Angelo Badalamenti (1937-2022)
Artwork © Jonathan Pérez 2022
NOTE: The following article contains SPOILERS for the entirety of Twin Peaks
Angelo Badalamenti died on December 11, 2022. The composer who became justifiably famous for creating perhaps the single most iconic television theme of all time passed at 85, in a way I think everyone would want to go—of natural causes, at home, surrounded by family. David Lynch, Badalamenti’s most famous collaborator, succinctly expressed the sentiments of the Twin Peaks fandom when he said solemnly, “No music today.”
Creating a podcast and website celebrating a television program whose peak (if you’ll pardon the pun) in popularity was over 30 years ago means you have resigned yourself to some losses. Long ago, Frank Silva and Jack Nance were lost, Don S. Davis a few years after that, and then when Lynch and co filmed the third season of Twin Peaks a good chunk of the narrative and fan speculation centered on how long dead actors would reprise crucial roles or how actors who passed during production—Miguel Ferrer, Warren Frost and especially Catherine Coulson would be incorporated into the new storylines. Since production wrapped, the Twin Peaks family has lost several members, including Peggy Lipton, Harry Dean Stanton, Walter Olkewicz, Lenny Von Dohlen, and very recently, Al Strobel. Perhaps no two deaths have had quite the impact as have the passings of Lynch’s two musical collaborators—Julee Cruise (on June 9th, 2022) and Badalamenti. (Why don’t you give our podcast dedicated to Badalamenti a listen?)
One of the biggest revelations I discovered when reading Clare Nina Norelli’s 33 1/3 entry on Badalamenti’s Soundtrack from Twin Peaks is that aside from the partnership between Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost, the first creative Lynch chose to enlist in bringing Twin Peaks to life was Badalamenti. This is a backwards way of working on a film or television project, where the score is usually one of the last things to be completed. Traditionally, the composer sees a (more or less) locked version of the film and they create soundscapes inspired by the images they are seeing. In an extreme (though not uncommon) example of a more traditional director/composer collaboration, James Cameron, when he commissioned the late James Horner to score his 1986 blockbuster Aliens, gave the composer a compressed schedule of three weeks to compose the score. This was half of the usual six-week time frame. The release date for Aliens was locked in place by the studio, filming was behind, and this left Horner with a nearly impossible deadline. Horner and his orchestra were pulling all-nighters watching incomplete footage while creating the music for the film. Wha is the first person David Lynch reaches out to when he gets the news he is creating a television show? Badalamenti, his composer from another 1986 film, Blue Velvet.
A YouTube clip uploaded on April 24, 2019, by user Joseph (@joeyasaperson) titled “Angelo Badalamenti explains how he wrote Laura Palmer’s theme” has the maestro detail his initial collaboration with Lynch on Twin Peaks. The clip is showing Badalamenti sitting at a Fender Rhodes keyboard, which looks to be in his office. Badalamenti notes the “beat up” Rhodes is the very keyboard used to compose the music of Twin Peaks. He mentions they set up a tape recorder and pressed play (incredibly wise of him, part of the astonishing nature of this clip is being like “Man, Badalamenti has some excellent recall” and then I realized, oh, he saved the tape). Lynch sits immediately to Badalamenti’s right, Badalamenti asks Lynch to describe what he sees, and Lynch whispers details to him about being in a dark woods, feeling a soft wind, hearing owl sounds, seeing the moon, sycamore trees are swaying. This is incredible for a couple of reasons. One—it shows how deeply ingrained this imagery was for David Lynch, who at one point must have cooked all of this up in a phantasmagoric dream. But he is describing the transitional sequences often seen in the first season of Twin Peaks—trees gently swaying, owls, dark woods. And the sycamore trees really don’t become crucial until late in the second season. It just reveals to me how much Lynch already knew where he wanted this story to go before any scripts were written, actors cast, scenes shot, or music composed.
The second astonishing thing is that Badalamenti, who is basically just plunking away at some notes in the same way an artist sketches out ideas with a pencil nails the “Dark Introduction” (as Norelli calls the opening to “Laura Palmer’s Theme”) after a simple bit of direction from Lynch: “Slower…oh yes, that’s a nice tempo”. Lynch then describes Laura Palmer as lonely and sad—and yes, he uses her full name, not just “a girl”. Badalamenti knows to segue the tune from a place of darkness to one that is rising with light, astonishing Lynch, who can envision Laura emerging from the woods and walking toward the camera. Lynch tells Badalamenti to reach a climax, and as the maestro hits the high crescendo of the song, Lynch responds “Oh, you’re tearing out my heart”. As Badalamenti plays, Lynch says, “and now she is falling…keep falling…keep falling.” (And note, the word used here is “falling”, which would become the title of the version of the Twin Peaks theme set to Julee Cruise’s vocals.) Badalamenti returns to the “Dark Introduction” as Lynch describes Laura returning to the woods. Throughout the segment, Badalamenti often closes his eyes, as I imagine he and Lynch both did while working out “Laura Palmer’s Theme”. As he finishes playing Badalamenti recalls Lynch giving him a big hug and telling him “That’s Twin Peaks!” Badalamenti, obviously pleased, but under the assumption that this is a first draft, tells Lynch he will get to work on it, and Lynch stops him, saying “Angelo, don’t do a thing, don’t change a note. I see Twin Peaks.”
