Lorne Balfe

0:12Hello and welcome to the Monocle Weekly. I am Laura Kramer, and on today's show, I speak to the Grammy-winning composer Lorne Balfe. With a career that spans more than two decades, Lorne has made an undeniable mark on Hollywood, working on projects for directors like Michael Bay, Ron Howard, and Christopher Nolan. Combined, the films that Lorne has crafted music for have brought in more than$9 billion at the box office, making him one of the most successful British film composers of all time. He stopped by Midori House to chat to me about his latest project, the spy comedy Argyle, directed by Matthew Vaughan.

0:53And Lauren began by telling me about the premise of the film.

1:02It is an homage, I think, to the movies that I love. Romancing the Stone was a great example of, I think, this is what Matthew was inspired by. These classic movies that had fun and action and comedy and romance. And Argyle really is, cinema's there to escape. And this is the movie that I think you get, where you get introduced to a character, Ellie Conway, where you don't really know where she belongs and then something happens and the plot changes and there's lots of surprises in it. But it's a romance film, it's an action movie and it's the type of film that I want to go to the cinema to see.

1:50I think you're right and Matthew Vaughn, the director, is known for this. Yes. He does this so well and you have a relationship going back with him quite a few years where you've worked in the past. do you have a sort of shorthand at this point in how you approach your composition how does that work we've known each other now coming up to four years which is kind of short especially when I look at some of the other directors I've been working with Michael Michael Bay now on and off for 15 years you know Michael's one of the people very much like Jerry Brookheimer who's a producer why I got into this industry.

2:28I'd sit there and I'd see their names appear at the beginning of a movie and I'd sit in the Highlands of Scotland and go, one day I want to be in Hollywood. And I'd see their movies and it would get me excited. And lo and behold, I get to work with these people. But Matthew and I, we've got the same love in movies, the same taste in film. and it's just an honour when you get to work with people that are passionate in anything in life. It's just an honour. And he's got great taste and he loves music. We actually started writing the theme of the film three and a half years ago and we wrote it together.

3:10So he's got a piano at home and we actually came up with the theme together. So that's another side to Vaughan that nobody would know that he can write. Saves some talent for the rest of us, thank you. Well, we wrote a Christmas song a couple of years ago from Michael Bublé. No. Yeah, Matthew and I, we wrote it with Gary Barlow. Which song is this one? Christmas Sweaters. Oh, my God. Yeah, which I love at Christmastime because I get the heat. It gets played and you kind of smile. My children can't stand it, though. But it's the most obvious song, Christmas Sweaters. And the thing is, I have to say, probably with your songs, it's not like you hear them all the time on the radio, unless it's classic FM or something.

3:59And so, of course, you get excited. Well, yes. And also because it's Christmas time and I kind of get excited about it. The general mood in the house is like, oh, it's on again. But I get Michael Bublé. You know, you can't beat that for Christmas. But anyway, Matthew and I wrote, we wrote that together. Awesome. So, okay, so you wrote the theme, you started out three and a half years ago working on it. How does the progression work then in terms of the development of the rest of the songs, the accompaniment? Do you need to see what happens beforehand? How much of a brief does he give you? Walk me through the process.

4:36Well, this film's been very, not at all like the majority of my other films, because we started writing songs for the film based on the themes in it. So that started kind of opening up another can of worms, which you don't know, kind of delve into. So we started, the main theme got turned into electric energy, which Boy George ended up singing on, which is again kind of an amazing thing. But then we had the Beatles song, which is kind of, you forget that you had the last song by the Beatles. And so we had that for about a year and a half. And we started using it, putting it into the film, having an orchestra with scored cues.

5:22That started being incorporated into it also. And, of course, we couldn't tell anybody that we had it, so we had to make up fake names and things. That is another story, just being able to kind of work with a Beatles song that nobody's heard. Well, maybe, you know, I don't know, 10, 20 people. and being able to kind of incorporate that into the film also has been amazing. What an honour to the last one. It's such a powerful song. And it wasn't until recently when the song came out two months ago, a month ago, it wasn't until somebody on the news said the last ever and you kind of then it dawns on you.

6:03And it was the same ways when listening to it for the first time. I wasn't told that it was a Beatles song. So I was just told this could work for this scene. And it's the perfect song for Bryce Howard's character in it. It's used as something from her past. It's used to trigger something. And no other piece of music could have ever replaced it. It was just an amazing coincidence that Giles Martin was working on it and is great friends with Matthew. And it just clicked. Did you trade any composing tips with Paul McCartney? No. He doesn't need tips from me. What am I going to suggest? I don't know.

6:50You don't know what his next reincarnation in the music career is going to be. Well, listen, there's somebody who's done it all. He's done film music. He's done video games. He's done concert music. I've got a great relationship through this project with Giles Martin now. And Giles is the vessel of the Beatles now. I regard Giles as a great friend now. And what he did with that song was magical. It's been sitting there for so long. And it's appeared and then it vanished and appeared. and he is, you know, I think him and his father have, you know, his father always was regarded as the fifth beater, but Giles is the next generation and we were very privileged to have that in the movie.

