John Murphy Interview

After much delay, here's the full question and answer session I did with composer John Murphy. He's composed excellent scores for smaller movies like 28 Days Later and Sunshine. But he's on the rise.I listen to a lot of soundtracks and while John Williams is my favorite, Mr. Murphy is definitely in the top ten. His music is emotional and raw, which might have to do with the fact that he doesn't read music to score his music. He simply figures it out on piano. The resulting music is close-sounding, like it's pressing in on you. The movies he's written for would definitely have been second-rate without his score.

But enough butt-kissing. Here's the Q and A.

Where are you from?

Liverpool.

Where did you live when you were a kid?

Bootle. Which is North Liverpool. I grew up practically on the Dock Road so I got to see the ships coming in every night from my bedroom window.

What was your first job?

Playing country lead guitar with my dad in the pubs and social clubs in Liverpool. I was 12 and my Dad sung like Tom Jones. They were good times. How many people can say their first band was with their Dad?

What was your earliest music-related recollection?

Because my Dad was in a band, there was always guitars and amps lying around the house, for as long as I can remember. I actually broke his Les Paul Junior, playing with it, when I was 3. He's still never forgiven me for it. But the first tunes I remember being very aware of where the themes in the spaghetti westerns and the early James Bond films. I must have been about five or six, but I never got over hearing that stuff for the first time. Morricone and John Barry. I had good taste in those days.

What was your favorite band/singer as a kid?

The Beatles. I started my own Beatles band when I was 14. We did all the local pubs for 10 quid a gig. I was John. We were s*** but we were kids so people clapped.

Now?

Probably... Radiohead.

Where did you go to university?

I didn't. I'd just left school when I got asked to join the Lotus Eaters and go on tour around Europe. They'd just had a big hit in England and were famous. So that was the end of my academic career.

What did you study?

Musically... nothing. I have no musical education whatsoever. I still can't even sight read. I hear it in my head and then work it out on the piano.

When did you know you wanted to be a composer?

I knew I wanted to write my own songs within 10 minutes of learning three chords on a guitar. But I knew I wanted to to be a film composer on the first day of working on the first film. It was a little British indie called "Leon the Pig Farmer" and it blew my mind that I could actually write music and not have to write lyrics or deal with a**hole singers any more.

What was the first thing you composed?

It was a trippy Penny lane rip off called "Daisy Street". I was 10.

What inspires you the most, musically?

Beauty. And non-cynicism. Like Bach and Puccini just wrote the most beautiful and simple melodies. And Lennon just wrote as he thought it. And Bob Marley just felt it, you know? That's what inspires me. I think when you think over-think music, it's already f***ed.

What was the first film you wrote music for?

Leon the Pig Farmer. I think I was 25.

What film was your "big break?"

Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels. That was about three years later. It was the first film where I got to do my own thing a bit, so it gave me a bit more confidence to be myself more. Up until then, I was still very unsure of myself.

Do people recognize you on the street?

Ha! Never... unless it's the postman.

What is the most recent film you wrote for?

Armored. Out in December. Jean Reno, Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne. Cool little indie heist movie.

What do you like about writing for movies?

Even though it can often be very constrictive... you sometimes get the chance to explore and experiment. Not just with what you write, but sometimes with structure... or how things can relate to characters and emotions in ways that maybe aren't the safe or the obvious way. Like on 28 Days... the score is almost like a negative of what you'd expect from films within that genre. Messing with the rules or the genre, and seeing what happens is always interesting.

Who do you look up to in the score-writing business?

If you mean guys who are still alive, for me, it's Ennio Morricone. By a mile. After that, probably John Barry. Of the Hollywood guys, I would say Howard Shore and of course John Williams. Though I like a lot of Clint Mansell's stuff. Of the dead guys, there are too many to mention... but probably Bernard Herrmann would be top of my list.

Why do you think that score-writing is important?

Just watch a film without music.

What's the best piece you've written, according to you?

For films?... I don't know. I can't even listen to most of my film stuff. I like the Adagio in D Minor from Sunshine. And I still have a soft spot for In the House from 28 days Later.

What's the worst?

Too many to mention. I wrote a punk song for a Reebok commercial in Britain called "Belly's gonna get you". It was insane but really funny. That would be high on the s*** list I think. I like it though.

What's the piece that's been the most mangled by the producer?

Most things get mangled to some degree. It's just part of the job of writing music to ever-changing picture. So it's hard to single out any one piece. But if you asked me what was the most mangled score, it would be Miami Vice.

How does your family feel about your line of work?

Proud but they worry about me.

So what are you working on right now?
I've got a film coming out in December... Armored, with Jean Reno and Matt Dillon. But right now, I've just started messing with some of my own stuff - something I've been promising myself for ages. Scoring films is great. But you can go crazy after a bit, just jumping from one film to the next and only ever writing to picture. It can actually get tedious if you don't take a break from it you know? And I don't want it to get tedious. So it's a good time to stop and do something a bit different. I'd forgotten what it felt like to just get up and write something, without stressing if it's gonna work for the scene or the character... or if the studio are gonna love it... or f***ing fire me! So I've given myself this a couple of months to just write for the sake of writing and not have to care if people like it or not. And that's it really... playing with the kids, watching the football... and writing a lot of uncommercial music.

