A show's opening musical theme is crucial. It sets the color and the tone, and signals the whole identity that is desired. Ideally, it should be something that is catchy and memorable, that will grab viewers' attention and entice them to watch the episode that is about to begin.
OLTL's main theme was composed by Lee Holdridge. The current music and opening was introduced for the 7000th episode of the show on November 20, 1995. Holdridge also composed the previous theme, which ran from 1991 to 1995. As well, from time to time he helps OLTL's principal composer, David Nichtern, create other original background music for the show.
Lee Holdridge is well known in the film and television world. In 1973 he collaborated with Neil Diamond on the film score for "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". His most well known prime time television themes were for "Moonlighting" and the television series "Beauty and the Beast" (for which he won two Emmys). More recently, he created the film score for the documentary motion picture "The Long Way Home", which won an Academy Award as best feature documentary for 1997. In addition to his many background scores for films and television shows, he has also written chamber works, rock pieces, songs, and theater music. An excerpt from "Scenes of Summer," one of his orchestral pieces, was used by figure skater Tara Lipinski during her recent Olympic gold medal winning performance.
Hoping to learn more about what goes into the music production on OLTL, I contacted Mr. Holdridge, and he agreed to an interview by phone on January 10, 1998. In this interview, he discusses his history with OLTL, the two main themes he wrote for the show, and the demands, challenges, and rewards of film and television scoring.
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- FIRST of all, I understand that you as a composer work on a contract basis in all your projects do you? You're not an employee of ABC, for instance.
LH: No, no, I'm what is known as freelance.
- IS that the way most composers work?
LH: Yes, most composers work that way. In the old studio days of MGM, Warner Brothers, and Fox, they had composers under contract, but those days ended in the 50s.
- COULD you tell me a bit about how you came to be associated with OLTL? When did you start doing some work for them?
LH: There was a producer by the name of Linda Gottlieb, who had produced "Dirty Dancing" and a number of other films. I had worked with her on a movie for CBS called "Face of a Stranger". She liked my work, and she was going to take over producing OLTL, so she asked me if I would write a new theme for it. I said sure, and I wrote something, and she loved it. That's how I started out, by coming in, I guess it was around 5 years ago.
- I BELIEVE it was 1991 that she came in.
LH: Something like that, yes. That theme ran for a long time, and I thought it was a terrific theme. Then a new producer [Susan Horgan] was brought in, and at that point we discussed doing a new theme, and that's what you have currently playing.
- SO it was the association with the producer that really got you there.
LH: Right. Linda wanted me to do the whole score, but I couldn't, because I was living out here in California and doing a lot of films and television. So I recommended David Nichtern to her. From talking to a number of people, his name came up quite a bit as someone who would be ideal to score the series, which he has been doing since then as well. He also helped produce both main title themes.
- THE previous theme music had a very different sound to the one that's playing currently. You wrote both of them?
LH: Yes. Sometimes different producers desire trying a different sound for the show, something that ties in with their idea of the look that they want, or the style that they want the show to have, and that sometimes helps decide the way you're going to approach the opening theme.
- DID they talk to you to any length about what kind of thing they wanted out of it, and did that guide you?
LH: Yes, a lot of discussion was spent on that, and I played some ideas until we found something that we all thought worked. There is collaboration with the producers, especially in a television series.
- WHAT sorts of things were being attempted, in terms of the concept behind the two of them?
LH: Linda's original concept was more romantic. The first theme that I wrote for her came out of that idea. When Susan came in she wanted something more up, more contemporary. We talked about rearranging the old melody, but I said, you know, sometimes it's just better to write a brand new melody, because you can then direct it towards the style in which the whole thing is going. The way they play it now, with the faces, that was a concept she evolved. And the theme reacted to that idea in terms of music.
- TO me the previous theme had more of a nostalgic sound to it.
LH: Yeah, it had some nostalgia, it had some romance to it, it had a nice kind of sweeping feeling to it.
- I REALLY liked it actually.
LH: Yeah, actually a lot of people miss it. I like both themes. I think the first one was probably more unique, but ... you experiment, you try things, that's what shows do.
