Harold Faltermeyer

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Well then, thanks for coming out this morning. We do have the honor of having one Harold Faltermeyer next to us and today, we’re going to talk about all things big that is Bavaria, Hollywood and pop music so, please, give him a hand.

Harold Faltermeyer

Hi, guys. Thank you.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Seeing that it’s been quite a hard week already, we figure we listen to some music just to ease us in.

(music: The Beatles – “Michelle”)

What role has that song in your life?

Harold Faltermeyer

You might want to ask what does Harold Faltermeyer has to do with The Beatles and with “Michelle.” This was one of the songs I adored so much because I couldn’t figure out the chords in the first place. This was for a rock band, or for a pop band at that time a very unique thing to do a song which is like a Irving Berlin or a very complicated chord structure.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What’s complicated about it?

Harold Faltermeyer

The chords. I mean it’s not just C, F and G or E, A and then B natural. It’s a rather complex arrangement of vocals and everything and I had a little band back then and we tried to play this song and it took us quite some time to figure out how it worked.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How old were you at the time?

Harold Faltermeyer

Thirteen.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You’re were in Bavaria then?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yes.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Harold is not exactly the most Bavarian spelling, right?

Harold Faltermeyer

But it’s how I’m called. I have a godfather who was an American soldier and my parents met him when America finally took over Germany and this was one of the rare friendships back then and they didn’t have kids and they said, “Whenever you have kids, I would love to be the godfather.” This guy’s name was Harold H. Clark. That’s why my name is Harold.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

And Munich was, not in the Bavarian sector but in the American sector.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. It was. Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you have any recollection of that godfather?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. He always pretended to be an Indian, a native Indian, but he was not. He was an American, typical southern guy. He was a great guy. I remember him being very gentle and very friendly to our family, and as a matter fact, his family supported our family really very good throughout the early years after Germany had to be built up again because everything was destroyed and they helped us, really.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Without making it sound too gloomy but how did you get access to instruments and all?

Harold Faltermeyer

My family was always known for doing music at home. This was this thing which was called house music back then. This has nothing to do anything with the house music of today but it was music where you played on a Sunday morning. You had friends over and you played like Schumann, Bach and Beethoven or Mozart. And my grandpa was a very good violin player while my dad was a very good piano player and my grandmom was a good singer so they sang like Schumann songs and Beethoven sonatas and everything. That’s how I got access to music and as a little kid I said, “I want to learn, I want to study and learn piano.” Which in the first place was a very interesting decision because I didn’t figure out, first of all, that I had to study a lot. I thought this comes by nothing. You just sit on the piano and you just play but you had to study and they had a teacher from Romania and she was, I should say a bitch because…

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Not a very nice thing to say.

Harold Faltermeyer

It was terrible because she had like a nail file and I played and she was always sitting there and doing her nails and whenever I play the wrong notes, hit me on the fingers. I didn’t like her.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It is interesting because I was actually going to ask you when you get brought up in the German schooling system and it gets to classical music, there’s all this horror stories about Schumann, Schubert or whatever and what their teachers did to them, like the one that would tie the fingers up to the grand piano…

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, terrible, isn’t it, huh? Schumann even lost his ligaments because of a thing like this. Yeah, terrible.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you think it’s worth it all the torture?

Harold Faltermeyer

Being a performer, you have to go through lots of hours of study. Otherwise, you don’t make it because the competition is just too big. I recall later in the music college, I tried to study piano on the first choice instrument and I couldn’t even get accepted at all because I was not good at all because we had so many great players. Funny enough, from Japan, at that time, we had like a student exchange program and the Japanese are known and were known for intensive rehearsals so they were sitting there at the rehearsal rooms day and night, practicing like 10 hours, 12 hours all these complicated Czerny etudes and all the things. They were so much better than the kids from Munich. Of course, what we call Messlatte [leveling rule], I don’t know the English word for that. It’s like the level…

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

The threshold or the mark.

Harold Faltermeyer

The threshold, the mark, was so high that only the best of the best could get in.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Well, what do you expect? ‘Cause at the same time you were just busy hanging out at TV studios.

Harold Faltermeyer

[laughs] That’s right.

(video: excerpt from a German talent show featuring Harold’s first band Melodic Sound)

That’s what’s called today like the big casting shows in the States like America’s Got Talent or whatever. This was a show in Germany which is like one of the ancient shows who was similar to that.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Was it even German TV or was it Bavarian TV?

Harold Faltermeyer

No. German TV. It was German TV, it was the Badische Rundfunk. Dieter Pröttel, this guy is one of the most famous TV directors in Germany, or was. He still lives actually. He’s now 88-years-old.

(video: excerpt from a German talent show featuring Harold’s first band Melodic Sound)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

[translates] “They write their own material, at least most of it.” Untranslatable ’50s youth speak, grown-up person trying to speak that.

(music: Melodic Sound - unknown)

Harold Faltermeyer

[comments] That’s my brother.

[music continues]

That’s me. [laughs]

[music continues]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

[in German] “Melodic Sound aus München, die dufte swingen.”

Harold Faltermeyer

These were the days, yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

“Dufte swingen…” It’s probably translatable as “smelly swinging” – whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Harold Faltermeyer

[laughs] This was an expression thing that we always said, “Es swingt schon richtig dufte.” That’s a very German expression for quite funky.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Not in smelling in bad sense. It’s an extremely tame way of voicing your dissent. Yeah, I guess pop music at that time was probably very parent-friendly, right? This is not exactly the last Slayer album?

Harold Faltermeyer

No. I mean, pop music, especially for a lot of people back then was associated with long hair, with smelly shoes and just being ridiculous and not being decent. I remember that my parents even said, “Your hair can’t only be this long and you have to dress decent.” And it was not very respected, especially in our family, this was a family of classical music and I was treated, first of all, like an outlaw because I was playing an organ or I was playing not classical stuff.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

An organ was also called the Schweineorgel or the pig organ.

Harold Faltermeyer

I know or the pig organ, right. Definitely. Yeah. Of course, you had like the pedal where you could make it as loud as you want, so you had like a big advantage against everybody else. If you played together with a piano player, he has his own volume but with the organ, you just hit the throttle and you go. It’s pretty terrible.

Torsten Schmidt

Some more music from those formative years.

(music: Unknown)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So apart from the fact that the intro would make for a pretty dope sample, what else was going on here?

Harold Faltermeyer

This was a song that I recall as a very emotional moment when I was growing up and being a teenager. This was a song, if you believe it or not, we played this in parties we had in the evening. This was the best dancing song when you were eyeballing a girl and you tried to get her on the dancefloor so you dance with her. And I had a girlfriend [inaudible] at that time and I remembered dancing to this song like all night long and holding her really tight and trying to seduce her. [laughs]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Then would have rewinds on the song and play it over and over?

Harold Faltermeyer

No. At the time, you just had to go back to the turntable and just put the needle on start.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It was that kind of house party?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Who was the DJ at the time?

Harold Faltermeyer

You had to be your own DJ. There were no DJs. [laughs]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You were still in school, right?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What happened when you finished school?

Harold Faltermeyer

That’s a really sad story. I was a school dropout, I never finished school. I was just too focused on music at that time already and my grades were really bad so what could I do? It was like the end of everything. First of all, the family said, “Oh, you’re going to be a garbage boy. You’re going to be doing something or open up restaurant or open a bar or whatever.” It’s not what the family expected because the family was rather educated, lots of professors and educated people and then everybody said, “It’s going to be the end of the family,” because they thought I’m something in our family, which is a big family, something like the heir of the throne but no way. I was a school dropout but I had one gift, I had a musical talent and my dad found out that he had to support that. So he did.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

In which sort of way did he manage to do that?

Harold Faltermeyer

He went to Munich to the college and he went to the principal of the college, Professor Augustin, I remember. He said, “You have to listen to my son. He is extraordinary gifted in music and he has to study music.” Everybody back then said, “It’s impossible. He has to make his Abitur. He has to graduate.” He said, “I don’t care. He has this talent, I want him in this university.” And he was really, really pushy at that time. He managed to convince the principal to give me a chance and to let me introduce myself. I did and back then, I had something which was almost perfect pitch. I still have that in that way but I don’t have a real perfect pitch but related to a piano, I could definitely state and name and spot every note. And so they got interested all of a sudden and there was another guy who had the same gift who was a similar character than I was. Believe it or not, we got both accepted and so I was accepted to study music, of course, with the limitation of never teaching music and not, of course, getting a degree in music. But I studied eight semesters at Munich Music College.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Where did the studio work come in?

Harold Faltermeyer

What’s that?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Where did the studio work come in?

Harold Faltermeyer

That’s another thing. I dropped out of school around Easter and the semester start was in October. And at that time, my family had a relationship with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Which is a renowned label.

