Composer Daniel Pemberton Talks His Score for Guy Ritchie’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.

Working across a wide range of musical mediums, Ivor Novello Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton has embraced everything from large scale orchestral and choral works to innovative electronic sound design, live salsa bands to post-rock guitar line-ups.

From THE COUNSELOR, THE AWAKENING and the upcoming STEVE JOBS film, to name a few, Pemberton has delivered another eclectic score – this time Guy Ritchie’s latest movie THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., in theatres Friday, August 14.

Fans of the TV show are familiar with the theme music from composer Jerry Goldsmith, with additional music for the various seasons provided by Morton Stevens, Walter Scharf, Lalo Schifrin, Gerald Fried, Robert Drasnin and Nelson Riddle.

Now comes the film version and a 5-star, international score that exudes the 1960’s as if it was pulled from a time vault. You’re right into the film from the first musical note and drum beat.

Recently the composer and I spoke about his affection for spy movies and on being chosen by Guy Ritchie to take on the music for THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.

WAMG: Guy Ritchie said of your MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. music, “The score was a very important, fundamental part of the film.” When were you brought onto the project and what did he tell you he was looking for?

Daniel Pemberton: Right from the start. I had a meeting with Guy and he asked me if I wanted to do it. I try to get involved in films as early as possible, that way you write a better, more unique score. I was involved as they edited and we worked in tandem. Guy has an amazing editor James Herbert who had some important musical ideas. I worked with them all the way through the process and we would add my music to the film in different ways.

We would do that 4 or 5 different takes. James is great. He’d say, “We’ve got the scene. Let’s try it a different way.” They’d always be pushing you to try different music that was the most surprising and exciting ones that would end up in the movie.

WAMG: It doesn’t sound like something from today – it’s as if you’re watching and listening to a score set in the 60’s from one of the composers of the time – like Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein or Jerry Goldsmith.

DP: I love 1960’s spy scores. It’s probably my favorite movie genres and I grew up with that. I spent decades absorbing every great spy score. This world wasn’t new to me. I didn’t have to do the research as it was already running through my blood.

I wanted to make it feel it was of the time and a 1960’s spy score. I wanted every one of the tracks on UNCLE to feel like the tracks on those spy scores.

WAMG: Was it a conscious decision to stay away from using the Goldsmith/ Lalo Schifrin themes from the TV show?

DP: Guy wanted a very different take on the film’s theme. He had a vision on how he wanted the film to look and sound, that you have to respect, and we had it in there for a while, but it didn’t feel right.

It wasn’t like it didn’t go with the tone of the film, Guy just wanted a new take on the music. In the same way when Christopher Nolan did BATMAN, he didn’t use the Nelson Riddle TV theme – although that would be quite funny.

But I was quite keen on getting THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. in there somewhere. There is a short little musical cameo of the TV theme that’s in there. It’s in the scene where Napoleon Solo is changing the radio channels in the car and he hears it for a second, dismisses it and keeps changing the channels. Once again the film’s editor, James Herbert, while doing the sound mixing, quickly edited it in the scene.

WAMG: The soundtrack is filled with some fabulous tracks of a Cold War, espionage score.  “Escape From East Berlin,” “The Vinciguerra Affair“ and “Bugs, Beats and Bowties” to name a few. It’s what you’d expect in this type of exotic film. What did you use to get a bold, 60’s type sound?

DP: Another great thing about scores from that era, everyone was using crazy instruments. I love using crazy instruments because it gives you something new and something you haven’t heard before.

Guy loves anything that’s unexpected and unusual. There’s an amazing flute player, Dave Heath, who we used a lot. He plays a lot of the crazy sounds you hear in the “East Berlin” track.

We’ve got a lot of percussion, organs and a Marxophone, which is a bit like a zither and a cymbalom which is like a giant zither, famously used by John Barry on THE IPCRESS FILE. It gave it a classic, Cold War sound.

We’ve got vintage guitars and genuine old 1960’s harpsichords. We had two harpsichords – an old classical one and a 60’s boxy one. The classical one had this beautiful range, but didn’t have the punch or the attitude that the 60’s one did and it had such a great sound to it, so we used more of that. That harpsichord sounded brilliant. We also put it through an old 60’s mixer which compressed everything a bit more heavily.

WAMG: The percussion section on “The Drums of War” is just insanely great.

DP: That was the result of a crazy evening in the edit suite. Everyone was pleased with the cue, but felt like we’d heard that before. Everyone on this film loves mad percussion and wanted mad bongos, so it was 7 or 8 in the evening and they tell me there will be a first screening the next day and to just throw in some big percussion. I went home and worked all through the night until 3 in the morning and pretty much what I wrote that evening is in the film now. It’s all the different drums playing the different tempos together as they’re going in and out of time.

