I'm a sucker for celebrity real estate stories - vicarious living for the win! - and Variety has a whole section dedicated to this stuff for weirdos like me. A couple of composers made headlines recently:
In the early 70s John Barry purchased a castle-looking villa in Mallorca, Spain. He was in the constant process of renovating it, but gave up on it when he moved to Los Angeles. The estate attained a legendary status and there was even a chapter entitled "Citizen Barry" in Eddi Fiegel's excellent Barry book. Anecdotes from those who visited add to the legend of the composer and his Xanadu. It still stands today, unfinished. Pictures and stories can be found on-line.
In the early 70s John Barry purchased a castle-looking villa in Mallorca, Spain. He was in the constant process of renovating it, but gave up on it when he moved to Los Angeles. The estate attained a legendary status and there was even a chapter entitled "Citizen Barry" in Eddi Fiegel's excellent Barry book. Anecdotes from those who visited add to the legend of the composer and his Xanadu. It still stands today, unfinished. Pictures and stories can be found on-line.
Interesting. Here is a blog post about it with some pictures of how it "stands" today.
The Barry house should be this at 39°42'53.64"N 3°6'45.58"E. Try the coordinates in Google Earth or Bing.com/maps. Google's last photo is from 2018, Bing is undated. But both show that the place is rather "deserted".
According to the article, a new owner took over the "ruins" in 2016, but had to wait for a building licence. This can, apparently, take up to three years. But it's been FOUR years since that article was published, so something might have happened in the meantime.
Regarding the Barry castle in Mallorca, i understand that at various stages George Martin, Marvin Hamlisch, Bill Conti, Eric Serra, Thomas Newman, and a few others took over the place but could never quite capture its glory years.
Forgive me if I get it wrong I just got home from a looong day at work so I am a little bit tired. Anyway I think Jerry Goldsmith said something like this in an interview: "Rambo Built My house" regarding why he scored all three Rambo movies. That quote was the first thing I thought of when reading the original post.
Forgive me if I get it wrong I just got home from a looong day at work so I am a little bit tired. Anyway I think Jerry Goldsmith said something like this in an interview: "Rambo Built My house" regarding why he scored all three Rambo movies. That quote was the first thing I thought of when reading the original post.
He used to say in concert - “what can I say about Rambo?…….Bought my house.”
I'm a sucker for celebrity real estate stories - vicarious living for the win! - and Variety has a whole section dedicated to this stuff for weirdos like me. A couple of composers made headlines recently:
Anyone have good stories about cool composer homes?
Henry Mancini built a 6811 square foot home in the "platinum Triangle" in the Bel Air Holmby Hills section of LA. The property was later sold to Kelsey Grammar for $13,700, 000.