Harold Faltermeyer

Very, very famous record label, especially in the classical field, and they had a studio in Munich. And we had this relationship because there were tenants in the building we owned in Munich and they had the Bavarian distribution, the southern German distribution for the records. At that time, they had to store like thousands and thousands of records, vinyl records. They rented the space. We knew all the guys, of course, and my dad said, “I want you to go the studio and to take some kind of a apprentice in the studio so you’re not hanging around all summer long until the semester starts.” They got me this job as a little kid in the studio just getting drinks for everybody and washing cables and setting up microphones and taking care of the studio. So I did, and as a matter of fact, the first job I ever had in a recording studio was getting a gin tonic to Mr. Max Greger who used to be one of the famous band leaders back then in Germany. That was my first job in a studio.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did all band leaders drink gin and tonic?

Harold Faltermeyer

Some of them drank whisky, like Bert Kaempfert. He drank a bottle a day. Easy. Actually, he died on the cirrhosis. I found out really quick that technique and the technical field of music is something which interests me a lot. And when the production was gone, like they had a nine-to-five situation back at Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, then I went back in there and I was like the phantom of the studio. I tried to find out what this amplifier was for, what this limiter was for. They had all this ancient stuff back then like Fairchild compressors, things you would pay a fortune these days. They had this in the studio like tons of them. Remember, we had like 20 Fairchild compressors. One is worth now 15 grand or 20 grand. Back then, we couldn’t even use them because the bulbs were broken.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Some of the stuff was actually being recorded there because obviously now you would remember Deutsche Grammophon from all the massive classical back catalogue, as well as the Neue Musik stuff, and I mean, just like even Stockhausen white labels out there and that kind of stuff, but they apparently did a lot of other things as well at the time.

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. The Munich studio was called the Polydor Studio and they occasionally did classical music as well. I actually worked for Stockhausen. I was a little tech then a little later and he was there recording some stuff but mainly this was used for Schlager productions in Germany.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What is Schlager to the not-German mind?

Harold Faltermeyer

Schlager, it’s a German thing. In America some people start to say ‘Ooomp-Tah’ music to it, which is not right. Schlager, you have to see is to the German word for popular music. A Schlager is like something which is a hit. A Schlager actually is a hit. “Schlagen” actually means “to hit.” Schlager is popular music and is strictly bound to German very profound lyrics, actually. Very, “I love you girl and blah, blah, blah” things, you know? It’s very shallow things but it has its audience and it sells millions of records, still does. We have a star right now, which is Helene Fischer who is considered to be a Schlager singer, but she is actually trained as a musical singer. She’s a great singer. But she sings songs which I personally don’t understand, like the Schlager music, I never really understood. I had to record some stuff in the early days but I was never really great at it because my favorite music was black music, was American pop music, was West Coast music, and I always tried to get some elements of this music back to my productions which was not really appreciated.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Which is a bizarre thing when you listen to Schlager throughout the ages, and obviously, you’re forced to it when you are in a public situation in this country, and that at that time, the string arrangements probably, while now there’s a lot of drum machines in there and there’s all these weird little offshoots of it where you figure like, “Oh, someone was actually in the studio who really wanted to do his thing but they just have to answer to it or whatever the production was demanding for.”

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, definitely. There was actually a singer who was really famous back then. His name was Roy Black. This was his artist name. His real name was Gerhard Höllerich which you cannot have on your record. This guy was Roy Black and he had huge hits but and this was Schlager hits. This was like a very schmaltzy kind of material but the people loved it and this guy always wanted to be a rock singer. He always wanted to be an Elvis Presley-kind of guy, but this was his biggest wish. But he couldn’t do it. He always tried to do it but he never ever had the kind of groove you need to sing this kind of rock ‘n’ roll. He was always ahead the beat and I know that because later in his career, I produced a couple of records with him and it was awful because whenever he said, “I can not do what I’ve always wanted.” And they said, “You can’t do it, you know. It’s…” “But why can’t I do it?” “Yeah, because you don’t know how to do it.” “I can.” We had a big fight once but it didn’t help. You had to stick with his successful things. Later, he got very depressed and he actually committed suicide then.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Which seemed to be a kind of a common thread. There’s others that have like darker elements in their music, like Alexandra also, where you think like a lot of the stuff that’s actually going on there is, if you played that to a Madlib or Just Blaze, wherever he may be, they would just go and sample it straight away because of all the polyrhythmic stuff that’s going on, all the weird harmony changes and so on. Is there any stuff that you would point out for folks who like to go for the digging in the crates? Like, “Hey, there’s overlooked Schlager stuff somewhere.”

Harold Faltermeyer

You mentioned Alexandra. She died in a car crash at the beginning peak of her career, which was a tragedy. But she was crazy, she was absolutely nuts. I knew the producer back then very well and he told me the stories. She would have been one who could have been like a German [Edith] Piaf because of her approach to what kind of music she wanted to do. She had a very clear view of what she wanted to do, in opposite to like the Schlager guys, Roy Black or Peter Kraus. Not Peter Kraus so much but Roy Black and Rita Pavone or the guys who we had back then. They didn’t have anything to say. They had a producer and they told them what to do down to the word. You didn’t have any voice. You were like a slave.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So it was like Motown before Stevie [Wonder] was able to get free of it.

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. Yeah. It was this kind of situation in the German market. Alexandra was different. She said, “I’m not singing this. I can’t sing it.” He said, “Why don’t you want to sing it?” “Because I can’t because it’s bullshit. I’m not singing this kind of things.” She was very strong about it and she had a brilliant voice and then, like I said, what a pity that she died in a car crash.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Why do you think that system was so strict in Germany while, let’s say, in our neighboring country like France, you have all these guys like Gilbert Becaud, Serge Gainsbourg, Léo Ferré or whatever, who were doing all this amazingly widely diverse things?

Harold Faltermeyer

In one way, it was because I recall it as a little mafia in Germany. It was not as today’s music. There were just two or three big producers and they ruled everything. So they tried, of course, to keep everything in the family. It was even so that the lyrics were written from the wives or from the husbands so they didn’t let anybody in and they were so big and they controlled the entire business. They brought a couple of guys to name was a Gerhard Mendelson. He was the guy who produced the Peter Kraus, Freddy Quinn and Rita Pavone. In Cologne, there was Kurt Feltz and Werner Scharfenberger and they did the rest, actually. [laughs] Since they were successful with it, they had like a big word, and so the artist really had a hard time to pass by because the record companies believed in those guys. They were like godlike producers.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

We’re jumping a little bit ahead in time but I want to close the section of by a Schlager-ish thing you did a little later with what folks called the German Frank Sinatra. If you were ever in a German pub at any given time, this would turn into a carnival place right away.

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. I think I know what you’re playing.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

If the Internet would be working, I would be. Damn it. Reload here.

(music: Udo Jürgens – “Ich War Noch Niemals In New York”)

[comments] Hang on. Because you were saying shallow lyrics beforehand. This is probably the ultimate escape song. It’s a classic Frank Sinatra theme in a way. So this guy, he tells his wife that he just goes and buys some cigarettes and then he happens to talk about the dreams that he never fulfilled.

[music continues] [translates lyrics] So he’s having these arguments with his wife and then he’s like in the chorus, “Well, I’ve never been to New York. I’ve never been to Hawaii. I’ve never been to San Francisco in torn jeans. I was never a free man.”

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. This, in Germany to this point, is like a national anthem. They play it on the Oktoberfest and as soon as the… Let me say that they only play the chorus, really, because the verses in a beer tent are rather boring. It’s like very elegic, so they played the choruses and the whole tent is standing on the chairs. This guy, Udo Jürgens is his name, he just turned 80 by the way a couple of weeks ago, he had a big show back in Germany. He is probably German’s really super star. He has a career of more than 40 years, 50 years behind him. Everything he does is really successful and he is actually the crossover between Schlager and pop music because his lyrics are everything but shallow. He had lyrics which are going into environmental problems. He has this kind of things, like in social problems when you have the problem like here with a normal life and you want to break out. He has like world pollution problems or weaponry. He had songs where he stated you should just dump all the weapons right there with the ocean and where the sea is the deepest, and things like this. He’s a big star. He’s our biggest star.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What did you have to do with that particular song?

Harold Faltermeyer

I produced it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

That meant in this situation?

Harold Faltermeyer

In this situation to produce was back then, you were the technical and the artistical producer. I actually remember in the original recording, I played this little mouth organ on a [Roland] JP-8.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So you got points on it as well?

Harold Faltermeyer

Not really. Yeah, you get points but not composing points. You get what we call GVL [German Collecting Society] points, which is something else, but this record is still selling and I still get residuals from that.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s playing on the radio once or twice?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. It’s a big hit. He even made a musical with this song, which has the title “Ich War Noch Niemals In New York,” “I’ve never been to New York,” which is successful.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

As you mentioned the Oktoberfest Munich at that particular time when you started working in those studio, started to become famous for what they call “The Sound of Munich” as well and we understand you somehow slid into that door somehow.