- I SAW on the newsgroup where someone said the second one had a very "big city" sound to it.
LH: Right, it does. It definitely has a more contemporary flavor. And there's more of David's influence in there of the guitars and the rhythm and percussion, in terms of the way it's arranged.
- WHAT about your other work for OLTL, besides the main theme?
LH: From time to time I have contributed new thematic material, something for David to use in the score, or to evolve as part of the score - maybe a theme for a certain character or a certain situation that's coming up. Often I've been asked to come up with ideas, and I do. Sometimes we record them with an orchestra, or sometimes David realizes them on synthesizers. Then from that David and the music directors [Jamie Howarth and Paul Glass] will evolve numerous variations of those themes and ideas. David contributes quite a number of original themes himself as well, and an enormous amount of the score, but sometimes a lot of it is based on material that I've created, that he uses as a thematic idea.
- SO you do collaborate to some extent.
LH: Yes. Essentially I might record a theme for him and then he will take that and do a lot of different variations with it, develop it.
- IN 1992 there was a very prominent storyline involving AIDS/homophobia. I've seen it mentioned that you had written a song called "There Will Come A Time" for that story? It seems to have made a big impression because I've seen it mentioned quite a bit.
LH: Yes, that was during Linda's tenure there. I wrote the music for "There Will Come A Time" and Cynthia Weil wrote the lyric. We wrote it for the AIDS quilt sequence that Linda had done. The music also exists in the OLTL library as an instrumental called "The Accusation".
- AND I gather that at first it was presented without the lyrics and then at the climax of the story the words were unveiled…
LH: Linda fell in love with the melody and she said, you've gotta have a lyric written for this, and so we did that and evolved into a song. The song version was premiered on the episode with the AIDS quilt. Luther Vandross sang it on an ABC television special last year. So the song has a life of its own, and I'm hoping one of these days it will get recorded. It's a great song actually. It's not typically commercial so I've had a tough time getting it recorded, but it will get on CD someday.
- CAN you tell me, just for background information, what's involved in creating the actual original music for the show? What is the process, what different things, what steps have to happen?
LH: I can give you some overall impressions, but most of the time David Nichtern is really the main person doing all of the scores and doing the bulk of the work for the show. David reads treatments of what the writers are planning to do down the road, and will discuss with the producer and the music directors what plans they have for certain characters. Maybe a storyline is going to develop, and sometimes they'd like that storyline to have a thematic piece that follows that story, so theme will be developed that everybody agrees works for that story. You see, in scoring a film you write to the film - the film is cut and edited, and you score to the actual film. In soap opera, you have to in a sense prepare the music ahead of time.
- THEN what happens once the music is written?
LH: What David will do is take a theme and record it maybe at many different lengths, many different tempos, many different moods. Then as the shows are taped and built, music will be added to it, literally in a mix situation, by the music directors, who edit the music, finding the right tempo, or the right mood, which cue to use - they might say, ok, let's use cue #72 for this moment. Then the producer will say, that works wonderfully, or, no that doesn't work, try something a little faster, or try something a little slower, or maybe something a little darker.
- THAT certainly sounds like it could be a tough situation to predict, all right.
LH: What happens is that the library builds up over a period of time that they have access to, as well as new pieces of music being created for upcoming stories or upcoming characters. So in a soap opera it's much more of an ongoing process, as opposed to in a film where a definitive score is written for that film at that moment in time and recorded to the film. Soap opera is evolving. It's almost like doing live television. It's happening instantaneously. It's being written, it's being taped, it's being directed and acted and taped, and literally edited and scored, all in a sequential, day in and day out, continual process.
- WHAT does that mean in terms of you the composer working in that situation? For instance, is it more of a frustrating thing, or is it more rewarding - or neither one, just different?
LH: Well, as a film composer I do like having a finished film to work to, because there's a certain definitiveness about it. It's very hard in soap opera for composers, because the process is constantly evolving, and constantly changing. I'm amazed at David's ability to meet different situations head on and figure out the right way to handle it. It requires enormous versatility, and enormous adaptability. The situations will change very quickly - from week to week. It's just a different kind of challenge.
