I read your autobiography a few years back, and one of my favorite bits is the story of the Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster.
Well, basically he gave me one of his guitars when I played on Electric Ladyland. He wanted to give it to me at the session. I told him he was crazy and, "No." And he said, "Why?" I said, "It's your guitar. What are you giving it to me for?" The next day he had it delivered to my house by his roadie, so I said, "Okay!" Then I had to do stuff to it so I could play it. I had guilt pangs about that. I had it for about 22 years and I sold it in 1991, because people were breaking into my houses in two cities. I made a big noise about selling it so that they would stop breaking into my house.
Did it work?
Yeah. I sold it for $100,000. I knew that if I held onto it, it would hit the million mark, but I couldn't have it around anymore. It was a magic guitar, but I was glad when it went, and I was glad to get that $100,000 for a piece of wood with six pieces of wire on it that I didn't pay anything for.
[laughter] Earlier we were talking about hard drive crashes. Tell me about your film score that crashed.
It was a film I did about four years ago and the director is a friend of mine — Peter Riegert — he's a character actor, or as Dr. John says, "A char-actor". He was in Animal House and Local Hero and a whole bunch of movies — Traffic - and this was his first feature that he was directing. We did a short together, which was the first thing that he directed. It was nominated for an Academy Award so I figured we'd stick together. We actually had a Blake Edwards/Henry Mancini deal — every film that Blake Edwards directed, Henry Mancini did the score. This was Peter's first feature, and initially he started out with a lot of music in mind. So I did all this music and the hard drive ate it — I didn't have it backed up. I'll tell you though, redoing it wasn't as difficult because it was current and it was in my mind. I got it back pretty fast. After I got it back, the producer talked him into using as little music as possible in the film. [laughter] So hardly any of it actually got used. That's what happens when you score films.
Redoing of it was kind of as if you had done fancy demos?
Well, it was instructional. Film scoring requires a whole other head. If you're a great musician and a great composer, that does not guarantee that you're going to be a good film scorer. It takes me two weeks of writing fake cues to warm up for it, because you have to be fluent in breaking rules in order to do the job properly. I am so versed in rules that it's very difficult for me to get in that head, but I can do it. Also, you have to be totally unemotional about what you write, because film directors are notorious for not understanding film scores. So it's a tough one.
How did you learn about syncing to cues and all?
The hard way. I scored my first film [The Landlord] in 1969. There were no computers back then, so I had to do it by hand. The producer of the film, Norman Jewison — a famous film director himself — interviewed me when the director picked me, and he was horrified. I was sitting in front of his desk with the director, Hal Ashby, and he said, "Have you ever scored a film before?" and I said, "No." He went, "Ugh," and then Ashby kicked me and whispered, "Just go along with this." He was not very happy about the choice, but I actually limped my way through and that really prepared me for going ahead. But as you do it, you learn so much more. If I had to give advice to somebody, I would tell them that when you look at a scene that they want you to score you should watch the editing in the scene and see if you can capture the rhythm that the editor was cutting to. A lot of them cut to "dummy" music and there's a rhythm there. If you can make that choice before you write the piece, then your downbeats will land on the edits and it's a very nice thing.
That's good advice.
Yeah. But don't try this at home... I'm a professional. [laughs]
You've accomplished so many diverse things in a pretty short amount of time. It seems like you're a ball of energy and ambition.
It's not such a short time anymore... I'm very much a hermit — I don't leave the house. I'm also an insomniac, so I have the advantage of having more hours a day than most people. I just passed my fiftieth year in the music business. Ambition is key. I've said this very often — When I started in 1958 I was probably 10 percent talent and 90 percent ambition. Now I feel it's reversed.
Where do you think you got your ambition?
Growing up in New York. It's a tough place. If you're gonna do something, you've got to go out and do it. And the music business also — very tough.
Especially at that time.
