John Car­pen­ter: ​‘A lot of purists want to go back to using film, but you’ve got to keep mov­ing with the times’

Every great artist even­tu­al­ly reach­es a point where it becomes appar­ent that their best work is behind them. In all like­li­hood John Car­pen­ter will nev­er again reach the heights of his ​’70s and ​’80s pomp – in the five-year peri­od between 1978 and 1982 he direct­ed Hal­loween, The Fog, Escape from New York and The Thing – but while he may not be turn­ing out era-defin­ing genre clas­sics at the same aston­ish­ing rate, the 68-year-old cult icon is show­ing no signs of slow­ing down. Hav­ing not occu­pied the hot seat since 2010’s tepid­ly-received psy­chi­atric chiller The Ward, Car­pen­ter has seem­ing­ly entered an excit­ing new phase in his career.

Build­ing on his ear­li­er acclaimed work as a film com­pos­er, in 2014 (on Hal­loween, no less) Car­pen­ter released ​‘Vor­tex’, the debut sin­gle from his first ever stand-alone stu­dio album. Com­prised exclu­sive­ly of orig­i­nal non-sound­track mate­r­i­al, ​‘Lost Themes’ rep­re­sent­ed both a nat­ur­al exten­sion and a sig­nif­i­cant evo­lu­tion for the vet­er­an film­mak­er, return­ing him to the fore­front of the cul­tur­al dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing the inter­sec­tion between movies and music. A fol­low-up album, ​‘Lost Themes II’, arrived in 2016 along with the announce­ment that Car­pen­ter would be hit­ting the road with his son, Cody Car­pen­ter, and god­son, Daniel Davies, to play his first live shows.

Carpenter’s trade­mark synth is present on both ​‘Lost Themes’ records, but unlike the dis­tinct­ly min­i­mal scores he cre­at­ed for all but four of his 19 fea­ture films (the out­liers being The Thing, Star­man, Mem­oirs of an Invis­i­ble Man and The Ward) the addi­tion of elec­tric and acoustic gui­tars lends these new songs a fuller, more melod­ic sound. Car­pen­ter describes ​‘Lost Themes’ as ​“sound­tracks for movies in your head,” and indeed there’s some­thing unique­ly com­pelling about lis­ten­ing to music which is unmis­tak­ably score-like in com­po­si­tion and tone but which exists with­out the need for accom­pa­ny­ing visu­als. We spoke to the hor­ror mae­stro about life as a tour­ing musi­cian, cinema’s dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, and why he’s open to remakes of his films.

LWLies: You’ve recent­ly start­ed tour­ing for the first time. How has that expe­ri­ence been for you so far?

Car­pen­ter: It’s been fan­tas­tic. The biggest thing for me is I get to play with my son and my god­son. And the oth­er band mem­bers we have, the rhythm sec­tion, are Tena­cious D’s band, and they are just the great­est. So far it’s been a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. The shows have gone pret­ty well. It’s pri­mar­i­ly a career ret­ro­spec­tive show, we’re look­ing at some of the scores from my old movies. The audi­ence seems to dig them so that’s nice.

There seems to be a renewed inter­est in your film score work. What do you put that down to?

I can’t explain it, it’s just luck I think. There seems to be a nos­tal­gia for an old syn­the­sis­er sound, which prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with it. Peo­ple recog­nise that sound from my movies but what’s fun­ny is that I start­ed using syn­the­sis­ers out of neces­si­ty, because it was the cheap­est thing avail­able to me at the time. If I was start­ing all over again I would prob­a­bly still use the same syn­the­sis­ers, but of course the tech­nol­o­gy has advanced so much that I would be able to cre­ate com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sounds. Dig­i­tal syn­the­sis­ers are the best.

What’s your feel­ing about the move from film to digital?

There are rea­sons for mov­ing to dig­i­tal in film. I’ve seen a com­par­i­son side by side and it’s real­ly inter­est­ing. A lot of purists want to go back to using film, but there’s no going back now so you’ve got to keep mov­ing with the times. The only prob­lem with dig­i­tal is it doesn’t hold up, you have to keep a copy on film because it just degrades. In terms of the sound, I’m work­ing on a com­put­er, off of audio plu­g­ins which you can pur­chase and play around with – man, the range you can get from them is just aston­ish­ing. I don’t know if bet­ter is the right word, but it’s pret­ty cool.