The high-pressure cooker James Horner found himself in with Aliens and the nurtured collaboration Angelo Badalamenti had with Twin Peaks prove there is no right way to create an iconic, instantly classic film score. It does give an incredible understanding of how David Lynch’s creative genius operates. For one, it places emphasis on mood and tone over plot. This is evident in nearly every one of Lynch’s films, and unsurprisingly his least successful film—Dune (1984)—is the one most dependent on pre-existing narratives. Crucially, what can also be gleaned from Badalamenti’s anecdote is that Lynch thrives with collaborators with whom he can establish an intimate creative partnership. If I was a composer I don’t know if I would be comfortable with the person who commissioned my work literally sitting at my side and whispering instructions in my ear. But between Lynch and Badalamenti, this process works.
In the many behind-the-scenes features for Twin Peaks, Lynch is actively seen as a co-collaborator in so many aspects of moviemaking. Lynch is building sets and props, helping to coordinate stunts, applying make-up—and in each aspect this is shown to be a collaborative process (if ultimately in service to Lynch’s visions). I think this is also reflective in Lynch’s casting decisions, wherein he looks at a head shot and then sits down and has a conversation with the actor instead of running lines or having a formal audition. Again, he is looking for those personal, intimate connections.
***
I also wanted to touch on two other Badalamenti points. First, while we devoted the bulk of our podcast coverage to Soundtrack from Twin Peaks and the accompanying 33 1/3 volume, we didn’t really touch on the other pieces of score Badalamenti wrote for the whole of Twin Peaks. Anyone who has watched the original run of Twin Peaks knows that the soundtrack is far more extensive than on the thirteen tracks first released on the 1990 album. In 2007, a volume of Badalamenti’s score was released to accompany a DVD release of the series. Titled Twin Peaks: Season 2 Music and More, the score shows just how varied and very weird Badalamenti reached. The collection is probably most notable for including “Just You” the love-it or hate-it ballad sung by James, Donna and Maddie (James Marshall, Lara Flynn Boyle, Sheryl Lee). But it also showcases a lot of the upbeat numbers that would serve as the “jukebox” sounds of the RR Diner “High School Swing”, “Hook Rug Dance” and swinging into the sultry numbers that would accompany James in his erotic misadventures “Night Bells”. In the opinion of this writer the first half of the second season contains some of the most emotional and dramatic moments, and one listen can easily evoke the images of Season 2. I particularly like the synthesizer sounds in “Harold’s Theme”. It’s moody, mysterious and given the fate of poor Harold, ultimately tragic.
1992’s soundtrack from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me shows another sonic leap from Badalamenti. Like the Season 2 collection, the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack highlights two killer vocal performances—Julee Cruise’s “Questions in a World of Blue” and Jimmy Scott’s “Sycamore Trees”. The music Badalamenti composed for the film starts kind of low and jazzy, and the tracks as played on the album until about halfway through, when “The Pink Room” hits with an incredible dissonant energy. This is the song played in the nightclub Laura and Donna visit, where the music is so loud the scene used subtitles for the dialogue. It’s one of the best pieces of music Badalamenti wrote for the project, and it conveys the dualities of terror and seduction both Laura and Donna experience. The track is followed by “The Black Dog Runs At Night”, which is built upon a spoken word sample. Badalamenti wasn’t afraid to get weird.
From the third season, I will highlight the track “The Fireman” which given the possibly extraterrestrial/supernatural origins of that character is appropriately spacey and spooky. This piece is probably best recognized in the indelible, instantly classic “Part 8/Gotta Light” as the The Fireman and Senorita Dido create the golden orb with Laura Palmer’s face. What makes this piece of score unique to me is the angelic synths could double as the sound effect the Laura orb is creating. In an episode that is already musically memorable for including (The) Nine Inch Nails’ “She’s Gone Away” and Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima”, “The Fireman” is another example of the alchemical relationship between sound and image Badalamenti and Lynch created.
***
Not to leave everyone with a disquieting notion, but when I heard the news of Badalamenti’s passing, I selfishly thought “There goes any chance at a Season 4.” Given the ambiguous nature of the endings in Twin Peaks, speculating on if there will ever be new content basically comes with the territory amongst the fandoms. And sure, there have been many of Lynch’s collaborators who have passed since the original series ended in 1991. But that did not seem to stop Lynch from making Frank Silva, Don S. Davis, and Jack Nance from having small but crucial roles in the third season. There are also many people still alive and thriving. Many of the cast members have careers that are still very much active and vital. Lynch has also shown a propensity to coax actors out of retirement to reprise their roles. But given the intimate collaboration between Lynch and Badalamenti (not to mention the passing of Julee Cruise), and how crucial their partnership was to unlocking Lynch’s dream of Twin Peaks, for the first time in my fandom I am not sure there is a will to make any more Twin Peaks.
As I mentioned at the outset, Lynch said: “No music today”. If Twin Peaks would continue, would Lynch make it without Badalamenti? Given the iconic nature of “Falling” and “Laura Palmer’s Theme”, I’m sure several pieces of the score would be recycled in a potential fourth season, but I do think that Lynch would have wanted something new from Badalamenti, and sadly that will never come to fruition. Perhaps he could reach out to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the Oscar winning composers via Nine Inch Nails. Maybe he would entrust the score to Dean Hurley, whom he closely worked with on sound design? It’s all speculative at this point but one thing is for certain: Angelo Badalamenti cannot be easily replaced or forgotten. His score for Twin Peaks is the music of dreams and nightmares and a recognition of the strange amongst the ordinary. Rest in peace, maestro.
