most listened-to scores of all.
First of all YESSS to indelibility! Second, I think Entertainment Tonight might have gotten it a little wrong. It's fairly well documented that Elfman didn't think he was getting a score album release because of the Prince album – it was virtually unheard of at the time to release a score album if there was a song album. In fact it was cuckoo bird mega producer Jon Peters who championed the subsequent score album release because he loved the score so much, even after he originally tried to relegate Elfman to arranger for Prince (and Michael Jackson and George Michael as they were all supposed to contribute songs to the film).
The legal troubles it seems stemmed from the fact that the Prince album was contractually obligated to have a Danny Elfman track on it. From Jeff Bond's stellar Elfman/Burton bio DANSE MACABRE:
Despite the support of Peters, the Prince album remained a fact. Elfman's score album would not be released until six weeks after Prince's album gobbled up the lions' share of publicity and market sales. Elfman, a rock musician himself, was seeing first hand the hapless position of a film composer when faced with the presence of a high-profile rock musician on any movie project…
"In Danny's contract, I negotiated that he had one guaranteed track on the soundtrack album(s). The word had a parentheses 's' at the end," [Elfman's agent Richard] Kraft said. "So, 'soundtrack album(s).' And I argued that the Prince album was a soundtrack album and [Danny] needs to have a track on that album. And they argued, 'It's not a soundtrack.' I found ads that Warner Bros. had taken out meriting the Prince album as a soundtrack album from Batman. And so they ended up paying Danny for one track, that non-existent track on the Prince album. So, I love that album. My son was born that year, and Prince sort of paid for the hospital bill."
So is there a track by Elfman on the Prince album? I always thought there wasn't?
I remember very well the controversy.. Fan pressure got the score released. Still think an album with four or five songs and the rest score, would have been phenomenal!
Goldenthal also got a separate release for BF and a single track on B + R
I remember very well the controversy.. Fan pressure got the score released.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think that there is no way that fan pressure got an album put out in a mere six weeks.
If there hadn't been a Prince album, six weeks wasn't an unheard of turn around for a soundtrack back then. We only really noticed because the damn Prince Batman was mocking us (MOCKING)! Later that year I remember it took for freaking EVER for Always and Back to the Future II to come out. The Abyss was longer than I was patient for as well.
So Elf got royalties for the Prince LP even though he wasn't on it!? Shades of Shire and SNF. or Grusin and THE GRADUATE. Or Silvestri and BODYGUARD. .Nice work if you can get it!!!!!
Still think an album with four or five songs and the rest score, would have been phenomenal!
Ask and ye shall receive! I just took the following 80 min score-song mix playlist for a spin and it really works in terms of bringing the cinema sense memory experience to life. I was totally whisked to 1989 when a summer's worth of lawn mowing money went to seeing BATMAN in a Kansas theater 12 times, plus an additional 2 times in Chicago while visiting and equally obsessed cousin. From La La Land's Expanded Archival Collection CDs unless otherwise noted:
Main Title "Electric Chair" [Prince] Family/First Batman/Roof Fight Shootout Kitchen, Surgery, Faceoff [Original Album] Roasted Dude Vicki Spies (Flowers) Clown Attack "Partyman" [Prince] Batman To The Rescue/Batmobile Charge/Street Fight Descent Into Mystery The Bat Cave [Original Album] Childhood Remembered [Original Album] Love Theme [Original Album] Charge of the Batmobile "Trust" [Prince] Attack of the Batwing [Original Album] Cathedral Chase Waltz To The Death Showdown I/Showdown II Finale "Scandalous" [Prince] "Batdance" [Prince]
BONUS Joker's Commercial
EXTRA BONUS: The first track Prince wrote for Joker's money/poison parade sequence (from which the skeleton of "Batdance" emerged), which Burton rejected, using "Trust" instead. Fun fact: Burton originally temped the parade scene with Prince's "Baby I'm a Star".
Still think an album with four or five songs and the rest score, would have been phenomenal!
