After Bernard Herrmann with Alfred Hitchcock or Nino Rota with Federico Fellini, he formed one of the most famous filmmaker-composer pairs with David Lynch. American musician Angelo Badalamenti died on Sunday December 11 at his home in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, his family announced. He was 85 years old.
When he passes away, the theme of Twin Peaks (1990). One then two notes played on the baritone guitar with a tremolo effect, a minimalist dialogue with an electric piano and then the entry of the synthesizers. A haunting motif arousing a feeling of sadness and then escape.
Badalamenti met Lynch in 1986. The director ofElephant Man was looking for a vocal coach for Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet, and this one will end up signing the soundtrack. Lynch has ideas about music, an ambition usually feared by composers. At the piano, Badalamenti gets to work, barely looks at the images and chats with the filmmaker, who talks to him about the 15e symphony of Shostakovich and a “ethereal beauty”.
Synthetic tablecloths
A theme rather in Hollywood classicism will follow and, for the ether, the synthetic tablecloths of Mysteries of Love, song performed by Julee Cruise, whose voice was recommended by Badalamenti. Here again, Lynch has a model in mind: the recovery of the Song to the Siren by Tim Buckley by the group This Mortal Coil associated with Elizabeth Fraser. This is how Badalamenti will import Scottish dream pop into American cinema.
What could not suggest a course started in Brooklyn. Born on March 22, 1937 in New York, Angelo Badalamenti started playing the keyboard at the age of 8 and received an academic education in composition, piano and horn. His brother, a trumpet player, also introduced him to the pleasures of jazz. Under the pseudonym of Angelo (or Andy) Badale, he worked as a composer and orchestrator and gained visibility in 1966, when he co-signed two songs from the album High Priestess of Soul by Nina Simone I Hold No Grudge and He Ain’t Comin’ Home No More.
More decisive was his collaboration in 1967 with the electronic music duo formed by the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Perrey and the German Gershon Kingsley (future author of the world hit Pop corn). But Badalamenti is still in the shadows when he decides, in 1981, to publish a curious album under the name of The Andy Badale Orchestra. As announced, Nashville Beer Garden is a tribute to the Germanic polka recorded in the country capital.
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