Terry Riley in the April 2007 Wire

The Wire 278, April 2007
Exclusive web only feature by Julian Cowley
Photo: Steve Jaffe

Terry Riley
Happy Endings

The minimalist composer discusses his film soundtracks. By Julian Cowley

"I never did have a desire to write film music, says Californian
minimalist composer Terry Riley. "But people approached me." The initial
approach came in 1972. "I was living in India at that time," he recalls,
"studying vocal music with Pandit Pran Nath. Director Jo�l Santoni
called from Paris and said he was making a film and he thought my music
would work well with it." Riley flew to France at the end of March that
year and recorded the soundtrack for Les Yeux Ferm�s (The Eyes Closed)
at Strawberry Studio, a converted chateau near Paris favoured during the
early 1970s by fashionable figures such as Elton John and David Bowie.

The vinyl release that transpired from that session was called Happy
Ending. It's long been a sought-after rarity and now, following
rediscovery of the original master tapes, it's being reissued on CD by
Tom Welsh's Elision Fields label, together with Riley's soundtrack to
Alexander Whitelaw's 1975 movie Le Secret De La Vie (Lifespan). In each
case the director had been captivated by Riley's "A Rainbow In Curved
Air" and "Poppy Nogood And The Phantom Band", paired in 1969 on a
Columbia LP. In both instances a version of the film had been made using
extracts from that pre-existing music and Riley had been shown those
versions prior to entering the studio. "I wasn't involved in any other
way in the production process but I knew what their atmosphere was," he
recalls.

Happy Ending comprises two side-long pieces: the title track and
"Journey From A Death Of A Friend". Riley multi-tracked, played piano,
electronic keyboard and soprano saxophone with delay. Less
psychedelically brilliant and a little more homespun than A Rainbow In
Curved Air, it's nonetheless cut from the same cloth, hypnotically
repetitive yet energized by an improvisatory openness reminiscent of
ragas and of modal jazz. Les Yeux Ferm�s has lapsed into cinematic
obscurity. It involves a duel between friends, a suicide and a character
who feigns blindness with unexpected consequences. "It's a very static
film, with not a lot going on," Riley remarks. "The last 20 minutes or
so is a single shot. But it's a very interesting film psychologically. I
think if it were revived it would achieve cult status. Once when I
played in Japan it was shown there and was very well received."

Le Secret De La Vie has recently been resuscitated on DVD, generating
interest in part because the cast includes legendary German actor Klaus
Kinski. "It's another suicide film," Riley points out with an ironic
laugh. The twist in this tale is that the victim is a scientist who
claims he has discovered the secret of eternal life. He takes his life
while attending a conference in Amsterdam and the story then
investigates that paradoxical action. "It has a strange cartoon like
quality," Riley observes. "All the actors' voices are dubbed - even
though they were speaking English. Sandy Whitelaw had worked previously
as an engineer dubbing soundtracks and voiceovers. It was made on a low
budget; he filmed scenes of ordinary people in Amsterdam... with Kinski
wandering amongst them."

Riley flew from California to Holland to record the music for Whitelaw's
film. As before he approached the project as essentially the making of a
self-sufficient album - with more available studio time than he was
accustomed to. Although his compositions were designed to enhance mood
they were not tailored to the visual dimension in a narrowly
programmatic way. The issued disc has six tracks, Riley playing
keyboards and saxophone and singing too on the moody and mesmeric "In
The Summer". There's also the solo original of his alluring "G. Song",
which recurred with variations on Cadenza On The Night Plain
(GRAMAVISION CD), a 1984 collaboration with The Kronos Quartet.

In 1984, in Geneva on a concert tour, Riley and sitar player Krishna
Bhatt were approached by Swiss director Alain Tanner who asked them to
record versions of some of the music they were then performing as a
creative starting point for a film he was planning. They provided the
impetus and colouration Tanner required and the glistening, pulsating
music for No Man's Land documents another stage in the flux of influence
and invention that makes Riley's music so suggestive and exhilarating.

At the end of the 1990s Gary Todd's Cortical Foundation retrieved some
fascinating archival material of Riley music from the early 1960s,
derived in part the composer confides from "stuff sitting out in the
barn. The rats had eaten part of it and I was going to throw it away. I
was sceptical at first but after Gary did it I felt it there was
actually a case for it." Now after protracted research and negotiation
Tom Welsh's re-issue shifts attention to Riley's 1970s output.
Completists may have noted that Riley is credited with supplying music
for Michel Polac's 1973 film La Chute D'Un Corps (The Fall Of A Body)
but although selections from his earlier work were used he wasn't
invited to contribute anything new to that project. There is, however,
one more original soundtrack that remains tantalisingly unavailable at
present. In 1958 a five minute long documentary called Polyester Moon
celebrated the work of sculptor Claire Falkenstein. Photographed by
Anthony Denny, its improvised soundtrack featured Riley playing piano,
Pauline Oliveros on French horn and Loren Rush on koto. Nearly half a
century later, Riley keeps his music current. In May 2007 he will be
performing live at festivals in Scotland and Ireland.

By Julian Cowley

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This was an article published online only in addition to the cover
feature on Terry Riley from issue #278 April 2007

� 2007 The Wire.

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* David Beardsley
* microtonal guitar
* http://biink.com/db