- FROM what you're saying it really sounds like quite a different approach that a person would have to take.
LH: Yes, it is. It's a very different kind of film scoring. When they ask me to bring something to them, I try to bring to it some of my film knowledge of the kind of music that I think has a sense of drama, or a sense of the dramatic qualities that you look for in a film score. But in soap opera you're not scoring to anything in particular, you're scoring to an idea.
- AM I right in thinking that scoring for prime time TV is more like film or movie scoring?
LH: Yes, because the films are cut and edited and finished, and then a score is added to it. So it's very much like scoring a film. You may have a one-hour episode as opposed to a two-hour film, and the budgets are more limited, the time is more limited, but still within that you try to create something very special.
- GIVEN that composing for soaps is so different from film composing, is there a kind of community of composers that works mainly in soaps versus others?
LH: There are certain people that are very well versed in it, there's no question about it, but what's happened in the business over the last 10 -15 years, is that versatility has become a key factor. A lot of different people work in a lot of different mediums, because there are so many mediums available now to audiences, so therefore the needs for music are wide and varied. I find myself composing everything from documentary film to feature film to television miniseries - many different kinds of things - and each of them has their own particular kinds of challenges and demands on you.
- SOAP operas do seem to be unusually demanding though, from what you're saying.
LH: I don't think any one person can do a soap opera alone. It's so demanding in terms of the amount of music that has to be created for it, that it goes beyond just the composer. It goes into an area of music editors, who are essential to the whole soap opera process because they edit different pieces of music to fit, literally as they go, as the show is being built each day. The music directors, or music editors, they are the ones that literally lay in the music day in and day out - edit it and lay it in, edit it and lay it in. They work one on one with the producer day in and day out, actually selecting what cue goes where, and maybe cutting two cues together. They also help decide what they need for the future - something they would communicate to David, and then David would decide how to get a particular piece of music.
- ONE other thing I've wondered about: I notice on the newsgroups that if popular music is used as background to a scene it always gets a really big response. People seem to like that - hearing a popular tune that they recognize.
LH: Well, the soap operas like to do that from time to time. It gives them a contemporary feeling. It's expensive. They have to pay a lot of money for the rights to use those songs, but sometimes it's worth it to them for particular things.
- WOULD it be more expensive than commissioning an original?
LH: In some cases, yes.
- OK. I was wondering if you could say something about, given that the popular songs seem to generate a response, why do shows use original music? What's the reason for having original music, what's the gain in it?
LH: Popular songs can elicit a large response but it can also be distracting, because you might associate a song with a certain thing. The reason for original music is that you can create an identity for the show that is unique to the show. Only original music can do that. This is true in a film or television or anything. Original music becomes the identity of the film. Whereas if you bring in an outside song, as wonderful as it might be, a lot of us have other associations with a song that we hear, and we may not necessarily associate it with that show but may associate it with something else. So I think it's a choice that has to be made very carefully by producers. They have to have a good reason for wanting a particular song, to do a certain thing in a scene. For instance, if I heard a certain song in the middle of a scene it might be distracting to me because I might start thinking about where I know that song from, and who sang it, and this and that and the other, and then the next thing you know, I'm not paying attention to the scene any more.
- WELL, I think that's absolutely what happens all right.
LH: So I think it has pros and cons. It has to be chosen very carefully, and I think maybe that's why they get very selective as to when they bring it in or not bring it in. Whereas with original music, the audience will now be more into the story and the characters, because the music is much more tied to that story and those characters.
- THAT'S true ... and when you get particular themes being used and associated with a particular storyline and a particular character, then using that theme can bring back all those associations too.
LH: Yes, it's very important. It's a very important factor. The producers really know how effective music can be and they rely on it - very much so - to create certain emotions, or certain moods. Sometimes also, the music needs to be truly underscore, or background music. It needs to be something that is there as a mood, but it doesn't necessarily hit you over the head. There's varying degrees of how strong you want the music to be in a scene, depending on what the scene is. Sometimes it's just a subtext or something that's going on in the subconscious of the character. A person who writes scores for films and television has to be a dramatist at heart. You're looking for something: what's the character thinking, what's the character feeling do you want to play against it. Maybe somebody's smiling and looking happy but the music is telling you that maybe something's not right.
