Yes,
The man who brought the world the classic horror movie “Halloween” is taking center stage playing a synthesizer these days. Fans of John Carpenter can catch the iconic film director on his music tour. He'll perform many of his movie themes as well as new material.
“My career has been spent behind the camera,” Carpenter says. “Now I'm out front. I'm loving it.”
The director, 68, is calling from his home in the Hollywood Hills. “In my mind, it's the only place in the world to live,” he says with a laugh.
A longtime musician who wrote the soundtracks for many of his films, Carpenter is touring behind his new album, “Lost Themes II,” the follow-up to his 2015 record “Lost Themes.” Released on the indie label Sacred Bones Records, the album features the director on synthesizer. He's accompanied by his son Cody Carpenter and his godson Daniel Davies (son of the Kinks' Dave Davies).
“It's a six-piece band,” Carpenter says about his touring unit. “There's my son, my godson and myself. The rhythm section is essentially Tenacious D's band. They're unbelievably great musicians. The concert is a career retrospective. Seventy-five percent of the show is old movie themes from my films. Twenty-five percent is new stuff.”
The tour has taken Carpenter and crew to Europe and the West Coast, with more dates ahead in Switzerland and the East Coast. He says playing music onstage is a welcome break from his day job.
“This is much more fun than the movies,” he says. “I get immediate feedback from the audience. Filmmaking is a lot of stress. If you take your job seriously, you're trying to please everybody, which you can't do. In the end, you just have to do the best you can, but the stress is unbelievable. But now, playing music is sensational. I get to have another career in my life for a little while. I hope it keeps up. I'm having a great time.”
The tour is a rare chance for fans of Carpenter's celluloid career to catch him in musical mode. His film history includes “Escape from New York,” “The Fog” and “Assault on Precinct 13.” In particular, “Halloween” set a modern horror standard. The 1978 slasher film introduced the iconic character Michael Myers, the wordless psycho-killer in an eerie mask who terrorized the teenagers of fictional Haddonfield, Ill. The movie also marked the feature film debut of Jamie Lee Curtis. Produced on a shoestring budget of $300,000, the film went on to gross millions and set a benchmark for indie horror.
Carpenter wrote and played the film's theme, a piece of music that has become as ominous and memorable as John Williams' theme for Steven Spielberg's “Jaws.” To find the right instruments for the “Halloween” soundtrack, Carpenter worked with a University of Southern California professor who taught electronic music and had a room full of synthesizers. The sound Carpenter achieved worked perfectly with the film's taut and streamlined direction.
“It was a minimalistic horror movie so it needed a minimalistic score,” he says. “This was a piece of music that I learned from my father when I was about 13 years old. He taught me 5/4 time on the bongos and I repeated that over and over until I learned it. Then I began playing it on the piano. When I made ‘Halloween,' it seemed like a perfect piece of music. It's a little round that works its way into your mind. I had three days to do the music, which was a luxury for me.”
Carpenter went on to write a number of scores and themes. Putting music to film is always the last step in the process for him.
“Movie first,” he says. “Then cut the movie so the story is told. Then sit down and score the movie. The music depends on what the movie needs.”
Although he's a man known for creating truly scary moments on screen, he admits that it's not easy to articulate exactly what makes something frightening. “There are no rules,” he says. “Everything is about the story. There you have the art of movies.”
His artistic influences run wide and deep. Carpenter grew up in a musical household in Bowling Green, Ky. His father was a musician and music professor. The aspiring filmmaker loved everything from orchestras to rock 'n' roll bands.
He was smitten by the work of many of Hollywood's greatest composers, including the Academy Award-winning Bernard Herrmann, a titan of radio, television and film who worked closely with Alfred Hitchcock. Another idol was Dimitri Tiomkin, an Oscar-winning composer and conductor whose memorable work graced the classic movie “High Noon.”
Carpenter soaked it all up. “The electronic scores started to creep in,” he recalls. “The first electronic score was done in 1956 for ‘Forbidden Planet.' I saw it and went nuts for both the music and the movie. Groups like Tangerine Dream also influenced me.”
Although he's been long acclaimed as an American original, his career hasn't always been easy. Working in the horror genre, he often didn't get respect in serious film circles.
“You're always seen as kind of a reprobate if you direct horror movies,” he says. “It's seen as a terrible thing to do — ‘Why would you make such horrible things?' After I made ‘Halloween,' I had a reputation of ‘Here's the guy who punishes sexually active girls.' That was hilarious. Whatever.”
Carpenter has straightforward advice for those who hope to follow in his footsteps.
“You have to have perseverance,” he says. “You have to keep working and keep telling stories visually. It's a really hard industry to break into, but you can't give up if that's what you want. You have to go for it.”
As for his unfolding second life as a touring musician, Carpenter is joyfully looking forward to playing for his fans in a live setting. “We are loud and we rock out,” he laughs. “I just want to make that clear. Some people don't think us old-timers can rock out, but we can.”
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