Harold Faltermeyer

That’s a long story, actually. I worked for Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, like I said, first of all as a little guy who got gin tonics for band leaders but then I got a contract as a tech, as an assistant tech. And a little later, my boss who was a sound engineer, a real sound engineer, had one big problem once. He liked alcohol a lot, and he was drunk, and he was lost somewhere in Munich and the next day 9:00 in the morning, we had a big session with a big orchestra and he didn’t show up. I was the only one who was there and the producer at that time said, “Can you do the recording?” I said, “Well, I guess I could but I’m not allowed to.” Then he said, “I don’t care. You have to do it.” Of course, you start sweating because this is like your first chance to be officially on a mixing console. At that time, especially with the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, this was a very strict thing. The tech was operating the tapes and the sound engineer was operating the recording console. You can’t imagine these things today but this was the way it was back then. So, to touch a fader on a console for a tech was a sacrilege. You couldn’t do it. This producer said, and until he died he was a close friend of mine, he said, “I’m going to support you and I take all the shit I will get from my boss. Don’t worry. You do the recording.” I was sitting at the recording console and had like an 80-piece orchestra in front of me. Of course, I was sweating because I had to do everything. I had to put up the microphones, I had to run in and out to set up earphones and everything but at the end, I succeeded and I did a great recording. And from that day on, I was something like a sound engineer. Then the studio was closing down shortly after that and was taken over by an independent company. It was called Arco Studios then and they employed me as the sound engineer then. This was my first way into a studio and, of course, parallel to that, I was studying music and so I was at the beginning of a merger between music and technique, which today is a very common thing. Back then, I was one of the first and only.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I understand you met a certain other person that became synonymous with that Munich sound who was actually not from Munich but from South Tyrolia.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, Giorgio Moroder. I saw the lecture and you called him Hansjörg. It’s actually his name. I know he doesn’t like that too much to call him Hansjörg but who cares? Anyway, Giorgio was working in his famous Musicland Studios, a couple of miles away from Arco Studios, and he heard about me being a crazy wizard. Then, a little later I was employed in Arco Studio and, of course, I had the chance to do my first arrangements for Schlager music or something. I was doing the arrangements. At that time, you had to write the score and you had a copyist who wrote the music to sheet music. And so sometimes, I was sitting at the recording console and out there, we had 20 strings like violins and celli or whatever and I was conducting them from the recording console. This was something really crazy and he heard about that. He heard about this kid. I’m 12 years younger than he is so he heard about me and said in his unmistakable Tyrolian accent, “Falti, don’t you want to work with me one of these days?” I said, “Yeah, I would be delighted.” I visited his studios and he mentioned the project he just started which I should do with him and this was the movie Midnight Express. This actually was my first work as a keyboardist and programmer of old vintage synthesizers like Moog and Oberheim and whatever we had in those days. It was my way into the big world of international music because Giorgio at that time was already famous in the States. He had a very strong relationship with Neil Bogart of Casablanca Records. Donna Summer was already very successful and since the movie Midnight Express was, as I recall, a co-production between Casablanca Records Films and Tapes and whatever, he was chosen to do the music. And it was a very exotic approach to do this movie with him and he…

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Exotic in what way apart from the accent?

Harold Faltermeyer

This was not the time where electronic movie scores were like the hippest thing on earth. I mean before, we had Chariots Of Fire and other things Vangelis did, but to do like action movies like this – especially one which is done in Turkey – you would have probably expected to use an orchestra or use some very oriental sounds, which later on we did on synthesizers. But it was a unique thing and it was, of course, the genius of a guy like Alan Parker who had the idea of putting an electronic guy into the [soundtrack]. We started to work on that. I programmed synthesizers, and at that day, you had to do it like manually which is playing it onto a tape, tape like this, we will show you later. And the sequencer technology was just at its beginning, we didn’t have digital sequencers back then. We only had analog sequencers, which were like voltage controlled step sequencers with like 16 or a row of 16 different settings. And you had to tune every single note and then you could run a sequence and then you played… [imitates synth arpeggio]. And when you put in another tone at your keyboard, it transposed that program sequence into another key and that’s how we did this music. So very, very ancient, Jurassic Park synthesizing stuff back then.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Let’s take it back to Jurassic Park for a second.

(music: Giorgio Moroder – “The Chase” / applause)

How did you feel like when you heard that Hansjörg was getting an Oscar for that?

Harold Faltermeyer

I thought it was the greatest thing on earth to get an Oscar. And somehow I felt that had a little finger nail from it maybe or a little toe or something.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did you get to go to the party?

Harold Faltermeyer

No, I didn’t go to the party. Back then, I was back in Germany, actually.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What was your working relationship like?

Harold Faltermeyer

We had a great relationship. You know, Giorgio is a genius. He is probably one of the most gifted writers in pop music ever. He’s the one of the most innovative characters we have in this field. He was not the greatest player. He was a composer and when he played you demos, he played like a chord on the left and a chord on the right and he said, “Harold, you look. I have this new song.” He was showing it to you and you said, [amused] “OK. Interesting.” I was more the trained player so we had a perfect match. He was, of course, capable of doing recordings and he was sitting on the recording console and I recall him sitting there and everything is like, we always called it “bend needles.” He had like distortion all over the place. Nothing really sounded anymore but he was in the middle like a Dr. Frankenstein and trying to make something happen. As he was not a great player, he was not a great tech either. He was doing it and then he was distorting everything. Sometimes, these distortion things were creating a sound but at the end, you have to take it down to a decent level to get the record done. I could help in that field as well because I was technically trained as well then and I knew how to do recordings. So these two things combined, this is two people combined, made this perfect match and for years we did very successful recordings and we always had a great relationship. Giorgio was just a very generous guy. I recall in Los Angeles, when we went to a restaurant, I never could pay in the evening. He was always paying the bill. And everything throughout the years, he is and he was really generous and a great guy.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

On that note of generosity, because that’s the situation people will find themselves in, as your relationship evolves, how do your actual splits changed? Like, obviously, when you come in a lot of the time, you’re just happy to be in the room. While, let’s say, five years down the line, you feel like, “Oh, I’m actually doing 50% of the work here so I should be having that part of the credits as well?”

Harold Faltermeyer

Of course, that happens. I mean, you develop and, of course, I developed really fast. First of all, I was flown in to Los Angeles in ’79 to do the arrangements for Donna Summer’s upcoming album. Then, all of a sudden, we found that Neil Bogart requested a double album not a single album and so we needed more songs. I got the chance to go to studio and to start composing songs because we needed them. And I was lucky enough to write a song, which then later on became Donna Summer’s biggest hit and this was “Hot Stuff.” This all led to a development and to a story which made me more and more independent. I had my first success and I got different offers from different people and, of course, with Giorgio, our relationship developed as well, and I recall that like ’82, he was on a fly off doing tons of different things and I said, “Giorgio, I need room to breathe. I have to do my own things as well.” And I felt that I had to go. I left him in ’82 and started to do my own thing, which was the right decision but, of course, we never had a fight about it but he said, “You know, you have to understand, if you go I need somebody else.” When I left actually, my buddy Sylvester Levay took over and he was the guy who did Scarface and later, not Dirty Dancing, Flashdance with him. I mean, these are things you develop and everybody goes different ways but we are still friends.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

On that note, probably to show the way that you were actually working together, here’s a little bit of an example and maybe you can elaborate on what we are seeing there. Let’s take that.

(music: Giorgio Moroder – “Baby Blue”)

[music stops] Let me go back to this because…

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, let me explain what this is all about. You guys wouldn’t know what that is. Go back further where you see this machine. Back. Back.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

We’ll just start from the top then.

[music continues]

Harold Faltermeyer

Stop here. This is a setup, which is, or was one of the beginnings of digital sequencers. This little thing is called a MicroComposer, MC-4 by Roland and the record we did was E=MC², Georgio’s solo record. And in this instrument, this sequencer, I had to type in every note manually. So if you guys might be akin with Logic Pro whatever workstation you use. You have like event list where you see a note position. You see a note pitch. You see a duration, you see velocity at the time we didn’t have and at the end you see the duration. These four values, you had to type in for every note and for every track, of course. Then you could play it back via a CV and gate situation into this what you see with the cables back there is a Roland 700 series. Actually, it is like four 700 complete series because this record we played and we performed live like an orchestra would play and recorded live to digital 2-track. This was done by Soundstream Incorporated, at the time it was the only system where it was possible to record digitally. It was like a 44.1 16-bit recording situation and it was used back then mostly for recording classical music because they demanded that kind of quality. And the editing, you couldn’t edit these things because we made mistakes. We had to go back to verse two or whatever, like the really early days of recording, and you had to splice it together. You had to splice the performance together which we had to do in a sound lab back in Utah. At Soundstream Incorporated, they had the labs there and the Winchester disks back then looked like gigantic washing machines. You cannot imagine what this was. We had like a room which you would see today in like a coin laundry. You see all the washing machines and there was like a big air condition because they created a lot of heat and that’s where we had to go to do the editing. Now, let’s continue and play the video and play he next dinosaur.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

In the meantime, if someone had the dinosaur technology of a MagSafe 2 adapter for a PowerBook, that would be greatly appreciated.

