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Composer and guitarist Gary
Lucas is famous as the co-author and performer of Gary Lucas
Plays The Golem, a modern silent film soundtrack performed to the
influential German expressionist movie The Golem (1920).
Originally conceived and co-written in
1989 with Lucas’ childhood friend, keyboardist Walter Horn, Lucas’ Gary
Lucas Plays The Golem has played longer and toured more than almost
any other modern, non-traditional silent movie soundtrack, and has become
a dominating force in Lucas’ career.
Gary Lucas Plays The Golem has played in at least fifteen
countries in the world, and because of the movie’s Jewish subject
matter, the film has played in many Jewish film festivals and events,
including some in Israel. When the author was
working on the ill-fated commission An
Introduction to Modern Music in the Silent Film in 2001, Lucas
was one of several artists kind enough to assist with material and
information. However, Gary
Lucas Plays The Golem was not yet available on video, so the author
was therefore unable to say much about it at the time. The actual film
version of Gary Lucas Plays The Golem was not released on DVD until
in 2008, so it’s been a long time coming. Here's a look at how the
soundtrack works with the film, followed by more info on Gary Lucas'
career. A
Walk Through Gary Lucas Plays The Golem Gary Lucas Plays The
Golem goes back and forth between atmospheric, effects-laden “space
pieces”, and rootsy solo guitar pieces.
The pieces tend to underscore overall themes in the movie, and have
an unstoppable freight train-like momentum to them.
Lucas uses an overall good-quality print of the movie that looks
like a heavily-tinted restoration print with inserted intertitles taken
from a public domain print; the heavy tints work to give the movie a
slightly psychedelic feel that compliments the modern soundtrack quite
well.
The spacey pieces work
the best within the context of the movie.
The two most memorable scenes are the opening sequences where Rabbi
Loew foresees doom in the stars, and the summoning of the evil spirit
Astaroth to give the secret word that will animate the clay Golem figure.
Both scenes are just gripping and terrifying to watch thanks to the
doom-laden star music that lets you know in no uncertain terms that the
celestial forces demand blood. The first fifteen minutes
of the film roll along well, with the doom space effects rolling forward
like a storm on the horizon that is destroying everything in its wake. This
is initially counterbalanced by some guitar work that fits the
more intimate, focused parts of the action well.
The use of the tune of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” theme
to announce the decree that the Jews are being forced out of the feudal
state brings to mind Hitler’s love for Wagner, and therefore the similar
way that the Jews were treated in Nazi Germany.
So far so good. However, problems start to arise when Rabbi
Loew’s daughter meets Knight Florian, the bearer of the decree, and they
fall for each other. This
romantic substory begins to intertwine with the creation of the Golem
underground. At this point
Lucas rolls a guitar solo over all of this action that completely ignores
both the romantic subplot and the continuing terror of the formation of
the Golem. What I think would fit better here is a new “space piece”
with a “Beauty and the
Beast” theme, with the romantic “Beauty” side being particularly
sweet and heart-rending, and the “Beast” side representing a heartless monster that would be
only happy to kill the Beauty if he knew she was there. The themes need to
be easily interchangeable so that it would be easy to switch back and forth between the
scenes. After this sequence is
the conjuring of the demon Astaroth to bring the Golem to life.
This is easily the most chilling, gripping scene I’ve ever seen
in a silent movie thanks to the monstrous and horrifying soundtrack that
truly brings the evil in this scene to life.
The music covers the entire ceremony quite well—the striking of
the Rabbi’s wand, the waving of the pentagram, the balls of fire that
appear over the Rabbi and his assistant, the appearance of the evil spirit
and its breathing of the secret word, and finally the firestorm of
lightning that brings the scene crashing to a close.
Right after this, the
music follows the actual animation of the Golem and reflects the
sinister nature of this new life, the creature’s baby steps, and then
its relatively harmless utilization as the Rabbi Loew’s servant.
No real complaints about any of this music, with the exception that
the guitar adds reverb at the change from an exterior shot to the
cathedral-like interior of the Loew home, but then forgets the change back
when it returns to an exterior shot. Now when we get to the
Festival of the Roses, the music just about lost me.
The piece for this climactic scene is “all chaos, all the
time”, which completely ruins the buildup of the impending destruction
that unravels over the course of the scene. Again, the music rolls right
over all the nuances when it doesn’t have to.
The music needs to be able to switch from celebratory music with
ominous undertones to the terror and chaos as the partiers begin to meet their fate
and back again until chaos finally takes over completely. So again, a piece with two interchangeable themes that can
handle the back and forth nature of the storyline would be so much better
here. The soundtrack does make a comeback after this scene, however. The creaky steel guitar solo, entitled “Go Go Golem”, fits the uneasy intimacy of Rabbi Loew and the Golem returning home and the Golem turning against him, building up as the tension between the two thickens, and following all the way through to the Rabbi’s victory against the Golem. Next, the music successfully follows the sounding of the shofar (horn) and the happy excitement of the crowd in the streets, and includes a “Ride of the Valkyries” flourish that cleverly suggests that the Golem is now the new Tyrant out to kill the Jews. The music follows through the resurrection of the Golem and the monster's invasion of the tryst between Florian and the Jewess that ends in the murder of Florian. This theme of the murderous Golem is astonishingly powerful, especially when he smashes through the doors of the Jewess’ boudoir and throws Florian from the tower. However, the romantic subplot is ignored in the score yet again. A return to the hypothetical “Beauty and the Beast” piece recommended earlier would bring this out better.