As Mac As I'll Ever Go

I have an iPhone. And that's as Mac as I'll ever go.

And fanboys, don't yell at me saying that I've never tried 'em. As a KU J-School grad, I've been using Macs regularly for many years. And I just prefer Windows machines.

Anyways, as most iPhone users, I have a buttload of applications (hereafter referred to as apps), some of which I use multiple times a day, and some of which I don't remember downloading.

So here's the first post in a series, regarding which apps I have, and why I have them. I'll skip the boring ones.

Page 1

Facebook. I use this app embarrassingly too much, even when I'm right

next to my computer and can use the real facebook. It's just handy, tiny, fast, and slick. The version before iPhone O

S 3.0 came out was way worse, and I used it only as a backup when my laptop was being silly, or when I was

on the road. The new version has pretty much every feature, save for watching embedded videos, and they say they're working on that.

Overall, quite the good app.

AP Wire. The AP wire is one of the best news sources out there. In fact, now that papers are firing a lot of their reporters (ahem, you can hire me!), most of the content you'll see in the papers today is AP wire feed. This app started out rocky, and it's first few iterations were embarrassing and often crashed my phone. The new one, though, is quick and reliable, and where I get most of my news.

The New York Times. It certainly does have a liberal tint sometimes, but that doesn't mean it's one of the greatest papers out there today. And, as far as I'm concerned, it is the only one that has a free app that works as well as the NYT. It's fast, it lets you read content offline (which I used on a flight to Florida), and it features most of the newspaper features. As you can see, I

really only read the headlines, the opinion section, the politics section, and a few tech headlines.

It's slick, and it's reliable.

Google Maps. An outstanding mapplication (see what I did there?) that uses the GPS chip very well. It plots directions pretty fast, doesn't have turn-by-turn, but I already have a TomTom, so who cares? The GPS

is surprisingly accurate, but you have to have a good cell signal to download the image of the map. Only problem.

Another cool feature is traffic status. Those squiggly green lines show how congested traffic is at any given time. As you can see, it's range is pretty limited, but it gives me most of the Kansas City area, and has actually saved my butt once or twice.

Very rich and useful app.

Camera and Camera Roll. Excellent as far as camera phones are concerned. I would love to have video, but alas, I do not have the $400 to pay for a 3GS.

The camera's okay quality, and the organization of the pictures is second-to-none. It allows for multiple albums, emailing, and even mini-slideshows.

Doesn't have any editing capability, but I use plenty of third-party apps to do that.

Weather Channel. Perfectly suited to quick updates. The geo-locating

works great, and the severe weather alerts are helpful. The radar map is also excellent, as I like tracking storms and seeing where they're going.

Never used the video section, but if I wanted to watch the weather, I get about five channels with my digital antenna to do that.

Shazam. It's like they built an app especially for me. I love music, and in public am forever asking "What's that song? I've heard it before!" Enter Shazam. You start it up, hit the tag now button, and hold the microphone up to the radio or speaker. Ten seconds or so later, it tells you what song it was!

It's surprisingly accurate, too.

My only beef with it is the tiny tag now button way in the corner there. It needs to be a deal like SayWhere (an app I'll review later), where you just hit a big button as soon as the app starts. The tiny button works okay when you're stationary, but while driving or walking or something, it's hard to hit that little guy.

Still a lot of fun, though.

Bible. Perfect for when I don't have one with me. It requires an internet connection to access most translations, but has a few (random) offline ones, too. I don't use it too often, but it's very useful for when I don't have a hard copy with me.

Google. The voice search is really the only app worth reviewing, as all the other options just open up Mobile Safari to it's Mobile Google equivalent.

Voice search is fun, and that's about it. My wife and I tried to search for "Funder Tharts," and Bunder Store was the closest it got.

As to why we were trying to make it understand Funder Tharts, it was late, and I have no recollection.

So it's fun, but not terribly useful. I usually just use the Google box in Safari.

Hehe. Funder Tharts.

AroundMe. A basic but helpful GPS located that helps you find things in prelisted categories. Pretty useful, and have used it when out and about in the city more than twice.

It cracks me up that they have "Apple Retail Stores" in there. Have you ever been on the road and REALLY needed to find an Apple store?

Now remember, you're finding this Apple store with an iPhone, so the idea of using the Apple store for it's internet access (which I've done MANY times) is a silly and moot point.

They were probably just sucking up to Apple.

My Favorite Photo of the Day

I love this because Western Kansas is an area no one ever visits. It was taken near Phillipsburg, Kansas, my wife's hometown, and it's of her uncle's old truck.

And seriously, that's what most of the area looks like. When we visit her folks, we're quite literally in the middle of nowhere. And it's a wonderful change of pace.

