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"Love & Mercy" is based on the life of The Beach Boys' songwriter Brian Wilson, who is one of the most respected musicians living today. Composer Atticus Ross is well aware of Wilson's stature and knew that scoring the film would be a daunting task.
Ross tried to take a different approach to musician biography film scores by remixing classic tracks such as "Help Me, Rhonda," "California Girls" and more than a dozen other songs into one piece.
Ross was a rock musician before he started scoring films just a few years ago. He was in the British rock band 12 Rounds in the early 1990s, and more recently in the electronic band How to Destroy Angels with Trent Reznor. They collaborated on the Oscar-winning score for “The Social Network" and on “Gone Girl.”
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Ross on why he decided to remix Beach Boys songs, the challenges of scoring a film about Brian Wilson, and what the songwriter thought of Ross' work:
Were you nervous about working on a film about Brian Wilson?
Very nervous. And a film being made about Brian Wilson wasn't necessarily something that resonated with me because it's very nerve-wracking to having one's music [heard] against his catalog. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of music bios. I think there have been some good ones made, but generally speaking, not a great fan. So, eventually after much harassment, I did get around to reading the script and I thought it was a brilliant script and it wasn't at all what I expected.
I was doing some research and there was this mythology about all these recordings from those years that have never been released. So I had this idea that if we were to somehow convince Brian to give me all this recording that we might be able to do something interesting in terms of storytelling. And remarkably he was up for it. And then, even more remarkably, this hard drive arrived at my house with this phenomenal amount of material.
All of Wilson's masters?
It was all the masters, but I suppose what's more remarkable to the fan is just the amount of material. "Good Vibrations" alone — I think I've got 68 versions of it. He would leave tape rolling [in the studio] and you could hear him [in the control room]. I think that people, me included, had come to see Brian as spaced out. But when you hear him talking, instructing the musicians — [he's] incredibly focused, self-possessed, confident, direct... I mean it's incredible.
The track "Silhouette" is very representative of the film. You have your own orchestration and you're mixing it with some snippets of Brian Wilson's music?
The idea was that Brian should be ever-present. So we're taking parts of his a cappella pieces and sampling them, and then making new melodies that feel evocative of his work. And I worked with my family a lot ... my wife and my brother. But there's one scene — it's one of the darkest in the film — when he's in studio and his father ... comes in to play that dreadful "Fun Fun Fun" song. ]Wilson] goes into the control room and puts on the headphones and has this terrible experience. That was the hardest cue to do and it ended up being my wife's voice. She's singing.
When you started to work on this film, you were not enamored of Brian Wilson's or The Beach Boys' music. Did your thinking about his music and his artistic talent evolve in the making of the film?
Well, I wouldn't say that I wasn't enamored. I just wasn't an obsessive fan. Anyone who loves music can't [not] love much of what he's done. As a musical education, it really was incredible because to work out how he's put these songs together ... it's remarkable that he can achieve these incredibly sophisticated orchestrations while at the same time [creating] an incredibly catchy and beautiful song.
Brian Wilson was a collaborator on this film. What has he told you about your musical work on his life story film?
Nothing [laughs]. He's been very, very nice when I've met him, and I've heard he's very happy. I was very, very nervous about doing it. When we finished, everyone felt like they have done their best. But you could never tell how things are going to be received. It seems to be received pretty well.
"Love & Mercy" comes out on DVD on Sept. 15.