Second Blood

Cover for the new remastered soundtrack from Intrada.

I never expected to work on the Jerry Goldsmith "Rambo" scores. Douglass Fake of Intrada seemed to have closed the book on the series with expanded CD releases that were well received and weren't limited editions. Then in 2022 Jose Benitez of Quartet Records hired me to produce expanded LP presentations for "First Blood," "Rambo: First Blood Part II," and "Rambo III." The result was "Rambo: The Jerry Goldsmith Vinyl Collection."

For that release, I wanted to dive into the material and not just dump the CDs onto vinyl. If it says "Produced by" me, it should be produced by me. However, there was a roadblock. We couldn't find any scoring material. These films were made by Carolco, an independent company that no longer exists. After some emails with Doug and Roger Feigelson at Intrada, they kindly sent us the pre-mastered stereo mixes for all three films. "First Blood" had the most material, as Doug had mixes of every take recorded for the film.

Working on "First Blood" followed my usual routine of cutting up and ID'ing the music in the actual film first. This provides the reference for many things, notably takes and speed/pitch. And here's where things took a turn. The very opening guitar in the main title ("Homecoming") is its own take for the first few seconds and none of the takes matched the movie. It's always a little scary when the very first cue is an issue. In this case I determined that the stereo music mixes were running at the wrong speed. Was it the entire score (I hoped not) or just the guitar (please, please, please)? Using pitch and time software in Pro Tools I was able to correct that opening guitar and moved onto the rest of the main title and again, it was too fast.

It turned out all of the material for "First Blood" was fast. How did this happen? I don't know, I wasn't there for the transfers and I don't know what the material was. So for the vinyl I went through every cue, matching the speed and takes to the movie. And yes, the irony of correcting the speed for vinyl, a format not renowned for speed accuracy, wasn't lost on me. But it was important for me to get this right. As an aside, let me point out this issue did not affect the two sequel scores so please don't ask about those. I kept detailed notes for all of the "First Blood" work and of course saved the material just in case the project ever came around again.

And it did. A few months ago I was speaking with Roger at Intrada about various things and I blurted out, "What about 'First Blood?'" as a title to revisit. I then explained the speed problem and how it could be corrected. He got back to me a short while later and suddenly it was a "go" project.

This time things would be different again. This wasn't going to simply be the vinyl masters dumped onto CD. It was going to be a 2-disc re-build with the score on disc 1 and the original 1982 album assembly on disc 2. This was going to require a bit of work, as the 1982 album had many unique combinations of cues and at times different takes and I've never re-cut that. My methodology has also changed regarding correcting speed, so all of the work performed in 2022 would have to be redone.

My first task was to handle the cues for the film. With that complete I could then put the film takes up against the album to hear where combinations were made and where different takes were used. What did I use as a reference for the 1982 album? Good question! I had two sources, the first was Intrada's 1988 CD which was the primary reference for the album, as the speed was much more accurate than the later album reissue. Weird, I know. I also had access to something very limited and incredibly rare, Jerry Goldsmith's own acetate reference master, made prior to manufacturing the original vinyl. There is no higher authority.

Outer sleeve for Jerry Goldsmith's acetate ref.

If you previously bought the "Rambo" box set from Quartet, congrats! You've been enjoying a pitch corrected version of the score for a few years and maybe you don't need to buy this score again. For others, this may be a good reason to upgrade from prior CDs. And if you've never owned the score, now is a great time to get acquainted with it. The score and album have been entirely rebuilt digitally, eliminating any physical tape bumps and both discs have been mastered by Mike Matessino, a recent GRAMMY nominee.

Finally, if people look at the credits, they'll see I share the producers credit with Douglass Fake. While he sadly passed away in July 2024, his presence was felt throughout the production of this album. "First Blood" was an important score for him and for Intrada. This release retains not only his stereo mixes but also his liner notes from the 2010 album, with some small adjustments to bring it inline with this update, and we've retained many decisions he made for the earlier album as well. I could not have done this without him and I hope this release lives up to his high standards.

About That Mono Goldfinger Single

Last year, to honor the 60th anniversary of the release of the James Bond film "Goldfinger," La-La Land Records was asked to produce a new soundtrack album. This was one that was never on my "to-do" list because by all accounts the scoring masters are missing. But with the request in and a desire to continue having a roof over my head, I went ahead with the search for the score to "Goldfinger." While we wound up with many different album masters made over the years, no extra music was present on any of them. A search of the inventory at MGM did reveal one set of DA-88 tapes and we had those transferred.

Album cover for the 60th Anniversary Edition of the "Goldfinger" soundtrack

These tapes were digital back-ups of original 2-track 1/4" tapes from 1964 and contained the main title only, including the stereo mix of the version used on the soundtrack album and film (where it was folded down to mono). For that performance, Bassey recorded her track live with the orchestra. Once a completed take was in the can, that orchestra recording became the basis for a mono single that featured Bassey singing a fresh interpretation of the song. The tapes had those alternate takes with her on channel 1 and a mono mix of the orchestra on channel 2.

YouTube video of the original 45rpm mono "Goldfinger" single.

Evaluating all of the takes I determined that three of them (10, 12 and 15) were used to create the mono vocal performance. Listening to the original mono single an observant listener might be able to hear where those intercuts are. With digital editing it's much easier to make the transitions seamless, to preserve the illusion of a single performance. But there were still some issues, most notably that mono orchestra track still had remnants of Bassey belting out the lyrics from her booth. At times you can hear two voices on the original mono mix, such as around 1:12 where you can hear Shirley in the booth sing "It's" right before the alternate vocal comes in. Working with engineer Chris Malone, we were able to clean up all these stray bits to present the mono single in the best way possible. It's included on the La-La Land CD as track 17.

So why did we keep this mono and not create a stereo version? The answer is simple: we never found a stereo only mix of the orchestra. If one had ever been created, it's lost now, along with the rest of the score. But having access to the recordings revealed to me this was always intended to be released monophonically. That's why she was recorded against the mono mix of the orchestra. Could it be done with AI or some other computer trickery? Sure, but it would go against the intentions of the artists and may function as a curiosity but not a replacement. I'm thrilled with the work we did on this and it made the "Goldfinger" project, one I was initially skeptical about, worth doing.

Six Things About Six Soundtrack Albums

 Quick post here with behind-the-scenes trivia about some recent album releases.

Jurassic Park III

I edited this album for Mike Matessino and La-La Land Records. We had 5.0 mixes of every recorded take. This was recorded in the era where digital editing had hit an all new-level of precision. Performances could now be perfect with the ability to edit multiple takes seamlessly together. Here is an example.

I don't remember what cue this is, but this represents three different takes in five seconds. I'm able to do this by precisely lining up the recorded takes to either the film or original album which are used as reference.

The Godfather Part II

So I've established that I match performance takes to the film as reference. But what if the cue in question is for a deleted scene? That happened on "The Godfather Part II." On that score we only had the selected takes and in many cases they were able to do it in one take but for cue 19m2B, the second half of "Remember Vito Andolini (Film Version)" on disc 1, we had two takes and the scene was cut from the film. Which take should I use? Luckily, I remembered this deleted scene was on the television broadcast. I asked co-producer Dan Goldwasser for the scene which he had extracted to his computer. Sure enough, they intercut the two takes together and I duplicated that for the album.

Spider-Man 2

This was a challenging project because so much of the music was changed in the final film, with different composers coming in and even cues from the first film being repurposed for this film. We had stereo mixes of all of the final intended cues, but in some instances, once again, the takes we had didn't always match what was in the film. My theory is what existed was the entire score cut together, possibly to assemble the original album. That makes sense, right? Anyway, I was able get the missing takes and reassemble performances to match what was selected for the film. The ones I remember spending the most time on were "Spidus Interruptus" and "Armageddon." One of the Christopher Young "Demonstration" cues was also an edit of two takes.

Heavy Metal

If you like the original score album for this, thank Jeff Bond for its inclusion on this release. In 2008, Film Score Monthly issued the full Elmer Bernstein score on CD for the first time using the composers tapes which contained the film mixes. For our release, we stuck with the same transfers of these tapes. Jeff Bond, who wrote the notes, said it sounded good, but he preferred the mixes on the original album. So I reached out to Warner Music Group and sure enough, they had the original stereo 1/4" album master, already transferred in high-res 192 kHz/24-bit. The transfer ran a little fast but I was able to correct all of that and now Jeff Bond is happy. Looking at it now, I love this cover, too.

The Man With The Golden Gun

Surprisingly, there isn't much to say about this score. It's well known that it was completed in a hurry and there weren't many variations. It was a surprise though to learn "In Search Of Scaramanga's Island" was a different take in the film than on the album. The film uses take eight while the album uses take four. So if you're wondering why disc 1, track 22 says "Film Version" now you know.

Licence To Kill

One of my favorite things to do is rebuilding original soundtrack albums with our new transfers and mixes. In some cases, like "The Godfather" and "Moonraker," there is a major sound quality upgrade. In the case of "Licence To Kill," the original CD already had good sound but for some reason it was the editing that could be improved. The album track "Licence Revoked" had a cut in it that always stood out to me but in analyzing all of the score cues on the original album I found edit points that weren't the most refined throughout. That's all been addressed on the new CD.