[music continues]

Harold Faltermeyer

[comments] This instrument here, you can see a keyboard on the lower side of the screen and you see something, which has like pistons, which you see above it. And those pistons go back and forth and they trigger the keys. Those things were called 4 Sets and it was by Marantz Technology and we had a couple of those things for our electric piano, for a grand piano and for a clavinet by Hohner. You had to program this music as well with the MicroComposer, and then, once you fire the MicroComposer and you press play, you had the four sets converted into an actual signal like a keyboard player would play the instruments.This was really the very experimental in early days of electronic digital recording. Today this is all, of course, peanuts.

[music continues]

You can see it, right?

[music continues]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Who is the lovely lady that’s singing there?

Harold Faltermeyer

[laughs] This is Giorgio Moroder over a vocoder. It’s not a lady.

[music continues]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

There is another song, or the title of the song of that album, is there something you would like to share about that one? Because that is being popular with a lot of collectors these days. Shall we play it for a second?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, why not.

(music: Giorgio Moroder – “E=MC²” / applause)

This song actually is called “E=MC².” This has a very unique ending. Did you ever hear the ending? It is another thing about Giorgio’s genius. He said, “This is all like a digital album and I want to have everything different than it was done on albums before.” So he said, “Why don’t we put the album credits into a song?” And we first said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Yeah. We put it into the song.” “Why, do you want to put a sheet there, or what?” He said, “No. We sing it.” I said, “Uh, what do you mean, sing it?” “Yeah, we just state who did what on the record.” You want to play the end, it’s really funny.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Don’t you find it a bit of a shame that as popular as that track is with deep house DJs these days that they rarely get to the end because even they have a short attention span now?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. The very end we didn’t get. Did you hear it? He says, “Thank you Albert.” Did you hear it? It’s funny.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You worked together on something else that we should probably quickly play in because that leads into the next stage, I believe.

(music: Blondie – “Call Me”)

I guess some of you might have heard that before. That was from another movie American Gigolo.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. This was American Gigolo, yeah. We did this song with Blondie. Jerry Bruckheimer requested a song and Giorgio wrote the song, and like it is always with movies, you need an artist and where to get the artist from? You cannot just hitchhike an artist and you just need somebody. Problem is, most of the guys are in their own album work or they are on tour or they’re just not available. So it’s rather tough to get the artist you want to do a song for a movie. Unless you pay them a fortune, then you get everybody. Blondie were in the middle of an album but they figured that it’s a good idea to do a song especially for a movie because I know she liked Richard Gere.

[laughter]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I mean…

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, no wonder.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Play that to my mom and it’s like, “Hey.”

Harold Faltermeyer

[laughs] Yeah. Blondie committed and so we went to New York. First of all, we did a, what I call grid because this song was used in the movie as well locked to the picture. We recorded a first session and we took it back to New York which was not very appreciated by the group because they thought they can play everything by themselves. Giorgio was always a guy who does not want to spend hours and hours in the studio. Everything had to be quick and that just get it done. You know how it is with rock ‘n’ roll groups, they spend time and time, then they smoke pot and then they take a break. And then they’ll…

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Take a break from the pot smoke?

[laughter]

Harold Faltermeyer

Take a break to relax again and to get back in. So this was not Giorgio’s world, I realized it immediately. In New York, we finally convinced them to use our track because we could, of course, justify because we needed that grid because it was for the movie and we had to get it done. With a movie song, it’s always a question of getting things done quick and not spending a year like groups on an album. Blondie was recording her voice in New York and Mr. [Chris] Stein was recording his guitar. And I was engineering at the time, so I remember that the guitar of Chris, I think was his first name, whenever he played it it was just like noise. And when he stopped playing, he immediately cut the volume. I said, “Chris, what are you doing here? This sounds like shit.” He said, “It’s OK when I played it, it’s good.” “Could you just leave the volume open for a while when you’re not playing?” “No. No. No. No. I can’t.” Finally, I got him to just keep the volume open and you cannot believe what I heard. It was like hiss and buzz and ground problems and everything on his guitar, and when he just hit the cord, then it was somehow OK, but, of course, it was unacceptable to record. So we had to spend like a day on his amplifier setup and his guitars and get the grounding right and everything to make a decent recording.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You were just not hip to the way New York sounded at that time?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, you know, but this was a little too much. I mean I’m keen to everything new but if it’s just technical problems and this one didn’t really sound, it was terrible. We got them to do the performance and then I had a talk to the keyboarder. I said, “Yeah, I have another idea for this and that.” And then we tried to record it. We couldn’t get this stuff in sync and then Giorgio said, “OK, guys. This is it. We go back to Los Angeles.” Then they said, “Well, the record is not finished yet.” “We finish it back in Los Angeles.” So we took the tapes back and we finished it and then we had rather serious arguments with the band because I played the solo part on the song, which, of course, in some way I understand it. The keyboarder would have like to play it and he didn’t really like it what I did but, anyway, the thing was out and it was a huge hit. It was one of Giorgio’s biggest hits so that’s all history.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It was also one of the band’s biggest hits.

Harold Faltermeyer

And it was one of the band’s biggest hits, yeah. That’s right. Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I guess it’s also a karaoke classic. And tonight is also an event about a karaoke bars so…

Harold Faltermeyer

Yes, I can play the solo.

[laughter]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Right. Make sure we get a keyboard then. You mentioned Jerry Bruckheimer. If I recall American Gigolo correctly, there was not a single earth devastating explosion in it so are you sure it was a Bruckheimer movie?

Harold Faltermeyer

It was. It was one of Jerry’s early movies. I think it was probably… No, it was not his first because I was asking that recently. It was one of his first movies and back then, he was not like the big Jerry Bruckheimer you know him from today. He was a producer back at Paramount. He did the whole oversee of the production, and thank God, it was a big success and it was Jerry’s beginning.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

He also asked you to work on another movie that is probably only known to you if you were sadly old enough to remember VHS tapes and all the things that you would find in the B-stock of your local videotheque and that’s some work you did for him then. Right?

Harold Faltermeyer

Right.

(music: Harold Faltermeyer – “Stolen Secrets”)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Can you recall what was going on on the screen when that played?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. This, by the way, was my first movie I did score. Jerry Bruckheimer called me one night back in Germany. It was summer in the Bavarian Alps and he asked me, “Want to do a movie for me?” I said, “Well, sure. What should I do?” He said, “Yeah. You should score the movie.” “Oh, great.” I said the silly thing, I said, “Why didn’t you ask Giorgio?” He said, “Well then, I wouldn’t have asked you but…” He just said, “Yup. Giorgio is not doing movie scores anymore. He doesn’t want to do this. He’s producing an own movie right now and so he doesn’t want to do it.” First of all, I thought, “What a dumb question I was asking there.” Maybe he said, “Oh, good idea. I’ll call Giorgio.” But he had the idea that I should do a movie for him and so I said, “Yes. I’m gonna do it.” The next day, I was flying to Los Angeles and he played me the movie, it’s called Thief Of Hearts. It’s actually a neat story. It’s a story of a thief who breaks in a big mansion in Beverly Hills, finds the diaries of the wife where she states all her fantasies and all the needs and longings. He reads everything and he gets close to the wife later and he knows everything about this girl and he, of course, then seduces her and he’s really sneaking into her life. A great story. Somehow a terrible movie, it didn’t work at all. It’s a really good story. I think it would be a good idea to do a new one with this kind of scheme because I think it’s great.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Then, you got on to do another movie.

(video: Harold Faltermeyer – “Axel F.” / laughter)

Harold Faltermeyer

Rick Dees.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I guess we got better sounding videos of that but we also wanted to give you credit for the invention of wireless MIDI.

[laughter]

That worked really well in that setup. Yeah?

Harold Faltermeyer

[laughs] Yeah, it did.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Yes. That song, I guess, one or two people have heard of that. Do you probably want to say anything before we go into this thing you prepared like in cooking show beforehand?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. Actually, that was the theme song obviously for Beverly Hills Cop and the interesting thing about that song is that, first of all, nobody wanted to have it. I got close to the fact of getting fired from the movie because I tried several different themes. Nobody liked it and it mostly has to do with the fact that at that time, to score a comedy was always done with an orchestra. It was like this Hanna-Barbera aesthetic, like you had like the orchestra with the cartoonish kind of themes like… [imitates classic comedy score] It had everything played live in orchestra. Now, there’s the idea of doing an electronic score and doing that with one of the most successful comedians we had in America at that time, Eddie Murphy, so the studio was nervous. Everybody was nervous. The only guy who was really not nervous was Marty Brest, the director, because he had a very clear view of what he wanted to have. He wanted to have like the aesthetic of groups like Yazoo or Afrika Bambaataa, these kind of things. That’s what he wanted to have. Very minimalistic, no paddings, no... Like my movie before was more or less a Tangerine Dream-kind of approach to the scoring. This should have been totally different. No padding, nothing, just minimalistic patchwork-y kind of sounds. The first two attempts of writing a theme failed. They didn’t like it. I said, “Well, I’ll write another one. Don’t worry.” I’m writing the third one and, of course, when you don’t succeed and when you don’t get what they want, everybody gets nervous. I played them the first couple of bars of “Axel F” and I still see as it would have been yesterday. I see Bruckheimer looking at Simpson, Simpson looking at Bruckheimer, Martin Brest looking that, then the editor, Billy Weber said, “Nah. It doesn’t work.” It was like a situation you were against the wall somehow. What should you do? You just had to…

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Probably in order to understand the horror of that situation, you might want to talk who that Don Simpson guy actually was.

