By BWilliams / 16:48, 20 August 2004 / TrekWeb Features

The worlds of film, television, music, and STAR TREK lost one of its major contributors last month with the untimely passing of composer Jerry Goldsmith at the age of 75. Goldsmith’s music touched the lives of many people, as did Goldsmith the man.

TrekWeb’s contributing writer/editor Bill Williams has prepared a special tribute of reminisces from many well-known and prominent people in the STAR TREK community and beyond, along with a number of thoughts from Goldsmith, director Robert Wise, and editor Todd Ramsay, recorded in 2001 for the DVD release of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Join us as we take a look back at the life and career of Jerry Goldsmith and his legacy to the STAR TREK saga...

“His chameleon ability was a prerequisite to longevity and success in Hollywood. We used to call him Gorgeous. He was the golden boy, a beautiful presence. His music had a freshness, and he had a freshness.” -- composer John Williams

When you think of the great film composers who have changed the face of film music forever, many names come to mind. Of those who have changed the face of film music from the past 40 years, only a handful of those names immediately come up: John Williams, John Barry, and Jerrold King Goldsmith.

Over the last five decades Jerry Goldsmith’s music has become synonymous with film, elevating him to a legendary status few have ever achieved. From his early days of scoring for television series like THE TWILIGHT ZONE, GUNSMOKE, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., and PERRY MASON, to his scores for A PATCH OF BLUE, LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, THE BLUE MAX, FREUD, LILIES OF THE FIELD, to his experimental jungle-like music for PLANET OF THE APES, to the military punch he brought to the score for PATTON, to the world of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure, Goldsmith repeatedly broadened and expanded his vision of film music with scores that took lives of their own beyond the cinema screen.

In 1976 he crafted the score to the film version of LOGAN’S RUN, followed by the haunting choral score to director Richard Donner’s film THE OMEN, which brought Goldsmith his only Academy Award, though he was nominated 17 times in his career. Goldsmith was Donner’s first choice to score SUPERMAN in 1978, though Goldsmith would contribute the score for the spin-off film SUPERGIRL in 1984. He also created the sparse yet atmospheric score for Ridley Scott’s ALIEN in 1979 and re-teamed with Scott for the score to LEGEND in 1985. It would not be until 1999 and 2001, respectively, that DVD and film score aficionados would hear Goldsmith’s original scores in their entirety on the respective DVDs.

Goldsmith’s musical contributions became synonymous with the STAR TREK saga over the last 25 years. His first venture, the score for STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, brought forth themes that evoked feelings of adventure, romanticism, and exploration, the very themes that Gene Roddenberry sought to convey in the original 1960’s television series and in the first of the many motion pictures to follow. Ironically, Goldsmith had been sought to contribute scores for the original television series but could not due to scheduling concerns.

“Science fiction is interesting as it goes back to my early days of television, I suppose, I started TWILIGHT ZONE, doing those things,” Goldsmith recalled on the DVD commentary for the Director’s Edition of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE in 2001. “I always liked those kinds of pictures because there was such great imagination going into the stories and into the creation of them. It gives the composer a very broad palette, and I could be free to do whatever I wanted to do. As far as writing in the more avant-garde style, that culminated in PLANET OF THE APES, where I had to pull out all the stops and do whatever I wanted to do with that film for the director -- the more interesting, the more far out I was going, the more experimental, the happier the director was. I had a free hand in doing that, and then did, I guess, LOGAN’S RUN and ALIEN, I guess a lot of them.

“STAR TREK, the original STAR TREK, the television show, I was asked to do it originally, though that isn’t something that as Alexander Courage tells the story, he reminded me of it as a matter of fact one day. He had seen the memo that had come from, I guess, (Gene) Roddenberry to try and engage me for that. But I remember to this day, thirty some-odd years ago, getting the phone call to do it. I wasn’t able to do it because I had a conflict, I was doing something else at the time, so it’s rather serendipitous that years and years later I came back and did this project.

“But I think when it came to STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, although, I think that George Lucas’ vision of the music for STAR WARS greatly influenced not so much what I wrote for it but stylistically, the music rather ended up being rather avant-garde and being strange and he plays it very romantic. When you stop and think about it, space is a very romantic thought. It is, to me, like the Old West, we’re up in the universe. It’s about discovery and new life, and then when we came to STAR TREK, it’s really the basic premise of STAR TREK. I never really understood all the stories, to be perfectly honest, but I do know that it’s really about goodness, about a better world, that there could really be some tranquility with one another. It’s a lovely thought, and I think that’s why the universal appeal of it and musically you’re going to go that way, it was more or less that that was what was out there, and that was very successful, but it made sense.

“I subsequently got treated to all the STAR TREK movies that I’ve done, it’s more a musically romantic way rather than getting very avant-garde and making strange noises and all, but it is clearly the opposite of the score for PLANET OF THE APES.

“When I was asked to do the movie, I said, “I’d love to do it, but I don’t want to be saddled with the television theme.” And the producers said, “Fine, there isn’t going to be any association.” I mean, how can you do STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and all the cast, and not have it be associated with the television theme? That’s where it came from, and subsequently we didn’t. There’s one quote of the original STAR TREK theme in the Captain’s Log, which they finally said, “We’ve got to have it somewhere in the picture,” so I had Alexander Courage actually do it himself, which was the right way to go. Subsequently, in all the other STAR TREK films that I’ve done, (five) of the films that I’ve done, I always start the film with the Sandy Courage fanfare from the television series, which was right to do, and then go into the theme I wrote.”