Which film com­posers did you most admire when you were start­ing out?

Movies in gen­er­al were very, very impor­tant to me when I was young. They loomed very large in my life, and the music was equal­ly as impor­tant. I was influ­enced by the ear­ly great com­posers like Bernard Her­rmann and Dim­itri Tiomkin. These guys were the real pio­neers. As time went by I got into groups like Tan­ger­ine Dream, they did a score for a movie called Sor­cer­er which is just aston­ish­ing, that real­ly blew me away when I first heard it. And also the work of Gob­lin, that was impor­tant for hor­ror cin­e­ma. The first elec­tron­ic score I ever heard was for a movie called For­bid­den Plan­et back in ​’56. There was absolute­ly no orches­tral music in that, it was all elec­tron­ic, and I’d nev­er heard any­thing like it.

Do you think orches­tral scores are overused today?

Well, they sure are used a lot. They’re still con­sid­ered the best, you know, any­one can play a syn­the­sis­er. I have very min­i­mal chops, which is why I say that. So there’s a lit­tle bit of snob­bery involved. But then you have a guy like Hans Zim­mer, who blends orches­tral and elec­tron­ic music real­ly well. His scores are always very memorable.

What was your process when you were start­ing out?

It was very impro­vised. When I was writ­ing those ear­ly scores I wasn’t watch­ing the films, that only came lat­er. So ini­tial­ly I would write and play the music and once I had four or five dif­fer­ent pieces I would cut them into the movie. The first time I scored to the image was Escape from New York in ​’81. But I could sit down with a deep bass com­put­er sound and start from there. You’re try­ing to cre­ate a mood, so as soon as I have that ini­tial note I can start feel­ing my way around. The process has evolved and I’ve evolved as a musi­cian, but it’s still about try­ing to cre­ate a mood and build an emo­tion­al connection.

Why was this the right time in your career to go into the stu­dio for the first time and record an album?

To tell you the truth it just sort of hap­pened. The record label heard the music and expressed their desire to release it, which was some­thing I had want­ed for quite some time. I don’t know what will hap­pen next though. I tend to take things as they come nowa­days. I was pret­ty ill last year so every day that I’m above ground is pret­ty exciting.

Have you been approached in the past to write scores for oth­er people’s movies?

Yeah, but noth­ing I ever real­ly want­ed to do. I’d be open to some­thing that inter­est­ed me. I’ve always been focused on my own stuff though. I’ve got a cou­ple of things cook­ing right now, noth­ing immi­nent, but we’ll see what hap­pens there.

Quite a few of your movies have been remade in recent years – and there’s even a Star­man update in the works. How do you feel about that?

Ah you know, it’s okay. They won’t destroy my orig­i­nals. They’re still there, peo­ple still watch them. I just pre­fer that when they remake my movies they pay me. That’s always a bonus. But I’m nev­er involved in the process so it real­ly doesn’t mat­ter to me.

There’s an inter­est­ing sto­ry about Ennio Mor­ri­cone using some of the music he wrote for The Thing for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hate­ful Eight…

See, that’s just weird. The Thing was the first movie I did for a major stu­dio, and they didn’t want me to do the score. So they brought in Ennio which was an amaz­ing for me because he’s one of the great­est film com­posers of all time. I don’t speak Ital­ian, he doesn’t real­ly speak Eng­lish, but we worked pret­ty close­ly togeth­er and it worked out great. I have no prob­lem with the fact he end­ed up using some of the music he wrote for The Thing on anoth­er movie.

What do you love about movies?

Movies are the art form of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. More so than music, I think. They’re tran­scen­dent, they can be shown and enjoyed in any coun­try in the world. Espe­cial­ly hor­ror movies – peo­ple all over the world get scared about the same things, it doesn’t mat­ter who you are or where you come from. I’m scared of a lot of shit. I don’t want to die. But we’re all head­ed for the big dark, so what the hell.

John Car­pen­ter is cur­rent­ly on tour across the UK. ​‘Lost Themes I & II’ are both avail­able from Sacred Bones Records.