Harold Faltermeyer

Of course, Don Simpson was Jerry Bruckheimer’s co-producer. Don, at that time, was very into drugs and changed his mind on a minute basis. It was like, one a minute you were a star. The next minute, you were fired. It was very hard to work with him. But he had good ideas. That’s for sure.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

He invented high-concept, basically.

Harold Faltermeyer

For example, yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Which is probably from your view like how would describe high-concept movies?

Harold Faltermeyer

At that time, this was an innovation. This was something incredible and he was the father of it. Yup, Don Simpson, I’m there with my little melody and we listen again and again and I played them several different variations of the theme. I had it locked up to a different cues to different parts of the movie. I played it and Don said, “I don’t know.” Jerry said, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Everybody tried to not make a decision. Everybody tried to get somebody else responsible.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s very popular in these situations.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yes. It’s a really common thing. At the end of the playback, I stopped the tape and said, “What do you think?” In the corner, Billy Weber said, “I don’t think it works.” Martin Brest, the director was sitting there and I still remember that with his... He always smoked cigarettes with a tip. He was smoking like that and he said, “Let me hear it again.” I played it again. He listened very into it and then the thing was over and there was silence. I said, “Well, this is it now. Either I’m fired or they like it, what else could happen?” Martin Brest said, “I have to tell you, guys. I think that this is the most perfect cue I ever heard for this movie. I think it’s great. I love it and we should go for it.” Then I won and then Simpson said, “Yeah. I think it’s great. Let’s do it.”

[laughter]

Then Bruckheimer said, “Yeah. Great. Let’s do it.” And Billy Weber said, “I still don’t think it works but you guys do it.” I was in and I did the movie.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Interestingly enough, it never got to number 1 at the time, even though it was everywhere.

Harold Faltermeyer

It was number 1 in England but it was not in America. I was stuck on number 3. Number 1, I had “Careless Whisper” from Wham! and number 2 was Tears For Fears, “Shout.” I was number 3 but it was really there for weeks and weeks and weeks and that was over selling like 20,000, 30,000 less than they sold.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Less. You don’t want to imagine how much that was.

Harold Faltermeyer

Today, you’re happy when you sell 30,000, right?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Pretty happy, you’d go straight number 1.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. What a pity.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Never got to number 1 in Germany either at that time. No?

Harold Faltermeyer

No.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But it got to number 1, 25 years later oddly enough, yeah.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I guess that’s something we get to in a second. Probably, let’s have a little look at this video. Where was this shot?

Harold Faltermeyer

That’s shot in my studio back in Germany because I’m doing remakes of all my famous themes from the movies for a couple of reasons. One reason is that we have a situation with the movie studios. They are very protective about releasing scores. I’m getting tons of request of having the scores of my movies and Paramount, for example, does not release it. Now, I’m out of any re-recording restriction anyways. I’m re-recording those things. Of course, I’m trying to re-record it in a manner like you did it back then. “Axel F” is the first one I just made a remake of, the next one to follow is Top Gun anthem and Steve Stevens is the guitar player. He’s going to play the solo again. Then, of course, Running Man, Fletch and all this kind of things, we’re going to re-record and so that we are able to release them and release parts of it, like we did the scores. Then, the next reason why I’m going it is because we are planning a remix album next year where we invite DJs to make remixes of that songs with the original stems so I can provide the stems and because I played it, I did it new, I own it so I can distribute them and we make this remix album. That’s why I’m doing this.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you find it hard to sonically capture the same kind of energy than in the original recording?

Harold Faltermeyer

If you would use modern instruments, then it’s, of course, a lot more difficult. Because like I said, at that time, we didn’t have dynamics in keyboard technology so if you forget in today’s technology to really get rid of everything dynamic, then you would never make it sound as we had it back then. Plus, of course, if you use different instruments and if you use new instruments, they sound different. Even if you have like the best plug-ins for Moog synthesizers, for Roland, this is a JP-8. That’s actually the original JP-8 I played “Axel F” on in ’84 and I still have the original sounds, there on a casette and you just load them in and you have exactly the right sound. If you don’t use these kind of instruments, then you would have a hard time to get it. With “Axel F” there is a unique thing as well, “Axel F” was never a song, “Axel F” was always a patchwork. It was a cue with the main theme [imitates “Axel F” theme]. Then you hit another cue with [imitates “Axel F” stabs], and then you had the marimba cue, which we all called back then the banana cue, because it was the scene were Murphy puts the banana in the tail pipe of the two clumsy cops. We designated this marimba sound to the clumsy cops so this was the banana sound. So these three parts were never linked together in one piece originally for the movie and so we assembled it for the record, and interesting enough is that back then, we had a music editor who did give us a click for each scene, which was optimized to the edits and to the cuts of the scene. They were slightly different, but just slightly, so we’ll be talking about half a beat per minute. You had like a tempo which is 118.45. Then you have a tempo which is 118.78 or 119 or 117-something. Actually, I did reconstruct it with this little minor tempo changes and you would think the “Axel F” is one tempo but it isn’t. It has tiny little differences in tempo. Yeah.

(video: Harold Faltermeyer private footage recording “Axel F”)

[comments] That’s in my studio here. So the MIDI sequencer is obviously recorded already. I’m just trying to tweak the sounds. That’s a Moog Model 15. That’s the original one, which I used back in ‘85.

[music continues]

[comments] This was the drum machine with the bass drum and the snare where recorded with. That’s a unique thing, that’s how we made the reverse noise. If you want to stop the tape real quick, I’ll explain why. That’s how we did the noise, this [imitates sweeping sound] at the “Axel F,” and the reason for that is why is we just didn’t take a fader and then cut it is that, on the mixing consoles, those were all VCAs so it’s not like a cut when you cut something. It was like turning off electricity slowly but a couple of millisecond. You would not get the effect like this here to really have a clean cut. It’s always like a little fade out. We figured the easiest way to do this is just to plug in and just rip out the cord and then you had a real clean cut and that’s how we’d record it direct to tape because at that time, we didn’t have like Logic or something or ProTools where you just take a soundfile and just cut it and it’s clean. So this is another dinosaur of ancient, jurassic way of doing music.

[video continues]

[comments] That’s a Roland 100, M100 model. That’s how I constructed the footsteps. That’s the finish thing then.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

We did miss the marimbas, right?

Harold Faltermeyer

We did miss the marimbas. Right. But I mean it’s just the assembly of that. The sound is, of course, just location sound so you don’t hear the real sound but it sounds pretty cool.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I do understand, seeing that we have this thing here, which is a little too heavy for one hand. We don’t have the time to bake this so that it will be in a proper working condition in time, but we do have the copies there, and if you don’t mind, Erik’s going to put that on the desk later and you can have a little go with the multitrack of that and do your own little dub mix of it.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. Go for it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s heavy.

Harold Faltermeyer

It’s amazing if you just imagine that what’s on there today fits on a little stick.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

On that note, how does it feel when it seems like you’re inventing an entire genre of cover versions? Like...

(music: Axel F cover version)

Then there’s this guy, you can learn how to play it as well. [stops music] And so on. Countless hours of fun, I’d say. That’s probably one way to learn about the right situation like, if this guy hits, what, 592,000 clicks now, are you getting any of that?

Harold Faltermeyer

I don’t think so.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Who’s getting that outside of YouTube and Google?

Harold Faltermeyer

I think that’s still a great song and I think it’s a pity that this is not solved but it’s our fault. I mean, the industry should have cut in there a lot earlier but nobody really saw the danger of things like this. Of course, now it’s too late and too many things, and now they’re trying to catch up with it. And it’s so tough to really get the handle on that because you don’t get really help from the governments either. You even have parties, like we have the Pirate party in Germany who says that music is for everybody, you shouldn’t get any royalties. I think that’s a pity. I don’t know how to get out of this misery. I know that there are attempts made but it’s still going to be just the fraction of what we should get, I think. That’s speaking for you guys as well because you really try to make a career in music where the royalties come from.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Before we get to this guy, I mean, there was Paramount before that that probably did not have you participate in your actual own work too much.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. When you sign a contract for doing a score, especially with Paramount, there’s this is famous word by Henry Mancini who I met actually before he died and we talked. He was a nice guy. He’s a guy who I really adore and his whole work and everything. He said, “You know, Harold, you know that the big arc from Paramount, down at Melrose, 5555 Melrose? This huge arc where you go through the gateway and then you are in the holy grounds of Paramount.” And he said, “You know, this arc has a special meaning. When you would drive or you walk through this arc, you lose your publishing. That’s this arc for.”