7:42You know, your first feature film anyway was Crazy in Love, 2004. So that's 20 years ago now. Yeah, yeah. Could you have imagined two decades down the line you'd be on these type of projects? I could imagine just working. Let alone, I think anybody when you are from somewhere that's not a main city in life, I think it's a miracle that anything happens. I was brought up in the Highlands of Scotland and you played in fields. and at the time Hollywood was a different planet to me. It was like something where these great movies that I go to the cinema with my father and escape from the world. So I kind of never had a plan about it.

8:35I was very fortunate that I wrote a random letter to Hans Zimmer saying if you need a T-boy, I'll come over and got heard, well, we don't take, you can't just come over here. So I did. I saved up. I bought a plane ticket and I went. And I think anybody in the arts, we're fortunate to be working. Somebody said once, you know, it's a hobby you get paid for. You've got to kind of always remind yourself we're very fortunate because there's many people that don't get to have an orchestra play their music. were very fortunate to sit and have these amazing musicians in a studio at Abbey Road playing.

9:19And you do take it for granted because you're part of a... It's a job. But then you've got to step back and just go, there's many, many friends that wish they could do it and they don't want to do their job. So it's... You know, every project brings a great challenge, whether it's a small independent film or a big blockbuster. So when you look at it as 20 years, I feel that I've only really, I feel that I kind of only just started in the last two years. I feel it, you know, and the industry is changing so quickly. There's more films coming out. There's more TV shows coming out and it's a different platform.

9:59There's AI, which was, of course, a big discussion and also on this song that you worked on now and then. Yes. You know, you could talk about it for hours and fundamentally, with the arts and AI, I personally think you've got to embrace it. It's not going to go anywhere. And it's simply just basing its creation on the past. So I don't feel threatened by that. I wanted to touch on something you mentioned before about Hans Zimmer. I got the chance to speak to him at the Bond 25, as they call it, the premiere. And I spoke to him about his creations for Dune at the time. And he said to me, this man went out to the desert to feel the desert and to get to know it before he composed everything for it.

10:53I'm like, you are incredible. Do you do anything like that in order to try to get in touch with... I dressed up as a spy. do you think you'd make a good spy no no far from it i'd my i'd loose lips sink shit um no i um you know i i think look i i learned so much from hands uh about not not about music about filmmaking and storytelling and I saw how our job is to try to relate to to what is happening and you've got to kind of try to help the audience connect fundamentally you need to connect to this character so that even if they're not talking that music can help tell the audience how they're feeling and um i think you know last last year i did a movie called gran turismo i don't have a driving license so my inspiration levels were not very we're not very high for that but but something like that you you're trying to understand the emotional connection of a boy that basically had a dream to become a professional racer and was playing video games it's a you know it's something that you can't really try to experience we have to we have to try to understand the emotions and and tell a story that way and i think that um composers the majority of composers are fundamentally kind of socially inept i think we're locked in dark rooms seven days a week you're kind of left to your own devices you know it's not like being on a set with these people around and things you've got a job and it's just to try to write and you're locked away for months and you know we're working on films for a year you know we yeah matthew and i started on this three and a half years ago obviously i have been on holiday a couple of times in those three and a half years but successful composers i think are those that embrace it and try to kind of channel what the inspiration is and and and hands is master of it there was always going to be a debate between Hans Zimmer and John Williams but I think it's obviously the geniuses Now looking ahead you've got a lot of projects on as well What can we expect?

13:24And also I want to talk a little bit about Mission Impossible if I may because when you go into a project like that you've done several you're going to do another one how do you go off the back of kind of an original one and put your own spin on it what is that process like? I've done quite a few franchises and I think that you've got to always think about the audience. I think what happens is that it hits you and you're really intimidated by it because you've got something that's so iconic. I think that's a hard job. Somebody has given you the most recognisable theme. So the hard work is done in one respect and then you've just got to then focus on what does the audience want.

14:11When do you use it? when do you want to feel good inside and kind of be able to hum it? And I think the first time I had to use something was on Terminator. And again, that was an iconic theme. And you just, you have to sometimes just try to imagine, being in that cinema and hearing that piece of music, how do you use it to try to give a feeling to it? So I think you struggle because you know that it means something to people. and especially with the Mission franchise, you've had the best composers on the planet have done it. So you're stuffed. Where do you go with something like that? So I think you just have to kind of put that aside and just focus on the moment in time with it.

15:01And so what do you have got? You have no option. I guess you don't. You wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. The daunting task of it would just be over you. Yeah. What do you have coming up then? So working on another iconic theme, Beverly Hills Cop, I think it was probably the first thing I learnt to play on the piano. I just remember the corridor at school and a badly tuned piano. Everybody, da, da, da, da, da, da. So being able to use these themes, it's a privilege to be able to touch them and legitimately use it. I'm doing the same with Bad Boys, which is another iconic franchise. so doing that and then getting to work with Matthew on another project is going to be very exciting.

15:47My son actually said to me when are you going to do a film where you write your own themes and I thought he was quite true That's going to be the hard one the iconic Well that's the thing, you kind of take it for granted how difficult it is to write a memorable theme But that's why I've been last year trying to choose other interesting smaller projects. That's been a fun process.

16:26That was Lorne Balfe, the composer of the Argyle score and the man behind the music to the movie, which is in cinemas now. The Monocle Weekly was edited by Dominic Gozo. I'm Laura Kramer. Thank you for listening.