As always, you can buy a print of it at http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=28937161. 8x10 glossy is the standard, but I take special orders too.

An Open Letter To The President.

Mr. Obama,
I am a conservative white male from Kansas, but please don't let that sway you from actually reading the rest of my letter.
Allow me to get straight to the point: you need to listen to your people.
When you became president of the United States in November, I wasn't one of the people dancing in the streets and crying. I did in fact vote for McCain, but after you won, I understood what had happened. Our country had once again practiced what made it great: democracy. We had banded together and elected a common leader, and we had done so unanimously. People had started to gloat and people had started to whine on November 5th, so I wrote a blog post about it.

I woke up in the usual manner today. I worked a late shift until three a.m. and so I slept until about 10:30. I woke up, stumbled out into our living room, and turned on the T.V.

And guess what?

The world hadn't ended. The world hadn't been magically solved of all its problems, either.

Aside from the women on shudder The View, who were gushing and practically crying on network television, the world was moving forward. Cartoons were on, infomercials hawked their useless wares, and CNN was running the morning news gambit.

The world lives on.

Last night, we elected Sen. Barack Obama to be our 44thh president. This morning, we still live in America.

That will never change.

Facebook went crazy last night around 11:00p.m. when Sen. Obama was finally confirmed as the winner. Cries of disappointment and of horribly misspelled ecstasy echoed up and down the News Feed.

I got fed up after about three seconds.

I quickly changed my status to:

"Caleb Sommerville says chill out, America.http://www.kansan.com/blogs/reactor/2008/oct/05/unite/."

That link is, of course, a link to my October 5th blog on moving forward with ourselves after the election is over.

It still stands today.

I also wrote a quick note on my profile:

_"Oh boy, here it comes. Cue the gloating, cue the whining, cue the doomsday marches.

Two words, America:

CHILL OUT.

Yes, Obama will be our next president. Yes, I do think we should not have elected him. But guess what? The people have spoken, and so be it. Stop the whining, stop the gloating. Take your McCain stickers off your cars; take your Obama signs out of your yard.

The election is done, our country will continue on, and above all:

God is still in control.

Daniel 2:21 says:

"He changes times and seasons; He sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning."

HE set Obama to be president. And HE will decide when he will not be. We needn't worry ourselves about the terrible or mind-blowingly amazing things that will happen to our country.

Obama's the president. Get behind him, support him, and shut up.

In other words, Move, America. Quit whining, quit gloating. It won't do us a dang bit of good. True, I don't like Obama and I don't think he'll be a good president, but guess what?

He's MY president.

I am a citizen of the United States, and we, as a country, elected him.

He's the people's president.

He's (or at least, will be in a few months) our leader. Stop complaining and leaving your McCain/Palin '08 and Ron Paul (seriously?) stickers on your car and start over.

Support Obama. He needs all the help he can get.

So you see, Mr. President, I supported you. I knew that our country had spoken, I knew that whining and complaining wouldn't get me anywhere. I simply had to hope that you would actually institute the non-party line change that you promised.
But that was in November.
Now, almost a year later, that same change you promised has happened, but not like you promised.
Instead, you have drifted back to the left, sometimes so far left in fact, that you have alienated not only most of the Republican Party but also some of the Democrats.
Sure, you will always have your detractors, but you as the president must also work to try to BRIDGE that gap, not do everything you can to widen it.
But it's not just the party members you have alienated. You, Mr. President, have alienated your people.
The people that disagree with you, at least.
Instead of listening to dissenting opinions, considering alternatives, or at least letting others speak, you have adopted a McCarthy-esque nature of immediately and categorically ignoring and ridiculing those who disagree with you.
Sure, there are those that must be ignored. A military coup is ridiculous. A death panel will (hopefully) never happen. These things are indeed silly.
But you have taken it too far, Mr. President. You did not develop a thick skin during your tenure as Senator, and you have taken disagreements far too personally.
Or perhaps, you have let your supporters take it too personally on your behalf. It seems I cannot open an opinion page these days without seeing a columnist that supports you that says all who disagree with your policies are racist, ignorant, stupid, uneducated crazies.
This is of course, mostly not true. There are of course crazies on both sides, but for the most part, the arguments brought against you are well-thought out common issues, not fringe wackos.
But you, Mr. President, have dismissed all disagreements and refuse to listen to dissent.
And I am standing here as a citizen to tell you that that is not okay.
You are the President. It is your duty to listen to your people, and to react accordingly. Refusing categorically to listen to dissent that tends towards the scary realm of undemocracy. Democracy means, Mr. President, that you must listen to your people. You must take counter-arguments into account and not just assume that they are all uninformed.
Please, Mr. President. Listen to your people. The fringe grows more reckless every day, and it worries me. If you would just listen to counter-arguments and show some proof that you indeed are, then the fringe would not be so willing to attack everything you say. Then also, your supporters would not be so willing to attack your detractors.
Please, Mr. President. You are our leader. Please act that way.