[laughter]

That’s the way it is. When you do a score, you have to sign a few publishing and what you do actually is you do work for hire. Of course, you get money but you sign off your video rights and you just get a fraction of that what you should get. On the other hand, in the long run, of course, it pays off, especially with “Axel F” or with other things. It paid off because the soundtracks at that time were selling millions. Of course, TV performances and now with Netflix and all these kind of things, you, of course, get some money. It’s a fraction of what you should probably really get but at least it’s money.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

The thing is, I guess, you just did some more and in the end it all added up and we don’t need to worry about you.

Harold Faltermeyer

No, I’m fine. Thank you.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

There’s this great guy to introduce this thing.

(video / music: Harold Faltermeyer – excerpt from Top Gun score)

That’s not the original version though.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Obviously, you were an inspiration to folks around the world. How was the work on that little recruiting theme for I guess the United States Marine Corps working out for you?

Harold Faltermeyer

First of all, there was no briefing. It was the rare situation that I composed the theme before the movie was shot. I had this theme and I recall a dinner with Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson and my friend Keith Forsey, down at Morton Restaurant in Los Angeles. We were having dinner and Bruckheimer said, he was just cutting his steak and he said, “So do you have a theme for Top Gun?” I said, “Oh yeah. I have an idea.” He said, “Can we hear it?” I said, “No. It’s not recorded yet.” He was always very fast for several reasons. He said, “I know you can but you didn’t record it. So why didn’t you record it?” I said, “Well, because I didn’t have the time yet.” “So record it. Can we hear it tonight?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Why? You said you have... But at least they could hear it.” I said, “Well, I would have to play it to you on a piano.” “Yes. Let’s get a piano and let’s play it.” This was how Don Simpson was. We went to the studio and I played them the theme. They liked it. He said, “We need a demo for it. We need it immediately.” Actually, Tom Cruise at that time was with us in the studio. They loved the idea of the theme and so I had to make a demo for them and I did do it in that very night and it took me four hours or five hours to get like the first draft of demo together. I came up with this TR-808 sounds at the beginning with this delay and everything and that then turned out to be the intro because they liked it and we just tailored it and we put more stuff on it, strings and everything. So we repeated it all over the place for the beginning, and actually, it was Bob Badami that music editor who had the idea to really loop that at the beginning and not put the real theme, the melody on top. Just put like images on top and just build it forever and forever.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you said to him, “Oh, I have a theme for that,” then did he tell you anything beforehand about the movie? What did he want?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yes. What he said is, “We need a theme for this movie. It’s about flying.” That’s how the briefing was. He said, “Harold, you have to see these guys, these pilots. They are like rock ‘n’ rollers in the sky. They are waiting for the takeoff clearance and they’re sitting in the F-14s and they have like a Walkman on.” At that time we had the Walkman with a casette. “They have Walkman on. They listen to Billy Idol.” I said, “Ah, interesting. I’m writing something rock ‘n’ roll.” He said, “Yeah, but it has to be heroic. It has to be everything. It has to be everything a theme needs.” Funny enough, the first couple of bars I composed was for a totally different movie. It was Fletch with Chevy Chase. There was a scene...

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

We’ll get to that in a second.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. There was a scene in Fletch where Chevy Chase dreams to be Michael Jordan, the famous basketball player. And it’s like a dream sequence and he dreams because he’s a big star and I had this [sings] “Da-di-da-da-da-da-da-da-da,” for that very section. And funny enough, we work in a studio where next door was Billy Idol working on his new album. Billy came and we are very good friends, actually, and so Billy work the next door that was playing with my thing and Billy took a break back there and passed by my control room and he opened the door and he said, “Harold, that’s great. That’s like Top Gun. You should use it for Top Gun,” and he left. I said, “You should use it for Top Gun? I’m doing it for Fletch.” Then, I thought about it. I said, “Actually, it would be a really good idea to have it for Top Gun.” I thought about it more and more, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew this is the theme for Top Gun. I took it off the movie Fletch because this was just a little scene I could compose everything for that, which I later on did. I took away the theme and this was Top Gun, and actually, let’s say Bill Idol was somehow the initiator of the theme for Top Gun.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Let me get it straight. For one second, you were writing something for a comedian, dreaming to score triple doubles. Next thing, you’re taking that thing to annihilating Russians in the sky. That’s mildly different content.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. You have to be flexible these days.

[laughter]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It was an interesting political climate when that movie came.

Harold Faltermeyer

Of course, it was still the Cold War and, of course, today this movie wouldn’t work. You would have to write it totally different.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You somehow have the feeling that the foreign department seems to be...

Harold Faltermeyer

It might come back if we continue like this. No, but at that time, it was just a home run. It just hit the spot. It was this heroic thing. As a matter of fact, there’s another song in this movie, which is called “Memories,” which is the scene where the partner of Tom Cruise, Goose is his name in the movie, he dies.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

“You can ride my tail anytime.”

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. Yeah. [laughs] This guy dies and so there’s this very sad melody. It’s called “Memories” and that’s actually one of the favorite tunes they play in Arlington when they have a funeral of one of the army guys. This movie definitely stirred up some things and to me, it was a big honor to do music to a real American domain movie. Normally, you would use John Williams or one of the guys. It was Bruckheimer’s decision and Don Simpson’s decision that I do the movie.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It didn’t feel any sort of way weird to you because, I mean obviously, it’s a mildly different situation as a German writing for something that doesn’t get much more American than this movie?

Harold Faltermeyer

Exactly. Like I said, it was the decision of the producers and I felt somehow in one way honored. And in one way, of course, astounded why they didn’t use a Native American for that.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Using a Native American could be an interesting take on that as well.

[laughter]

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

The record is not fully clear on this one, so I’m asking you by playing it, whether, and to which degree you have an involvement on this part of soundtrack.

(music: Berlin – “Take My Breath Away” instrumental)

Harold Faltermeyer

I recall this was an adaption of Giorgio’s “Take My Breath Away.” We needed that in an instrumental version so I guess I did do a little cue out of it and played it with a synthesizer. For Giorgio, it was a lucky shot. I, of course, would have wished I would have written more songs for Top Gun but the scoring was so intense and so time consuming that I didn’t really have the time to sit down and invent and compose songs. Giorgio took the chance. He said, “Ah! I have songs, the right songs for the movie.” He was actually littering Bruckheimer and Simpson with ideas while I was working on the score and, of course, great that he came up with “Take My Breath Away” and “Danger Zone,” the two main songs of the movie. I wish I would have contributed to it but I just couldn’t. There was no time for it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You were busy doing something else and I’d like to play the actual music video rather than the way it used in the film because you were doing a bit of acting in there as well.

Harold Faltermeyer

I did that, did I?

(music: Harold Faltermeyer – “Fletch Theme”)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I guess that deserves a hand.

[applause]

That’s one of the finest examples of white man funk, right?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, but the white man funk here comes from a very funny thing. I got so many compliments of what great drum programming this is. I mean, drummers came, “How did you do that? How did you come to this idea? How did you do all the syncopations?” I have to admit, it was done by mistake because at that time, you have to do the picture of the Doctor Click, right?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Yeah.

Harold Faltermeyer

Maybe you can show us that real quick?

(photo: Doctor Click Rhythm Controller)

At that time, you had to fire the digital sequencers with a device which was called Doctor Click. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with this kind of ancient device, maybe not. We show you a picture of it. This is a device where you had a quarter note click recorded on the multi-track and then you feed the quarter note click into this machine and the machine analyzes it and spits out a code like 48 clicks per beat for Linn machines or you had like 96 clicks per beat for Oberheim. On the rear, you had like all these outputs. So the click was running, actually, when you start the tape and you press play in the gaps of two clicks and then the machine picked up and was synched with the quarter note click. With Fletch, I had the drums programmed rather straight and I told the engineer to start the tape and he started the tape and I was somehow not paying attention. So I hit the Doctor Click start button, one beat too late. Everything which was supposed to be on the downbeat of the first measure landed on beat number two of the first measure and that’s how this very unique drum sound came about. And I said, “Well, something is wrong.” My engineer said, “But it sounds great.” I said, “You’re right. Let’s keep it.” That’s how this very hip drum programming was done. [laughs]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Moving on, because I see folks are getting ready for lunch, I guess we have to speed up a little. In a marriage of beautiful accents in California, you worked on this thing.

(music: Harold Faltermeyer – excerpt from The Running Man soundtrack / applause)

This was mildly more dystopian than some of the other things. Did you actually read the book before you started working on this?

