Soundtrack Saturday

Back in January of this year I stated this weekly Saturday series, following year long ones from previous years- Saturday live (live performances) and VA Saturday (various artists compilations). Saturday Soundtrack is drawing to a close and I need to think of something new for 2026. 

Soundtrack Saturday started with Blade Runner and then went on to cover Wings Of Desire, Paris Texas, 20th Century Women, Walker, Lost In Translation, Performance, Bullitt, Midnight Cowboy, High Fidelity, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, The Rockford Files, Escape From New York, The Sheltering Sky, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Shopping, Absolute Beginners, Salvation, Repo Man, Trainspotting, The Beach, Flashback, The Wicker Man, Brian Eno on Jubilee, Heat and We Are As Gods, Ennio Morricone's Dollars trilogy, Sid And Nancy, Amongst Friends, Rockers, Mystery Train, Betty Blue, Goblin scoring Profondo Rosso, Suspiria and Zombi- Dawn Of The Dead, Butch Cassady And The Sundance Kid, Apocalypse Now!, The Clangers, Chris Massey's live re- scoring of silent films from 1920s Germany (The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, Metropolis and Nosferatu), Brush Strokes, Out Of Sight, Down By Law, The Ipcress File, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (The Road, The Assassination Of Jesse James BY The Coward Robert Ford and La Panthere De Neiges), various Western TV and film themes Rawhide, Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Magnificent 7), On The Road and most recently Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. 

You don't need me to tell you how great Blade Runner is and how perfectly Vangelis' music fitted with Ridley Scott's visuals. One of the joys of the Blade Runner soundtrack is the use of dialogue from the film on the OST album. Harrison Ford's voice adds a lot to the Vangelis' synths here, sci fi noir and symphonic drama in sync...

Blade Runner (Main Titles)

I think it's now pretty clear that Ford's Deckard isn't really the hero of Blade Runner. Deckard's job is to 'retire' replicants. In 2019, when the film is set (made in 1982 when 2019 seemed impossibly far away), most work has been outsourced to replicants, human seeming androids made with an expiry date. These replicants have reached a pint where the manufacturers can even give them memories, enabling them to believe they are human. Early on Deckard meets Rachael (played by Sean Young), a replicant who has no idea she is not human. Deckard falls in love with Rachael, further adding to the complications. 'Too bad she won't live forever', he is told at the end, mockingly. 'But then again, who does?'

What it means to be human is central to the film as is the question of the morality of creating beings that believe they are human and giving them the jobs that humans won't do. Pris, played by Darryl Hannah, is described as 'a basic pleasure model'. Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, is the leader of a four replicant gang, AWOL on earth and needing to be retired. Batty and the other replicants are the real heroes of Blade Runner. At the film's end Batty demonstrates his humanity, saving Deckard despite the Blade Runner trying to kill him. Batty's monologue, partly improvised by Hauer, is legendary...

Tears In Rain

In 2013 Grumbling Fur released a song, The Ballad Of Roy Batty, a cosmic, choral, psychedelic song with Hauer's words sung by the band. It sounds like it could a bad idea on paper but actually works really well, the monologue's message- life is short, experiences are fleeting, we all die, make the most of it- as apt now as it was when a fictional character muttered it on film back in 1982. More in fact. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Throughout 2024 I ran a series every Saturday called V.A. Saturday, a celebration of the various artists compilation album. I could probably keep this going but felt it was time for a change so am shifting the Saturday slot to an appreciation of soundtrack albums, the records/ CDs released to accompany films. There's a difference between soundtracks and original scores which I will probably skirt the line of, and maybe at times the old V.A. Saturday might return. 

When I was a kid, I'm talking twelve/ thirteen, I was really into soundtracks. I was a big fan of cinema and the early 80s were a good time to be into films. Soundtrack albums were tied in to the cinematic releases, and were often if truth be told a bit of a let down. What sounded epic and exciting over the cinema speakers and complemented by the visuals could easily sound less so at home. But there were enough really good soundtrack releases that stood on their own two feet and it was a habit that lasted through the 80s, vinyl OSTs and soundtracks a big part of my fledgling record collection. In 1981 I bought the Raiders Of The Lost Ark soundtrack, my first soundtrack album, with John Williams' orchestral theme played by the London Symphony Orchestra often on the Dansette turntable. I was a slightly quirky child at this age. The same year, '81 (I was eleven), I was invited to a fancy dress party and went as Lawrence of Arabia. Everyone else was far more plugged in to popular culture for their fancy dress. The Raiders soundtrack didn't survive the years- I've no idea what happened to it. 

