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The Haunting Credit Music and Score for Get Carter

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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If ever the music for movie "captured" its every essence -- both when it was made and now for its place in film history -- it is Roy Budd's work for Get Carter.

In certain ways, its a low budget score "to the max." No big orchestra, no jazz band. If we are to believe a promotional piece on the DVD, Budd did the score all by himself, with two piano syntheziers, one in front of him and one to his side. He mainly played the one in front of him and then used his other hand to "add harmony" at times from the other one.

But you don't see any of that in Get Carter. Rather -- from the very first image on screen -- Michael Caine through the window of a penthouse in the dead of night, looking out at us with people behind him -- we hear electronic notes which create a MOOD...ominous, bleak, melancholy..menacing.

In that penthouse, Carter is watching a "porn slide show" with his London crime bosses, and the girlfriend of one of them(who is also, we shall learn , HIS lover.) The crime bosses have heard that Carter wants to travel north to Newcastle to investigate the drunk driving solo crash death of his brother. The bosses do NOT want Carter to go up there.

He goes.

And now we are on the train from London to Newcastle and Budd's credit score kicks in to launch the film in earnest. The music is an all-enveloping piece of early 70s funk -- a blood brother in certain ways to a more famous 1971 theme -- the theme from Shaft, by Issac Hayes(with his vocals). Moreover, the music is timed to the rumbling down the line of the train that Carter is riding to his destiny, the music rumbles and rattles along with the train on the tracks -- as the train slows down into Newcastle, the MUSIC slows down, too, down to...a...few...notes..and done.

(This "locomotive" music would find ITS match in 1974 in David Shire's opening credit music for The Taking of Pelham 123 a movie about the hijacking of an NYC subway train.)

The Get Carter theme has "touch points" with Shaft, and with Pelham 123, and with some of the 70's jazz funk thriller music of Lalo Schifrin (Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick.)

But it is very much APART from those scores, too -- more haunting, more mournful, more quiet...when that train slowly comes to a stop in Newcastle, it is as dead and listless as Newcastle itself will be.

For a lot of Carter's grim adventures in Get Carter, there is no music. But when the movie(rather than the train) reaches the end of the line...the very last and haunting and powerful images of the film...the music comes back. Not "big," not brassy...just very slow, and quiet, and mournful, accompanying the stasis of death itself.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Here's a video of Roy Budd recording the theme music in his studio:
https://youtu.be/8kMhcf8eyiA

Wikipedia had this to say about the score for Get Carter:
"The film's budget reputedly allowed only £450 for the score, but he overcame this restriction by using only three musicians, including himself playing electric piano and harpsichord simultaneously."

Good catch on the train connection. Goldsmith's score for The Great Train Robbery also imitates the rhythmic sounds of a train. One part of that movie you can hear the train sound clearly which Goldsmith incorporated - it sounds identical to the main theme.

Budd teamed up again with Michael Caine for Kidnapped (also 1971). Budd later did the scores for Wild Geese I and II and The Sea Wolves. He started out with a mean, lean (and young) Michael Caine at one end of his career and ended up with a-bit-long-in-the-tooth Roger Moore, Richard Burton, and David Niven on the other.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Here's a video of Roy Budd recording the theme music in his studio:
https://youtu.be/8kMhcf8eyiA

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Excellent! A "post with music and image." The movie comes right back in memory. Powerful stuff.

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Wikipedia had this to say about the score for Get Carter:
"The film's budget reputedly allowed only £450 for the score, but he overcame this restriction by using only three musicians, including himself playing electric piano and harpsichord simultaneously."

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Hmm..I thought it was him alone. But two other guys. Well, it works.

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Budd teamed up again with Michael Caine for Kidnapped (also 1971).

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I've never seen Kidnapped, but in one of his bios(the first, I believe, I haven't read the others), Caine says that Kidnapped is the only movie he didn't get paid on. They ran out of money. I think he sued them. Hard to imagine a big adventure movie being scored by three guys...

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Budd later did the scores for Wild Geese I and II and The Sea Wolves. He started out with a mean, lean (and young) Michael Caine at one end of his career and ended up with a-bit-long-in-the-tooth Roger Moore, Richard Burton, and David Niven on the other.

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It happens. Given my crossovers to Caine's rejection of the Frenzy killer lead elsewhere here, I will note that the actor who played that killer -- Barry Foster -- is merely a supporting player to Richard Burton, Roger Moore, and Richard Harris(and Hardy Kruger) in The Wild Geese. Foster was never going to be a movie star like Michael Caine. TV was better for him, I guess.
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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Good catch on the train connection. Goldsmith's score for The Great Train Robbery also imitates the rhythmic sounds of a train. One part of that movie you can hear it clearly - it sounds identical to the main theme.

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Hmm..I saw The Great Train Robbery years ago...I'd have to look at it again. Might as well add one more: "Murder on the Orient Express" waits awhile to get the cast all introduced and all aboard that train at the station, but we then get the great, slow, ever-building music as the train wheels start slowly turning, the steam bursts out of the pipe and the train accelerates into action..with a "waltz"-like accompaniment.

I think I like the opening credit music to "Pelham 123" the best of locomotive music. Its exciting, muscular, and a little bit funny.

Meanwhile, as a commenter says on the YouTube about Budd's Get Carter score its...ghostly.

To me, the nostalgia is almost tear-inducing. The imagery and music of 1971 is RIGHT THERE yet...gone.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The main title track called "Goodbye, Carter" has a double meaning. The goodbye is both because he's leaving for Newcastle, but also foreshadows his fate at the end when the theme returns - the long goodbye, so to speak. The icy theme works on may levels, along with the pictorial train reference.

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SPOILER: Yes, I do feel that connection between how the music works at the beginning(in the penthouse, as Carter contemplates "what he must do" -- go to Newcastle) and then at the end ("Mission accomplished" -- all the baddies are dead or prison bound -- but Carter himself is killed.) The music is quiet both in the penthouse at the beginning and on the beach at the end. The music "moves faster" on the train.

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I was going to mention "Murder on the Orient Express" but you beat me to it.

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Wellll..there's probably a whole lot more in the way of "train music" for train movies. Henry Mancini's score for "Silver Streak" just popped into my head. There's gotta be more...

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You can hear the train sound at the very beginning in the Goldsmith with the stuttering "dunn... dun dun... dun dun... dun dun...": https://youtu.be/Cs4djp2cZ6Y

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Typical lush and muscular Goldsmith music. Its funny...I very much remember Goldsmith's overtures for Capricorn One and The Boys From Brazil in 1978 -- but this score, I forgot, and its just as good. Nifty poster, too -- Connery and Sutherland with their interesting male faces; Lesley Ann-Down with her interesting female form ...amazing, that woman was married to the monstrous William Friedkin(The French Connection, The Exorcist director) for a time. He musta had something. Well, he was rich.