- YOU want to do the subtext.
LH: Yes, so it just depends on how you want to play the scene - and sometimes it's something you're directed to do.
- WHEN you're doing film scoring, would you have the final control over that?
LH: Well, you work very closely with the director on a film. Because the director has lived inside the film and shot it with the actors, and they've spent time with the screenwriters. More than anyone that is their statement, and it's very important to them what the music does in each and every scene in the film. So you must work closely with the director to achieve those results.
- WHEREAS on a soap, you would be less involved in the final product.
LH: Yes. You would rely more on what the producers, and the music directors, who are also music editors, what they actually put together.
- IN your work then, do you work mainly with the producers or directors?
LH: Well, in television the producer is the captain of the ship. When you get into movies you're dealing much more with the director as being the captain of the ship. But that's just the nature of the way corporate things are set up, as to who's in charge. In a television series the producer oversees the overall direction and style of the show. They may have many directors and many writers working for her or him, and different composers sometimes, but they try to oversee the overall direction and style of the series.
- I'M curious about some of the latest projects you've been working on. You just did something for Turner Pictures?
LH: Yes, "Two for Texas" it's called. It's starring Kris Kristofferson, and it will air on January 18th. It's a big western - action adventure - and it's a big score too - big orchestral score on my part.
- WHAT about something called "Family Plan"? Is that still upcoming?
LH: Yes, that's a Leslie Nielsen film. It's a comedy that I did with him over the summer. That's coming sometime in the near future - I'm not sure exactly when that will be released.
- A FILM that came out recently was "The Long Way Home", too.
LH: "The Long Way Home" is a documentary feature film which has played in several major cities starting in, I think it was October of this past year, and now it's reopening in February again. It's an excellent film. It should be seen.
- ONE last thing I wanted to ask about: During your overall career, you've worked in a lot of different types of music - and I see you've written a violin concerto, and an opera ...
LH: Yes, I came from a concert music background, and I spent some time writing arrangements for famous recording artists, and that's what got me into films. Basically I love composing. It's what I do, it's what I've been doing since I was ten years old. Composing is a very natural process to me, and I like it - coming up with ideas, and exploring them. I find myself enjoying writing for a lot of different forms, because it keeps me fresh, and it keeps me constantly challenged. You may do a dramatic film and then your next film is a comedy, so you've got to totally switch gears - but that's the fun of it, and that's what makes it adventurous and exciting. You're starting with a blank canvas each time. You start over from scratch. Sometimes at first it's very frightening - you say, oh my gosh, I've gotta come up with an idea for this - but then, as you sit and work on a film, ideas come.
- I'M wondering, given all the different forms, the different genres you've worked in, do you have a preferred form or genre? Or do you like doing the variety?
LH: It's all music. So, my preferred form is music. I love music and I love all the different facets of music, and so it's very hard - it would be like asking someone which of your children do you like best - you can't really do that. It's all part of yourself. Sure, I love certain pieces of music more than other pieces of music - sometimes you feel you're more successful in some than others. But in every case you give it your best, and you give it your all.
- SO it's not that you'd really rather be, say, writing the violin concertos?
LH: No, I don't think that way at all. To me ... I like doing it. I like doing all kinds of music. I like going into the studio and recording it with an orchestra or group of musicians. I like the fun of writing something and then hearing it, and I love hearing it on the air or seeing it in the theater ... it's just magical.
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Thanks to Lee Holdridge for kindly consenting to this interview with a curious (but nervous) "newbie" interviewer, and for his patience and generosity with ideas. It was a real pleasure to hear first hand about the experience of working on films, television, and in particular soap operas from a musical point of view.
Further details about Lee Holdridge's career, and a discography with available soundtracks and CDs can be found on his official web site: CLICK HERE!