Ask and ye shall receive! I just took the following 80 min score-song mix playlist for a spin and it really works in terms of bringing the cinema sense memory experience to life. I was totally whisked to 1989 when a summer's worth of lawn mowing money went to seeing BATMAN in a Kansas theater 12 times, plus an additional 2 times in Chicago while visiting and equally obsessed cousin. From La La Land's Expanded Archival Collection CDs unless otherwise noted:
Main Title "Electric Chair" [Prince] Family/First Batman/Roof Fight Shootout Kitchen, Surgery, Faceoff [Original Album] Roasted Dude Vicki Spies (Flowers) Clown Attack "Partyman" [Prince] Batman To The Rescue/Batmobile Charge/Street Fight Descent Into Mystery The Bat Cave [Original Album] Childhood Remembered [Original Album] Love Theme [Original Album] Charge of the Batmobile "Trust" [Prince] Attack of the Batwing [Original Album] Cathedral Chase Waltz To The Death Showdown I/Showdown II Finale "Scandalous" [Prince] "Batdance" [Prince]
BONUS Joker's Commercial
EXTRA BONUS: The first track Prince wrote for Joker's money/poison parade sequence (from which the skeleton of "Batdance" emerged), which Burton rejected, using "Trust" instead. Fun fact: Burton originally temped the parade scene with Prince's "Baby I'm a Star".
Albums were only 40 minutes in 1989! It might have been 5 Prince songs on side A. 1 Prince track to open side B and 15 minutes of score (orchestra fee of 15 minutes, a thing in 1989).
So the questions remains: TOP FIVE TRACKS FROM BATMAN. For me, after 30 years of careful consideration and surely surpassing 1000 listens, it is hands down:
5. "Kitchen, Surgery, Faceoff" 4. "Roof Fight" 3. "Shootout" 2. "Batman To The Rescue/Batmobile Charge/Street Fight" 1. "Cathedral Chase"
Honorable mentions: the assured atonal sound world of "Roasted Dude" is spectacularly creeptastic and so effective in the movie, and "Clown Attack" would be up there if that sneaky, syncopated pizzicato echo effect through the orchestra hadn't already been used so effectively in BEETLEJUICE.
It feels weird not to include "Main Titles" or "Waltz To The Death" as those are the two track that essentially sold me on film music forever, but as we mature I guess tastes evolve or at least change.
I know the score wasn't released until August of 1989, but wanted to get this thread started to share the love for the film/score that first got me (and I'm sure a few other 40-somethings) into film music.
First up, David McCaulley's excellent analysis of the "Shootout" scene with score reduction:
Thanks for posting this! This is the kind of content I crave. Subscribed to his channel as soon as I finished watching.
So the questions remains: TOP FIVE TRACKS FROM BATMAN. For me, after 30 years of careful consideration and surely surpassing 1000 listens, it is hands down:
5. "Kitchen, Surgery, Faceoff" 4. "Roof Fight" 3. "Shootout" 2. "Batman To The Rescue/Batmobile Charge/Street Fight" 1. "Cathedral Chase"
Honorable mentions: the assured atonal sound world of "Roasted Dude" is spectacularly creeptastic and so effective in the movie, and "Clown Attack" would be up there if that sneaky, syncopated pizzicato echo effect through the orchestra hadn't already been used so effectively in BEETLEJUICE.
It feels weird not to include "Main Titles" or "Waltz To The Death" as those are the two track that essentially sold me on film music forever, but as we mature I guess tastes evolve or at least change.
I maintain that the simple and eerie Main Titles sequence is one of the best in film history, not only because of the score, which is monumental but also that slow, BRILLIANT reveal of the bat logo. Good stuff...
I'm old enough to still have a copy of this score on cassette tape somewhere but the La La Land release is a grail. It's such a strong, tight, and effective score and really set a precedent for a lot of early 90's scores that followed (the early 90's really was a high water mark for action film scores).
If I was a soundtrack producer and I had to pick five cues to include on a Batman soundtrack back in ye olde dark ages o' 1989, I would probably go with--
1)Main Title 2)Batman to the Rescue -or- First Confrontation 3)Descent Into Mystery 4)Waltz to the Death 5)Finale
EDIT: one thing I want to point out--the performance of this score is probably one of my favorites of any film score. I feel like the Sinfonia of London did a flawless and spirited performance, maybe only outshined by their playing on The Mummy Returns (I wonder how many of the same players were on both scores???).
.