Harold Faltermeyer

No, I just saw the movie. It was done and this was a very odd situation because the movie was finished. They had a composer and they had the complete movie finished mix delivered. And the production didn’t like it. They said, “Get rid of the music. Get another composer.” They got me in as a composer and I was left by myself completely throughout the whole production. I didn’t see a producer. I didn’t see anybody. I just got the tapes. I got the parts and I took the whole stuff back to Germany, actually to my new build studio. We recorded that all by ourselves and they delivered the score. And I’d never heard anything about it. I just delivered it and I didn’t even get a thanks or something. It was just done, signed, sealed, delivered and then I was invited to the premiere. This was it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You reckon that was because you were not present there and were not hanging out at the right breakfast spots anymore because you were back in Germany?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, this was ’86, the studio just got built. I said, “I have to do the movie. I do it but I have to do it back in Germany because I have to observe the construction and all that. I cannot be in Los Angeles at that time.” I took it back, otherwise I would have done it in the States.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What were your main reasons for going back?

Harold Faltermeyer

Actually, the kids. I have three kids, by now they are grownups, but at that time, I said, “I want to raise the kids back in Germany. I want to stay with the family.” I’m born and raised in Bavaria, outside of Munich. That’s my home, that’s where my heart is. That’s why I did not want to raise the kids back in the States. I rather figured they should have the same youth and the same great times as I had back there. This was the main decision why I went back to Germany and, of course, I said then, “Let me build a studio back there and I can work out of Germany as well.” You can say it was a wrong career move because if I would have stayed there, I would have probably done a lot more movies. But on the other hand, life-wise, it was a great decision. The kids grew up really great and they’re all doing fine and I’m happy with the decision and I still can go back and that’s what I’m doing. I’m going back and forth.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But you left the playing field to others like another German, Hans Zimmer.

Harold Faltermeyer

Sure. Yeah. A lot of time, people say if I would have stayed there, Hans Zimmer would have never happened, which is bullshit. Hans would always have happened because he’s a great composer and there’s, of course, room for a lot more composer than just one out of Germany. It was my responsibility. I did make the decision. I know that a couple of people said, “You made the wrong decision,” but on the long run, on the long hand, I’m happy with it and I wouldn’t do it different today.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I guess my dad always told me, “You can only eat with one spoon.”

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. I guess that’s what I told you, didn’t I?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

No. He said that.

Harold Faltermeyer

He said it. Yes.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But it might be a generational thing because you’re the same age almost to the day, right, like two years apart.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Obviously, you had a whiff of the Hollywood life, and outside of the football club Munich is a little bit more laid back especially where you have grown up, right?

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. Sure. To me, it’s always heaven to be there. When Hollywood got too crazy for me, I just went back, took the next flight back to Germany and then entered our premises and just felt great and then I had enough power to go back.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Things you did back in Europe, I quickly want to hint on before we open up for questions. There was this one which was so popular in Germany at the time that they made us do a choreography dances in school to it, and since there was an old hippie teacher, you did not want to be there. Trust me.

(music: Laura Branigan – “Self Control”)

What was your contribution to this then?

Harold Faltermeyer

I wrote the arrangement and I played a lot of the synthesizers together with Robbie Buchanan who’s a great piano player and arranger. This song actually was written by an Italian musician, Raf, and we got the demo tape from him and I said, “This is a great song for Laura Branigan.” The producer was Jack White back then, he’s a German producer known for lots of Schlager music, actually. I got hired to do the arrangements and then play some keyboards. This was the only song ever I wrote a full score like you would write for a classical orchestra of synthesizers to record that and we recorded strictly to the music I wrote. There was absolutely no room for improvisation. It was all done and all written out and all the parts were played as written. That’s, for my work actually unique, because normally, I’m more the guy of trial and error. This time, I thought this song is so consequent and so strict it has to have a master plan. Otherwise, it’s just another jam session. To that day, it’s the only song I have written and scored for a synthesizer song.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Maybe we take a quick listen to the demo song, I guess, by this young Italian and what did you change to it?

(music: Raf – “Self Control”)

That already seemed relatively elaborate.

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah. That’s just a different approach to things. We did it a more stompy way. His version is more elegic in one way and has elements, I call it, Tangerine Dream-y elements. We made it really tough and we went more the Kraftwerk-kind of way. Plus, the stomps we had in what is this chorus thing, [sings] “Oh-oh-oh-boom,” with the big booms, we emphasized it a lot. Of course, this is a theme with Jack White, being a German Schlager producer, he said, “Let’s do it really, really hard and stompy.” That’s the difference from this version to our version.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Were you actually going out? Were you dancing in the clubs at all?

Harold Faltermeyer

No, I hated clubs, actually, because we had an experience back in New York with Giorgio, actually. Giorgio and myself went to New York and there was this huge club, which was called Bond’s [Casino]. At that time, it was like a 4-/5,000 people club. We went in, we were invited. We were in the VIP area and I said to Giorgio, “Giorgio, something is wrong here. Something is smelly.” He said, “No. What do you think?” I said, “Something is burning. Let’s go.” We actually went out of the discotheque and we saw out there like the whole block full of firemen because they tried to keep away the people from panicking. We got out there and then they had to evacuate the entire Bond’s and it burned down at the time. I said to Giorgio, “You know what? That’s a sign from above or somewhere, we should not go to a club.” So we never went to a club.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

That’s that. So you just decided to do stuff that folks could breakdance to out in the park instead?

Harold Faltermeyer

No. I mean, we made music for clubs, of course, but we never hung out in the clubs. Giorgio didn’t like the clubs as well, actually. Not just because of the fire but because of the fact that it’s really loud in there and we were more of the guys who went out for dinner and we had nice conversations rather than staying in the clubs and had to shout to each other all the time. I always called it like “a super-dimensional Walkman you have on” in the club. You can’t talk to somebody. It’s always just screaming and shouting and I don’t like that too much.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You were just being boring then?

Harold Faltermeyer

Probably, I was being boring, yeah, but I enjoy more the gourmet evenings rather than the sound evenings. I have sound all day long.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What about “Being Boring”? Maybe we play a little bit of that before we talk about it.

(music: Pet Shop Boys – “Being Boring”)

What was your role here then?

Harold Faltermeyer

This was one of the most interesting productions I ever had together with the two guys from Pet Shop Boys. They came to Munich in 1990 and asked me if I would co-produce an album with them and I said, “I would be very happy to, but why do you need another producer? You guys can do it by yourself, can’t you?” They said, “Well, because we want to utilize your skills in vintage synthesizers. This time, we want to make an album which utilizes vintage synthesizers.” We made the deal and we decided to start pretty soon with the production. It was so interesting to work with these guys because they’re two really great producers. The three of us in the studio and me doing all the work with the synthesizers. At the time, we used a Synclavier for the main workstation and recorded everything on Sony DASH 3324 digital.

All the days we spent there was like really trying to be on a very high level of creating music. Sometimes, almost really obnoxious because the Synclavier had at the time about 4 or 500 different samples of tambourines. We know that for our kind of music about 10 or 20 qualify for being used but Neil and Chris wanted to hear all the 400 tambourines before they started recording a song and we recorded 13 songs, or 14 songs, so we had to hear all the 400 tambourines until we really got one which we then used. We always used one of the 20 but they wanted to hear everything because they didn’t want to make any mistakes, just being accurate to the point and do everything the best they could do. It was a great work.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How did they take to Baldham culture then?

Harold Faltermeyer

They actually loved it because outside of the studio, we have a little hut where we go in the afternoons for a nice tap beer. They were really keen to go there to the hut, and then going too much to the hut. We did not work really concentrated. So I said, “We only can go to the hut when a minimum of 40 sectors is written to the disc of the Synclavier,” which is actually not a lot but it’s some kind of stuff. Chris Lowe is the technical guy of the two guys and he knew exactly that writing 40 sectors to a disc is a lot of work when you do normal recording, like a bassline or something. But he knew exactly that once you use like a ribbon controller or a mod wheel or a pitch bend on a keyboard, it eats up lots memory. So whenever we were stuck on like 32 or 35 sectors on disc, Chris came and said, “Let me just do a track.” He entered his Synclavier, I pressed record and I said, “Go ahead.” The only thing he did, just some rubbish but he just pressed the ribbon and the mod wheel and everything and then he said, “Save it.” We saved it and it was 42 sectors. I said, “Now, we can go and have a beer in the hut.” They really liked the Baldham out of Munich culture in the studio, which is really pleasant. They love it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Before we write our 42 sectors, any questions from you guys?

Audience Member

What’s your opinion on “Crazy Frog”?

