David Lynch died last week aged seventy eight, as I'm sure most of the readers of this blog will know. He was a visionary artist, the director of film and TV that redefined what film and TV could be. His films- Eraserhead, Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway- all lit up the screen and took storytelling and cinema somewhere else. The dreamlike world he created, a sense of the surreal and the strange being just around the corner, live in the memory long after the credits have rolled. Twin Peaks reimagined what television could be and do.
Music was crucial to Lynch's film and visual world. Blue Velvet, 1986's psychological thriller/ film noir, was based around the Bobby Vinton song of the same name and any reference to the film- the cover of The Face magazine above for instance- will have the song playing in my head instantly...
Blue Velvet is one of those 50s songs that has a weird, trippy edge to it regardless of its association with David Lynch's film. It's place in the film just made it even more so. 1990's Wild At Heart, a black comedy/ road movie/ romance/ crime spree film, made a star out of Chris Isaak and his song Wicked Game.
Wild At Heart took Elvis, the 1950s, a snakeskin jacket, suggestions of the Wizard Of Oz and the stars Laura Dern and Nicholas Cave and wrapped them in a love story freak out. I saw it at the cinema in 1990 while a student in Liverpool, an afternoon screening that had us blinking in the daylight when we came out. My then girlfriend saw it with me and hated it (and made it clear during the film's duration)- it was very much a film that split opinions.
Twin Peaks is unimaginable without the soundtrack, not least Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti's song Falling, that plays over the opening titles, a song that creates a dream world of its own and that sets the tone for everything that follows.
It's been sampled ever since its release in 1990 as have other parts of the Twin Peaks soundtrack and world. I've posted this before but its worth posting again- a Bedford Falls Players track from last year called Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams that takes Kyle MacLachlan and Twin Peaks and builds a wonky, electrifying cosmic house world around them. Find it here.
David Lynch was a music obsessive and frequently made and released his own music too, the '50s influences ever present along with his enduring love of the blues. Many of them are at Lynch's own Bandcamp page, the physical copies largely sold out but digital available. This one, The Big Dream, is the title track from a 2013 album, twelve modern blues songs, Lynch and his co- writer/ musician David Hurley (with Lykke Li singing on a bonus song) and a Bob Dylan cover (The Ballad Of Hollis Brown). Dusty blues, like some 21st century crossover of Tom Waits, Bobby Vinton, Jack White and Link Wray, but ultimately entirely Lynchian.
The whole album is at Bandcamp too along with various other Lynchworld releases.
RIP David Lynch.