The soundtrack’s Day of Reckoning continues from here, and for the most part works well, with the exception that the Golem’s new infatuation with the girl is ignored. The soundtrack then returns to the creaky “Go Go Golem” motif, which I didn’t like at first, but now I’m starting to understand that it’s meant to show the “After the Storm—Tyrant Wins” quiet, and also create an intimate stopgap in the film. I think that maybe if this reprise of “Go Go Golem” added some squeaking of the strings to show the scurry of the people out in the street, as well as some reverb to show the almighty power of the Tyrant’s destruction, it would help to make this scene more effective. When the Rabbi and his daughter and assistant
are reunited in
the aftermath, we return to the doom space theme which suggest that the
doom is continuing. This seems to work well since the Golem is still on the
loose. Finally, when the Golem
meets his fate at the hands of an innocent child, we are back to a reprise
of one of the earlier guitar solos, which would be fine if the action in
the movie were not completely different from the action where this guitar
solo originally appeared.
My thought would be to insert the hypothetical “Beauty and
the Beast” theme again, with the sweetness this time referring to the child, and then
the Beauty and Beast themes going back and forth is a subtler way until somehow
the Beauty accidentally topples the murderous
Beast in the soundtrack to correspond with the action.
After that, when the children and the Jewish people come upon the
corpse of the Golem, return to this earlier guitar theme as a coda, and
then give one final star-doom growl as the Star of David returns in the
“Fin” of the movie. Overall, Gary Lucas
Plays The Golem is a true rollercoaster.
All the musical pieces themselves are quite good, but they vary
greatly in their success as soundtrack scores, with the high points being
some of the best silent horror sequences I’ve ever seen.
There are so many “just right” flourishes, as well as details
that are completely ignored to the detriment of the movie. I realize that
I’m arguing with success, and that this is one of the longest-running
and successful non-traditional silent movie soundtracks of our day.
A video release of Gary Lucas Plays The Golem has been a long time
coming and it’s great that it’s finally available, but I cannot help
but wonder if the soundtrack could be improved upon even further. More
from Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas has a lot more
to offer in his widely varied and always interesting career.
Outside of his work as a silent movie soundtrack composer, Lucas is
best known as one of the veteran members of Captain Beefheart and his
Magic Band, a blues, psychedelic, and extreme prog band active and
recording from 1965 to 1982. The
band’s frontman, Captain Beefheart (née Don Van Vliet),
was a childhood friend to composer Frank Zappa, and a musical
visionary whose extreme originality has been loved by critics and
influential to many artists over the years.
Lucas played on the final two Captain Beefheart albums, Doc
At the Radar Station (1980) and Ice Cream For Crow
(1982). Since that time, he has worked as producer, session musician,
and accompanist for names like Nick Cave, David Johansen (aka Buster
Poindexter), Peter Gordon, Fred Schneider (of The B-52’s),
Govt. Mule, Jeff Buckley, Joan Osbourne, and Chris Cornell
to name a few. He also fronts
a supergroup called Gods and Monsters, whose members include Billy
Ficca of Television and The Waitresses, and Ernie
Brooks of Jonathan Richman’s The Modern Lovers.
He has worked in the Captain Beefheart tribute group The
Magic Band, which consisted of all Captain Beefheart band alumni and
was fronted by John French, the longest-running Captain Beefheart
band member and one of the most original and greatest avant-garde style
drummers in the world. Lucas has also been a long-time member of the New York art
community, and for years has been a regular performer at The Knitting
Factory, one of New York’s best-known performance art venues. Lucas has many albums to his credit as a solo performer, of which I own two. His solo debut Skeleton at the Feast (1991) offers a thirty-minute suite of all the motifs from Gary Lucas Plays The Golem, as well as a potpourri of his signature live solo guitar pieces. His career retrospective Improve the Shining Hour (2000) walks the listener through some of the highlights of the guitarist’s career, with samples of his work with Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Nick Cave, David Johansen, Gods and Monsters, and others. Autographed copies of these two CD’s are
available from Lucas’
website at $20.00 US each. Alternately, Skeleton
at the Feast and Improve
the Shining Hour are available from Amazon.com at the corresponding
links. _____ Lucas has another DVD of
movie scores available called Sounds of the Surreal/Monsters From
the Id (2007). Sounds of the Surreal is a three-in-one
presentation, featuring Lucas performing his soundtracks to the surreal
silent shorts Entr’acte (1924), Ballet Mechanique
(1924), and The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912).
Monsters From the Id features Lucas playing to clips of
his favorite horror and sci-fi movies that he grew up watching in the
1960’s, including Carnival of Souls, King Kong, and Rosemary’s
Baby. This DVD
is available exclusively from Lucas’
website for $25.00 US and comes autographed by Lucas. For more background
information on Gary Lucas Plays The Golem and the movie The
Golem, see this
web page. For more info
on Gary Lucas himself, visit his official website |
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