James Harvey: Tell me about 1988 when you started something unique in Australia.
Philip Powers: You mean the record label, 1M1?
JH: Yes, the origin of your Australian film soundtrack label.
PP: In 1988, I was in a terrible situation where I was suddenly in between jobs. It probably all happened with 12-months. A great period, followed by terrible period, mixed with a creative period mixed with another terrible period.
JH: What do you mean by in between jobs?
PP: Ah. Well, there’s a bunch of Australians, probably elsewhere equally, where we’re never employed as such, but where, we are, um, live by contracts and commissions. My goal was to turn my Film Australia job (through making contacts) into a composing career, whilst always being careful to never put my name forward, and always suggesting composers I thought were a good fit for a project.
JH: So where did the creation of 1M1 Records fit into that?
PP: That’s was, like, three or four years later. Prior to that I was a music producer/director who was trying to match a director’s thoughts and style with a composer’s style. My job was to either 1) select music from music libraries, 2) clear music that was in copyright – recordings and copyright. 3) propose composers for projects. 4) make up cue-sheets for every Film Australia production which separated original music and music from a library from source-location music.
JH: Okay, I don’t know what that means, but we’ll come back to that later. Can we skip ahead to the period where you started producing film soundtracks for CDs?
PP: Yep. Of course. But, everything I did in that regard was a product of accidents. Outside of Film Australia, all the other things that happened where sheer dumb luck. You know, 1M1 Records didn’t even exist at the beginning of 1988. In 1987 I was still contracted as Music Officer with Film Australia and I was responsible for the music in their films. Like I said, sometimes I hired composers, sometimes I wrote music for the films for free, or when they had $1000 for music as opposed to $500 for clearances I worked overtime to compose a coupla scores, but most of the time we used music off disc. Whenever there was outside music appearing in the films, or chosen to feature, I had to get clearances from the publisher and the record label, and negotiate a fee based on the number of seconds it ran. I still had an ambition at this point to be a film composer, but the opportunities to write music for films and not be paid for it, outweighed the opportunities to write music and be paid for it. The former were “many” and the latter were “hardly ever”.
JH: So, what happened in 1988?
PP: It was more about what happened in 1986 or 1987. Someone approached an associate of mine in the industry and asked them what scores of Australian feature films were worth releasing as soundtrack albums. That person suggested that I would know the answer to that question.
JH: And that was Southern Cross, an American label?
PP: Absolutely. And when I was interviewed by John Lasher I was asked what scores came to mind. I mentioned The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Also, another two scores which I thought were terrific which were from films which were a few years old, but two of them interested John, one because it was from a film which starred Liv Ullman, and the other because it was by the composer of Mad Max. I mentioned several titles to him. I’d been seeing every Australian film made from 1984 on, at the AFI for several years, every year, so I knew almost every score since about 1980. I mentioned a bunch of titles and John chose the two films he thought would be most appealing – or had the most things, like, names, stars, that’d be known.
JH: And, I’m assuming this was the score for the television miniseries, For the Term of His Natural Life?
PP: No, no. That was certainly one of my suggestions but the score was by the same composer, but for a film called The Wild Duck.
JH: That wasn’t for your label?
PP: That was a Southern Cross release. Not one of mine. I just produced that one. I suggested it and then produced it. I suggested Frog Dreaming, and produced it.
JH: What’s the difference when you work for another label as opposed to your own?
PP: In those instances, nothing. It was amazing. I got to choose every cue of music, and edit every cue to any other cue, and deliver a finished result. I don’t even know what they would sound like now. I’m pretty obsessive, so I’m thinking I’m gonna be as happy with my choices in 2014 as I was in 1987.
JH: That’s a bold statement.
PP: Not so much. I hear a score and I can visually see where the bits can fit together to make a bigger piece of music than 32 seconds followed by 1m54s, followed by 16 seconds. The soundtrack albums that I bought from the 1960s and 1970s often had really short tracks. Like The Blue Max or The Midas Run. That’s where my frustration came from. I wanted some kind of development in a cue, even if it wasn’t there in the film. I would find a way to knit together 5 cues into a satisfying two-minute track. Those kind of releases that separated every track, no matter how short, did my head in. I was going to make sense of short cues and make them longer even if they were out of order.
JH: So, where did your idea of doing something with Australian music that was quite renegade, come from?
PP: Between 1973 and 1977 I was exposed to several very influential films. In 1974 when I was eleven, I remember seeing Faye Dunaway in Chinatown, but I didn’t understand the film. In 1974 I also remember seeing The Parallex View. The ending of that film left me stunned. I asked my dad and then my mum, “but he didn’t die, did he?” That was my first experience (other than Bambi) where the film doesn’t have a satisfactory ending.
Unfortunately, it was a down ending, but fortunately, it was a different way of looking at life, from that point. It was extraordinary that a hero died, because all of my literary heroes solved crimes and were congratulated for it. Parallex View confused me. All the President’s Men confused me as well because there was no hero. Well, not a hero I understood, because the person who deserved praise, was a nameless person in a carpark.
Heroes die in 1974, and have to hide in 1975. And in The Conversation they are seduced and robbed. Those three scores were sparse on all levels and it was really intense as well. I wanted to write my own film scores and do something between those films and Logan’s Run and Jaws. I was really into Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Beethoven and Mozart.
From there, I had an idea to produce scores – even sparse ones – for CD with no other idea than to get the music out of Australia. That’s all I cared about. Giving Australian film scores the same life as an Italian or French composer, or foreign film scores.
Actually…
Sorry. I’m sorry to stop here, but that’s the end of what we can talk about now. Sorry. I’ve got another appointment in, like, 45 minutes.
JH: No, no. I understand. That’s fine. Thanks for your time.
PP: No worries.