“I had the thrill of watching Jerry Goldsmith conduct a full orchestra on the music stage at 20th Century Fox, where music for ST: TMP was recorded over several days back in 1979. The first time I heard the STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE theme, I cried -- it was that beautiful!” -- Susan Sackett, assistant to the late Gene Roddenberry

During the film score’s development, Robert Wise and Todd Ramsay noticed some of Goldsmith’s interesting choices for musical selection, eventually leading to the development of the now-classic TMP theme. Wise said, “I listened to the first couple of pieces, and it didn’t seem quite right to me. It seemed like I got visions of sailing ships somehow.”

“The scene of the flying up to the Enterprise was a big, bombastic piece,” Goldsmith stated, “and it was... we all thought it was so wonderful, and we finished the sessions, and I’m patting myself on the back, and everybody’s telling me it was great and all that and...”

“Bob grabbed me, pulled me out in the hallway, we walked down the hall, and he said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ And I could never lie to Bob,” Ramsay said. I couldn’t get away with it even if I wanted to. I mean, it just is impossible, so I said, ‘Well, I... I think it sounds like sailing ships.’ And he says, ‘Well, I think it sounds like Conestoga wagons. What do we do?’ These were pretty frightening moments. These are the types of moments where if you were going to start having a breakdown, that’s when you start doing it.”

“And he really couldn’t articulate what was bothering him,” Goldsmith recalled. “He instinctually knew what was bothering him, but he couldn’t say what was bothering him. So he said, ‘You’ve got to do that all over again.’ I said, ‘Well, what’s bothering you?’ And he finally said, ‘There’s no theme.’ And I started thinking, ‘Theme? Oh.’ There’s a love theme. I’d written a love theme... but I think there was no STAR TREK theme. And I said, ‘Oh.’”

“I should point out that he actually started recording music before he came up with that theme,” Wise added. “He did five or six cues in late September ’79, and we viewed them against the picture, and they just didn’t seem to work. 'Leaving Drydock' was one of them. The love theme was pretty much in place, but the main theme was still undeveloped. So I called a few people down to hear the music and played it for them, and everyone agreed that it didn’t work, even though it was beautiful music, so I had to tell Jerry. Also, they were breaking for much of the scoring while we got more effects in, so that time Jerry hit upon the theme, and when they came back at the end of October, he’d written new versions of those cues.”

Goldsmith fondly recalled when the new STAR TREK theme finally came together. “(Bob) had come over to the house, and he had a bad day with the special effects, and he says, “I’ve had a really bad day today. Nothing’s working right. I hope you’ve got good news for me.” So I remember the head of the music department at Paramount was there then. We had rehearsed this, and I had two pianos in the living room, and we played it for him on two pianos.” He says, “That’s it!” It was like, “Why didn’t you come up with that in the first place?”

Among the more interesting selections Goldsmith used for the score’s development was an instrument that became known as “the blaster beam”, a mysterious-sounding device used as one of the key signature themes for V’Ger’s equally mysterious nature.

“The head of music at Paramount said, ‘This guy (Craig Huxley)’s got this thing called a beam, let’s go over and listen to it,’” Goldsmith remembered. “What it was, it was just as 12-foot long piece of aluminum with strings on it, metal strings kind of all the way over it and amplifiers under each string. You play it by hitting it with an artillery shell, and you pump up the low end in a mixing console, and it made a rather incredible noise. It was quite musical, too, because as you move this shell, it was like a steel guitar player plays this metal bar -- it’s the same process here, moving that shell around, you hit it different ways, you can hit the shell, you can hit it with a mallet, you get interesting sounds, and I was sort of intrigued with it. So I said, ‘Well, I’ll use that for the sound of V’Ger.’ And Bob loved it.”

But the clock was against the film’s production, including Goldsmith’s score development. Rushing to meet the December 7, 1979 release date, Goldsmith worked long hours into the night and the morning to create not only the film’s opening signature theme for the Klingons but also the film’s climactic finish.

“The last night of recording, which was, I know, I we finished 2:00 Saturday morning (December 1, 1979) and the picture opened, it fell on a (Friday), and that scene, I had recorded the opening Klingon scene and then the melding scene at the end -- I thought it was really quite good,” Goldsmith recalled. “I had stayed up the whole night before writing and I’d finished like at 11:00 that morning. It was like, we finished it and Bob says, ‘Can you do it one more time?’ I said, ‘Bob, I can’t, I don’t know what else (to do).’ Then I heard the next day on Saturday about 4:00, the phone rang, and it was Bob, and he says, ‘It works great, don’t worry about it, it works great in the scene.’”

Part of the film’s successful completion, as well as the scores, can also be directly contributed to the perseverance of then-Paramount executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. Goldsmith had high praise for the young executive. “I kept saying to myself, ‘Jeffrey’s going to become a very important person after this.’ And I remember getting phone calls from Jeffrey. He says, ‘How’s it going, kid?’... And he’s like the cheerleader going on, you know, ‘We’ve got to win one for the Gipper.’ He did it with me, I’m sure he did that with everybody. He had this indomitable spirit. This (film) was going to get done, and was going to see it got done.”