TOP COMPOSER LORNE BALFE TALKS TO ABOUT WRITING MUSIC FOR EVERYONE FROM TOM CRUISE AND EDDIE MURPHY TO WALLACE AND GROMIT
MARION McMULLEN
Was music a big part of your life growing up in Scotland?
My father was a songwriter and he had a residential recording studio, and we had bands from everywhere coming over.
Ozzy Osbourne would record there and I thought it was normal to wake-up at lunchtime and get to bed at midnight.
Musicians were around continuously and it was a great inspiration.
What was the first instrument you played?
(Laughs) Played successfully is a different answer, but drums were always there and piano – but piano was more complicated, so I stuck to drums.
I think there was more experimentation going on than there was me playing Mozart. I was playing drums when I was three.
There is a photograph of me with the band Inner Circle and, in a weird coincidence, they wrote the song Bad Boys, which is in the film of the same name.
I was getting drum lessons from the band when I was three or four and that was the beginning of it.
Forty-odd years later, the song has become part of my life after working on the last two Bad Boy movies.
How did you end up serving breakfast to the cast and crew of 90s TV drama Hamish Macbeth? (Laughs) That was my first proper job, working for the BBC. I was on production and doing everything from making breakfast to cleaning the toilets.
I had always known that if I wanted to work in the arts and film I needed to get a broad spectrum of everything, so I worked in post-production houses and at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Hamish MacBeth was a great learning curve because I got to see first hand how a film crew worked and how teams work. It’s like a mini-army.
How did composing become your career?
I think it was a simple case of “why not?”. I was doing commercials when I was 16, but I’ve never looked at it as a job and I’m fortunate now that it’s a hobby I get paid for. I can’t look at it any other way.
If you do something that you love then I don’t really know if it’s a job.
Axel F in the new Beverly Hills Cop movie, I really wanted to do because that was the first thing I learned to play on the piano.
It’s like working in the world of Mission: Impossible. It’s an utter privilege to be able to work with that famous Lalo Schifrin theme and you are sitting at your computer writing music and on screen you see Tom Cruise.
It’s a privilege to be able to work with the top of the industry.
Did you always want to go to Hollywood?
The world of academia was not for me, it just wasn’t clicking.
I always saw Hollywood as where the heartbeat of the films I liked came from.
When I was 16, I wrote a GCSE dissertation on music in film. My teacher said, “you should contact professionals and people you admire,” so I did, and one of them was film composer Hans Zimmer.
I gave him 10 questions and he very kindly replied with all 10 questions answered and he very loosely said “keep in touch”. I obviously read that as “you’ve got a job”.
I moved over (to the US) when I was about 20 and I started working at his studio. I started at the bottom as an assistant making breakfast. It was an apprenticeship, and I was there not far off 18 years.
I think I’ve been fortunate working with great film-makers.
How did you become involved in hit Netflix documentary series Life On Our Planet, which covers four billion years of life on Earth?
I’d never delved into the [programmes on the] natural history world. I always watched them but I had never worked on one.
When the film-makers came to me, the way they talked about it, it was a different way of telling a story.
I worked on a TV show once called The Bible and that was intimidating when you have to think, “What is the theme of Jesus?”.
It was finding instruments like bone flutes and being broad with it, but trying to have some rules so there was an authenticity to it.
There was a great instrument I discovered called the carnyx, preRoman I think. It was a sound that we have not heard and it was amazing with natural history.
From researching to recording with the London Symphony Orchestra it took about three years.
Are you looking forward to now going out on tour with concert specials of Life On Our Planet?
The live shows have just been a great rediscovery. You spend a lot of time working on something and then it comes into the world and it gets transmitted.
What is exciting about this is that it is going to have another life and another audience.
I’m also doing Top Gun: Maverick Live and that’s another one that crosses generations. You can get children and teenagers and grandparents all watching it.
What has it been like working on the new Wallace and Gromit Christmas special?
Wallace and Gromit means a lot to me and to my children.
Working on these projects, you do things thinking of the audience. That is why I got into movies.
I used to watch Jerry Bruckheimer movies and those were the films I wanted to do.
Wallace and Gromit are as British as they come and to be part of it is amazing. It’s great that it’s something my children can connect to. (Laughs) Most of my films are R rated.
Top Gun: Maverick Live in Concert comes to the Royal Albert Hall, London, on September 27.
Life On Our Planet in Concert tours from October 2. Visit lornebalfe. com for tour details and tickets
On the move: Brian Cox as Bach
STARS’ SHOWS HEAD TO LONDON
Brian Cox in The Score and Tamsin Greig in The Deep Blue Sea are both to transfer to London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket from Theatre Royal Bath next year.
Succession actor Brian plays composer Johann Sebastian Bach in the new play by Oliver Cotton, while Tamsin appears in writer Terence Rattigan’s classic drama.
Go to trh.co.uk for ticket details.
CATCH DANCER OTI’S NEW TOUR
Professional dancer Oti Mabuse, below, is going on tour next year with new show, Viva Carnival.
Oti, whose work covers hit TV shows like Strictly Come Dancing, The Masked Dancer and Dancing On Ice, says: “Dance has the power to bring people together and I can’t wait to party with everyone.”
The tour runs next June. Visit lambertjackson.co.uk for ticket details.
CLUELESS COMING TO WEST END
Singer-songwriter KT Tunstall has composed the music for new West End musical comedy Clueless.
The classic 1995 coming-of-age film is getting a makeover from the original writer-director Amy Heckerling and opens at the Trafalgar Theatre in London on February 15.
KT, pictured, says: “I think it’s just a really beautiful alignment of the stars because it’s the 30th anniversary of the film next year.”
Head to trafalgartheatre.com or call 020 7321 5400 for ticket info.
GET JAZZED UP FOR HIT MUSICAL
Kevin Clifton, Faye Brooks and Brenda Edwards are among the cast for the tour of multi-awarding winning musical Chicago.
Ex-Strictly pro Kevin, right, plays lawyer Billy Flynn, with Coronation Street’s Faye as Roxy Hart and X Factor’s Brenda as Mama Morton.
Since it opened in 1996, Chicago been seen by an estimated 34 million people in 38 countries.
The new tour runs from October 12. Go to chicagothemusical.com/ uk-tour for venues and bookings.