Harold Faltermeyer

“Crazy Frog,” the guys came to me with a first idea. They said, “We have this idea of this frog,” which was an Internet kind of thing. Like the annoying thing, that’s what it was called. They said, “We want to combine ‘Axel F’ and the Crazy Frog. What do you think about it?” I said, “I don’t know what you really want to do with it.” They said, “We’re going to show you, right?” I said, “Yeah. You have to show it to me.” Then, they showed me and I said, “I don’t know.” Somehow, it’s funny. Somehow, I really don’t know yet and then they said, “Do we have to ask the movie company?” I said, “Yeah. Normally, you would have to ask the movie company.” I said, “Well, but on the other hand there’s so many cover versions on the market, I would just go ahead and do it. You can do it.” Because then my kids came and said, “Oh what is this?” They were young at that time. They said, “What is this?” I said, “Well, they want to do this.” “Dad, it’s cool. Let them do it.” And I never heard anything about it anymore. I said, “They can do it.” Then, like a year later, it was done. It was released. All of a sudden, I’m getting a call from BBC and saying, “Can we do an interview with you?” I said, “Why?” They said, “Because ‘Crazy Frog’ is going to go to number 1, from zero to one, outselling Coldplay four times. That’s why we want to make an interview with you.” I said, “First of all, this might be a mistake.” They said, “No, it’s not a mistake. It’s the truth.” It was a big hit and what should I say? It made a lot of people happy. I’m probably not the happiest guy with it because I still think that the original one is the one. On the other hand, music is there for everybody and if it made so many people happy, then it’s OK.

Audience Member

Thank you.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Also, there’s a headline saying, “Chris Martin hates the ‘Crazy Frog.’”

Harold Faltermeyer

Yeah, he was not amused.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I didn’t think that guy had hate in him, right?

Harold Faltermeyer

That’s what “Crazy Frog” does to you.

Audience Member

Hello there? Hello. Talking about music for movies, when you face the idea of making a movie, of course, I mean there’s a lot of techniques like follow a leitmotif, these kind of things. What is your main general approach to what you want to say with the music? What are you looking for on it?

Harold Faltermeyer

Film music has a function like every element in movies have a function. What you have to be aware of is that the first in line in a movie is the picture, certainly. Then the next thing is dialogue and then there is the sound effects which are even more important than the music and then comes your music. What you are doing with the score, you are enhancing the feeling and the situation of the scene you have to score. I’m approaching it so not to disturb any dialogues and, of course, get out of the way of the sound effects. In using instruments with frequency ranges, which are not in sound effect range. Which was actually very hard to do with the Top Gun because with all these jet noises, they have a function like a white noise, which is the summary of every sound. This was very hard to do. The solution for that was, of course, not using pads but using percussive instruments so you get through this wall of noises. You always have to know what you are doing to enhance a scene. If it’s a love scene, you’re, of course, writing a love theme and you’re enhancing that situation, and you have to be aware never to win against the dialogue and the sound effects. That’s the way I approach it. Sometimes, of course, the interesting thing in a lot of movies like Beverly Hills Cop, of course, was the tipping is a very interesting aspect. You will play a theme before you see a character, which means you tip it. You make people aware that this is going to happen. This is a dangerous field but it’s always at the end, of course, the choice of the director how you go for it. But I’m trying, like I said, to enhance the thing and that’s I’m aware of the function of scoring.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Harold Faltermeyer

You’re welcome.

Audience Member

Some of your soundtracks sound like soundtracks made by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth back in those days. Is there any relationship between you, apart from the fact that you are using probably some same synth?

Harold Faltermeyer

Just say again the name of…

Audience Member

John Carpenter.

Harold Faltermeyer

John Carpenter. All right.

Audience Member

Alan Howarth.

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. Well, there’s an array of sounds or back then, it was an array of sounds you could use and, of course, everybody, all the composers, somehow they were linked and you looked what the other was doing. That comes in effect of today, for example, where you have like temp music on the movie which is so perfectly done that it’s very hard to do your own music. What happens, actually, it’s a situation where you have the music of Danny Elfman or of James Horner or of Hans Zimmer on it and you are supposed to do your own music. The director falls in love with it and makes you to do this kind of music. Very often, and that’s I think what Hans said recently as well, is that we are all copying from each other because we’re just copying somebody else’s temp music. Now, it’s of course different because you have a wider array of sounds, of possibilities than we had back then. Back then, of course, everybody was listening what the other guy was doing. There were like different aesthetics of synthesizer work like Carpenter or you had Kraftwerk, you had Tangerine Dream. You had Vangelis which was one of the pioneers. I adore all of those because they all did great work and I hope that they like my music as well.

Audience member

Thanks.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

The tough thing there, I guess, is if you’re working to spec, no matter whether it’s an advertisement or a film, the people that actually gave you something usually have such a good idea of what they want that no matter what you are doing can somehow satisfy that. How do you deal with that? Other than showing them GarageBand.

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. That’s the problem. You have to know that as a music composer, you get hired to do the project in a very late process. You’re hired when they do the post-production. You have to see that the director is working with this movie for years already and, of course, he’s watching his music editor and requesting new cues all the time for new scenes and with today’s technologies, a music editor has a library of about 5000 movies on his fingertip. He can give you the soundtrack of Star Wars or from Love Story in a split second and they can try all these things out and they work with it and then, of course, they fall in love. You have a hard time doing something new. That’s the misery but that’s the way it is.

Audience Member

Hi. Just a quick question out of curiosity. Now that you said that you feel like linked to the other composers before you got in the film game, did you feel like you were taking influence from people like Jerry Goldsmith and cats like that from the ’70s at all, like did you take anything from that music or John Williams? Not take like steal but influence.

Harold Faltermeyer

Goldsmith and Williams, of course, were already inspired by Puccini, by Wagner, by Mahler, and all the old composers. Of course, my favorite inspiration in film music was Ennio Morricone. I think he was one of the most innovative guys in film music. I know that Hans Zimmer is he’s big a fan of Ennio as well. Of course, Williams and Goldsmith are both brilliant composers and I adore what they do. But from the originality, from the spirit and the ideas, the really unique ideas, I think Ennio Morricone is a step further. Or another one is Henry Mancini, Pink Panther is a piece of art. The first time I think that jazz music was done in a cartoon movie, so those are the really innovators and Giorgio, of course, as well.

Audience Member

Breakfast at Tiffany’s and so on.

Harold Faltermeyer

Right. Yeah.

Audience Member

One more quick question. I’m sorry.

Harold Faltermeyer

Sure.

Audience Member

When I studied composition, I was wondering being from Germany, if you guys had ever studied anything like from Schoenberg back in that timeline like the idea of Grundgestell. Like little motifs that you variate and things like that, was that anything that you had learned in your training at all? I’m just curious.

Harold Faltermeyer

I touched that field but very briefly because I went on so fast to the pop music field which today, I somehow regret. Right now, for example, I’m writing a play, a musical and there you need, of course, a lot more ways to express yourself. And sometimes, I really come to a point where I say I somehow regret and really feel sorry about it that I didn’t really study this kind of things more thoroughly than I should. But it’s, of course, something which is a very interesting field.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Harold Faltermeyer

Thank you.

Audience Member

Hello Mr. Faltermeyer. Thanks for being here.

Harold Faltermeyer

Thank you.

Audience Member

I have to two questions and the second one is... OK. Anyway. The first one. With your brief encounter with Stockhausen, do you feel that it had affected the way that you work even subconsciously in some way?

Harold Faltermeyer

Like I said, I met him briefly. I worked on one… I really forgot what this piece of music was, it was very Stockhausen-ish, of course. And I remember they had like a huge array of equipment with ring modulators and things, which at that time were extremely expensive and he had everything. When Deutsche Grammophon heard that Stockhausen is doing something new, he got everything he wanted. Never in my life I saw so many Moog synthesizers than with this recording. I just think that the modern music guys like Stockhausen and company approached the synthesizers from a total different point than we do. They used it as a kind of spice somewhere and they didn’t really use it in a beefy way like we always did. It’s a total different approach and an interesting approach, though. Actually, I did do some experiment with a classical-trained conductor, Gustav Kuhn, and we tried to do twelve-tone music and things like this with the synthesizers, and try to go back to this kind of approach Stockhausen had. Our work unfortunately was never released.

Audience Member

Would be interesting to listen to that though.

Harold Faltermeyer

Maybe.

Audience Member

Also, I was always confused when I was younger, “Axel F” with Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” I know that many people are still confused. Were you actually like inspired by the song or did you even listen to it when it was out?

Harold Faltermeyer

It is a very good question. I have to say yes. “Rockit” was some kind of inspiration to the extent that “Axel F” has ascending array of intervals. What Herbie did was this, [imitates “Rockit” main melody] “Dan-dan-dam-dan-dam-dam-dam-dam” with odd semitones. When you listen close to my work, there is always a faible for semitones, and “Axel F” actually has this aesthetic as well. I just think it’s beautiful, and I’m not writing this to torture an artist because this is very tough sing, but I just love the way semitones work with different chords. You don’t change the melody really in big intervals, just change it in little intervals but you change the chord thoroughly. I always love this kind of thing. It’s very good ears, I have to say and I definitely thought about “Rockit” when I did “Axel F.” Yeah.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Wow. In that sense, I’d say, “Vielen Dank, Herr Faltermeyer,” and let’s give the man a hand.

[applause]