WAMG: What’s going on in the “Take You Down” track? Is it Vocals run through a mixer or purely instruments?

DP: That’s vocals run through really heavy distortion. I really enjoy that track and it was great to write crazy bold cues. My favorite kinds of movies are ones where you don’t know what’s going to happen – where you’re ready for a surprise. And when it’s accompanied by crazy music, you go, whoa what’s that?! It’s a great moment when it enters the movie and it was a really fun track to do. We did that cue with two drummers playing at the same time and that’s why it sounds so big – we wrote each drummers part full out and had them play it together at Abbey Road and it sound huge.

It’s very much like the “Drums of War” track where you have this polyrhythmic music to create these crazy sounds.. It’s chaotic in the middle and eventually comes back together at the end. It’s very complicated to do but sounds very cool.

WAMG: The songs mixed throughout are fantastic! Nina Simone, Louis Prima, Tom Zé and Valdez – you could almost swear the film was made 50 years ago. The selection of these songs just makes the soundtrack even more fun to listen to.

DP: I’m a massive soundtrack album geek and anytime I put a soundtrack out, I’ve gone over every single detail down to the pauses between each track.  Those songs are a big part of the film and they had to be on the album. “Jimmy, Renda se” by Tom Zé and Valdez was one of the first songs we added and Guy loves that song – he hadn’t heard it before. None of the songs feel out of place alongside the score.

WAMG: During the action sequences and transitions, there are kaleidoscope split-screens, where the score is very important. How did you approach these?

DP: There’s a scene where the screen is starkly divided into eight parts, along with these cutting sounds effects, and I wrote in the bongos cues, so as the screens divides, you hear the bongo player’s music as an added sound. We spent a lot of time trying to get details like that spot on so it feels really cool.

WAMG: You previously worked with Ridley Scott on THE COUNSELOR, which was a very modern score. Depending on the genre, how much do you like to experiment and come up with new sounds for your scores?

DP: Every film I do, I want to come up with a unique sound for that world. When I get hired, people want my take on the story and on the world, and I often come up with different ideas very early on and usually they’re not like the film.

I did another project with Ridley called “The Vatican” where I used Italian choirs with organs and hip-hop breaks. I love coming up with different ideas of how to approach a film and I often start with the main cue because there are so many different ways to tell a story. I want it to be unique and its way more work and way more grief, but when you get it right it’s exciting because when I go to see a movie, I want to think anything could happen here – not just two hours of an obvious sound.

© 2015 Universal Studios. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

WAMG: Your next score is for Danny Boyle’s STEVE JOBS and it was just announced that the movie will close the 59th BFI London Film Festival. You said you like your scores to be unique, so will it have a melodic motif with a technological sound like a computer or from the world of Steve Jobs?

DP: I’m not telling. (Laughs) We record that this week at Abbey Road and we’re doing some very different chords and cues than on any previous film. The only thing I’m allowed to say is that the Apple slogan from 1998, “Think Different,” has a big part.

Follow Daniel Pemberton on Twitter: twitter.com/DANIELPEMBERTON

From WaterTower Music, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. soundtrack is available to order at iTunes and Amazon. The track list is below.

1. “Compared To What” – Roberta Flack
2. Out Of The Garage
3. His Name Is Napoleon Solo
4. Escape From East Berlin
5. “Jimmy, Renda se” – Tom Zé and Valdez
6. Mission: Rome
7. The Vinciguerra Affair
8. Bugs, Beats and Bowties
9. “Cry To Me” – Solomon Burke
10. “Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days” – Louis Prima
11. Signori Toileto Italiano
12. Breaking In (Searching The Factory)
13. Breaking Out (The Cowboy Escapes)
14. “Che Vuole Questa Musica Stasera” – Peppino Gagliardi
15. Into The Lair (Betrayal Part I)
16. Laced Drinks (Betrayal Part II)
17. “Il Mio Regno” – Luigi Tenco
18. Circular Story
19. The Drums Of War
20. Take You Down
21. We Have Location
22. A Last Drink
23. “Take Care Of Business” – Nina Simone
24. The Unfinished Kiss

Henry Cavill stars as Napoleon Solo opposite Armie Hammer as Illya Kuryakin in director Guy Ritchie’s action adventure THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., a fresh take on the hugely popular 1960s television series. Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, it centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin who are forced to put aside longstanding hostilities and team up on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology.

The duo’s only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization, and they must race against time to find him and prevent a worldwide catastrophe.

The film also stars Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki, with Jared Harris and Hugh Grant.

Visit the film’s website: manfromuncle.com

Photos: © 2015 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. AND RATPAC-DUNE ENTERTAINMENT LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED