The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies: From Rock and Roll to Synthwave
by Nate Patrin (Music 781.542 Pat)
I think it’s safe to say that music
and movies are like peanut butter and jelly — most folks like them both on
their own, but they’re even better together! The history of film has always
been linked to music, too: when movies were still silent movies, most theaters
had an organist or pianist who played along with the films, adding another
layer of dramatic or narrative interest to the otherwise quiet on-screen
action. Once it was possible to reproduce sound with film, music remained an
important part of film production, often simmering in the background to set the
desired mood, or bursting into the foreground at dramatic peaks for emphasis.
There is a long tradition of
scoring music for film, writing custom music that compliments the unique
visuals, dialogue, and settings for each movie. But directors also turn to
familiar music frequently, too. There are a variety of reasons for this: music
familiar to the audience can be a shortcut to a particular kind of mood.
Sometimes it helps to establish a scene as diegetic music, or music that’s
being experienced by the actors on-film. Sometimes it’s both! Music writer Nate
Patrin has a fascinating new book called The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies: From Rock and
Roll to Synthwave which discusses some well-known uses of pop
music in film, and also makes the argument that having such music in film has
helped to legitimize the music itself as art to be appreciated on a serious
level.
The ”needle” Patrin refers to in
the title is a record player needle, of course, and in the film industry, the
diegetic music I mentioned earlier is often referred to as a “needle drop,”
when a character in the film would perhaps put on a record for their own
listening, and we hear it with them, or they turn on the radio, or they go to a
concert, etc. For the most part, these kinds of contexts are where pop music
first started to appear in films, while conventionally scored soundtracks
continued to underscore other parts of films. In his introduction, he points
out how these pop music moments in film can add so much meaning to a scene,
including establishment of a time period, revealing more about a character’s
personality, or even adding another emotional cue for the audience, as so many of
us have our own unique connections with songs. The idea became so important to
the film industry that the role of “music supervisor” was created to help
select music, organize it, and secure rights to use it.
The book focuses on 16 songs used
in 16 films, selected as being particularly influential or memorable, or
furthering the art of filmmaking. They’re arranged by the release date of each
film, ranging from “Scorpio Rising” in 1964 to “Drive” in 2011. Considering
that being influential is one of the criteria for inclusion, most of the films
are older, from the 60s to the 90s, with one representative from the Oughts and
the aforementioned “Drive” from the Teens. Jumping right into the 60s with
“Scorpio Rising,” we find a film that was regarded as borderline obscene at the
time of its release in the height of the Hays Code, but already somewhat quaint
by the standards of the 1970s. As an early film in the “biker” genre, it
arrived after the era of James Dean, but before the era of classic rock biker
anthems, and the music choices reflect that fascinating interstitial moment
when defining biker culture with rebellion was somewhat more open to
interpretation. Patrin focuses on director Kenneth Anger’s choice of the song
“He’s a Rebel” as performed by The Crystals as representative of this vaguely
liminal space, in which his unique blend of a documentary approach with edits
that represent his own interpretation of the culture are well represented in
the music. It was also one of the earliest cinematic examples of contemporary
pop music being placed in a film, which was influential for aspiring filmmakers
like Martin Scorsese.
Next, Patrin discusses the use of
music by Simon & Garfunkel in the 1967 film “The Graduate,” and in
particular “The Sounds of Silence,” which frames several important scenes. This
music would have been very familiar to audiences at the time this film
premiered, and it was unusual to have such familiar music used extensively in a
film both as diegetic music and underscore. While the plan had been to have
Simon & Garfunkel write original songs for the film, they were delayed in
delivering them, and in the meantime, the director and producer fell in love
with existing album cuts they had laid into the film as temporary tracks while
editing the final cut. While it was an unorthodox move at the time to leave
them in, it turned out to be a huge success: the film was extremely
well-received, as was its soundtrack.
We’ll skip ahead a little to the
film “American Graffiti” in 1973, which got to demonstrate another great use of
pop music in film: nostalgia. Here we have a period piece, set roughly 10 years
before the debut of the film, and director George Lucas opted to emphasize the
time period in part through musical choices. As so much of the action revolves
around driving, the music of the film is entirely diegetic, presented through
the car radios of its characters, and the music they’re cruising to is mostly
from the 50s. Ostensibly, Patrin focuses on the original 1958 Bobby Freeman
version of “Do You Want to Dance?” here as the main song, but the whole
soundtrack—41 songs that were already becoming vintage at the time of the
film—work together to set the mood and the time. It turned out that lots of
people were already nostalgic for the innocence and fun represented by the
“jukebox” selected for the film, as the soundtrack went triple platinum, spent
41 weeks on the Billboard charts, and essentially launched the era of classic
rock compilation albums.
Establishing a time period while
evoking some nostalgia turned out to work beautifully in the war film genre,
too. In 1979, “Apocalypse Now” opened with The Doors’ “The End,” powerfully
evoking the Vietnam War era with a focus on the personal rather than the
universal, something that would have been difficult to achieve with a more
heavy-handed approach such as any of the many war protest songs of the time. It
turns out that the whole opening scene of the film, which combines the Doors
song with footage of a helicopter dropping napalm on a tree grove and then
dissolves to the character Captain Willard suffering alone in a small room, was
conceived of toward the end of production. While finding this footage and
combining it with this music was essentially accidental, it became an important
element of the film, changing its structure and setting its tone. Much like
“American Graffiti” did for 50s nostalgia, “Apocalypse Now” marked the
beginning of a Doors revival that carried on for several years.
These moments of collective
reconsideration of familiar music are the basis for Patrin’s underlying thesis
in the book, a notion that these pop music hits became more seriously regarded
after their second lives through film. These songs contributed transformative
moments on screen, and they were themselves transformed in the process. In some
specific cases laid out in the book, I agree with this assessment. Take the use
of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” for David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” film, for example:
the impact of the film on the song, the song on the film, and the subsequent
Orbison reassessment that followed, did feel like an elevation of Orbison’s
song and work more generally. And the appearance of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”
in “Wayne’s World” definitely led to critical reassessment and a new generation
of fans for that band. But in other examples, I didn’t find his case to be
quite as strong, such as the Delfonics being featured in Quentin Tarantino’s
“Jackie Brown,” or the several entries that featured songs contemporaneous with
the films they were featured in. Even the “American Graffiti” soundtrack felt
more like pure nostalgia than a subtle or nuanced reassessment. These
relationships between song and screen are fascinating no matter how
transcendent they may or may not be, though.
If you haven’t had enough by the
time you reach the end of the 16 main chapters and their songs/films, there is
an “outro” chapter that adds an additional 24 examples to the mix. These are
covered with just a paragraph on each, but the additions definitely add to the
richness of the book. Who can forget the song “Tequila” as featured in
“Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” for example, or the surprising juxtaposition of Huey
Lewis and the News’ “Hip to be Square” in “American Psycho?” There are some
great songs and great movies to think about here.
This book isn’t just for music
fans, by the way. Describing these relationships between films and songs
requires a lot of description of the films, and movie buffs will find lots to
like here. In most cases, you’ll find more detailed analysis of the films than
the songs! This makes sense, though, as the films in this context are the
macro-structure art form at the heart of the discussion, and the songs are just
playing a role within them. It’s interesting to note that the supermajority of
the songs featured are considerably older than the films they’re featured in,
by at least a decade. I think this speaks to the notion that we have
complicated relationships with pop music in our culture: we hear it,
internalize it as part of our memories, associate with a particular time and
place, and then all of those associations come rushing outward when we hear it
placed into a new context like a movie. Music is a powerful way to express and
share emotions, and also a robust way to store those feelings in our memories
for detailed recollection later.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try The Music of Counterculture Cinema by Matthew J. Bartkowiak
and Yuya Kiuchi or Hollywood Shack Job: Rock Music in Film and On Your Screen
by Harvey Kubernik.)
( publisher’s page for The Needle and the Lens )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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