The following year Blade Runner came out. I was a big Harrison Ford fan and had an interest in film noir (early evening BBC2 often showed black and white films from the 1940s). The cinema up the road from us in Withington, the Scala (later Cine City, now a Tesco) had a liberal attitude to age certificates and admission and twelve year old me got in to see Blade Runner despite looking )and being) too young. Blade Runner is a very different kettle of androids compared to Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Star Wars- dark, ambiguous, dystopian. I loved it and love it still, whatever cut or version you're watching. I had no problem with the studio added voice over (and don't still) or the vaguely happier ending the studio tacked on to Ridley Scott's film. 

The soundtrack too planted deep roots in me, Vangelis' synthesisers and timpani, his wide screen electronics, jazz saxophone and film noir influences, all very memorable and  striking. Not that anyone could buy the soundtrack- it was unavailable until 1994 and then released in a strange version that included recordings not even used in the film.  

Vangelis' equipment list for the recording of the soundtrack is a synth lovers dream- various Rolands including the Jupiter 4, Yamahas, a Fender Rhodes. He supplemented them with traditional percussion instruments and when the various versions of the soundtrack were released, snippets of dialogue from the film were included, not least the famous Rutger Hauer Tears In Rain monologue. Blade Runner is a masterpiece, a perfect vinyl soundtrack album, twelve tracks of early 80s synth music, enormously influential, futuristic, moving, powerful, evocative, romantic and haunting, and a narrative in its own right. 

Blade Runner (Main Titles)

Tales Of The Future

Blade Runner (End Titles)

Tears In Rain

Tales Of The Future

More and more I think that the soundtrack to Blade Runner has been a formative influence on my listening. Which is weird because if someone asked me to list my favourite artists I'd never reply 'Vangelis'. Then film came out in 1982 and I saw it at the cinema (the Scala in Withington, a very run down flea pit with three screens, two small ones downstairs and a larger one upstairs with double seats on the back row. Entry was £1 and they weren't too fussy about age restrictions. It later became Cine City and then was demolished). The look of the film, the non stop rain and night, neon lights, 1940s/ 1980s fashions, Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah and Sean Young all captured my attention- the famous roof top scene and Roy Batty's death (and Hauer's famous improvised lines) lingered long after the credits had rolled. Vangelis' instrumental score must have stuck with me too- the synths and keyboards, the rolling drums and pulsing synthesisers, the bleeps and sounds of the machinery worked into the music and the snippets of dialogue, the strange bursts of Japanese singing in Tales Of The Future, the ambient washes of sound and sudden rumbles of distant timpani... I hear these all over the place in things I listen to at the moment. Vangelis has a long shadow.

Tales Of The Future

Blade Runner (End Titles)

Tears In Rain

Strange to think that when Blade Runner came out the year it was set in, 2019, was nearly four decades away in the future and is now two years gone. These Polaroids were taken by Sean Young during filming are an incredible time capsule and snapshot of the past/ future.

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer died on this day in 2002, seventeen years ago. It seems fitting to remember this each year and especially so this year, London Calling being all over the media and the internet. There's a good BBC show here where Pennie Smith, Don Letts and Johnny Green listen to the album and talk about their memories and role in it.

In 2001 Joe and his Mescaleros had released Global A Go- Go, an album which had back at the top of his game and leading a band who suited him. The gigs they played to promote it were raucous and life affirming affairs, Joe mixing up the new songs with Clash ones. I was at the opening night of the tour at Manchester Academy, November 17th, the venue packed with all the young punks and the old punks too, out in force. Early on there were a few beers arcing through the air towards the stage. Bass player Scott Shields scowled as he got a soaking, lager down the front of his shirt. Joe noticed this and when the song finished told Scott, over the mic, not to worry about as things were about to get a lot worse- they then ploughed into Safe Eurpean Home and the whole venue went up in the air as one, seconds before more pints were flung towards the stage. The gig finished with a memorable version of Yalla Yalla and then Joe returning for the encore with a child on his shoulders before they group followed him on to play Bankrobber.

The song that closed Global A Go- Go was a version of a traditional Irish song, The Minstrel Boy, an eighteen minute lilting lament to the boys who have gone off to war.

Minstrel Boy

A different version of the song, shorter and with Joe's vocals, was played over the closing credits of the 2001 film Black Hawk Down, a Ridley Scott about the U.S. army's raid on Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993.

The Minstrel Boy

The lyrics are a version of Irish Republican Thomas Moore's words, written in the late 18th or early 19th century.

'The minstrel boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you'll find him...

...thy songs were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery'