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| 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.
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| 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.
