It just chocked me to know, while reading "The Battle of Brazil", that Ridley Scott himself allowed Universal president Sid Sheinberg to dump Jerry score in favor of that dreadful Tangerine Dream one, among other "improvements" (sic).

In Scott's words: "In a way, I was trying to do that with Legend, only for adults. I wanted them to experience the same kind of awe kids get with the Disney films. We made it and I think there's a lot of great work in it. Brilliant costumes and set design. And [Goldsmith] did a relly good score. But the combination of the score and what I'd done was apparently too sweet. It had a very bad preview."

Can you believe it? It's embarrassing to know Scott was really convinced by tight-ass studio executives that his movie sucked because of Jerry's magic orchestral score. "It won't appeal to 12 year old moviegoers", Sheinberg explained.
I shouldn't be so shocked about that, since Scott's new soul mate "composer" is... well, we know who... And indeed mindless teenager moviegoers seems to love it!!

Far for being a great movie, the original cut of "Legend" has almost nothing to do with the ridiculous butchered American release, which I saw on VCR years later. Jerry's score makes a whole world of difference. In fact it's the only thing which makes the movie to get some sense trough all the confusing editing and shallow characters.

I've seen the Japanese laserdisc of LEGEND, back in the summer of 1989. It's somewhat more coherent than the American/Tangerine Dream version, but still not a great movie. I was distressed by the small quotes from the PSYCHO II score (a temp-track legacy), and felt the movie in general wasn't really as good as it should have been. (Goldsmith said that it was the producers, not Ridley Scott, who approached him to score LEGEND -- Scott hadn't even dreamed Goldsmith would want to talk to him again after ALIEN, but Goldsmith loved the original William Hjortsberg script, then called LEGEND OF DARKNESS, and signed to do the job on that basis. And, he said, Scott was much more approachable and communicative on LEGEND -- for all the good it did them.)

Ridley Scott felt miserable about what happened to Goldsmith's score, and told a reporter that he wanted to work with Goldsmith again and hoped that the composer would "forgive" him. Told of this, Goldsmith snapped back, "No, I don't forgive him. Why should I forgive him?"

While I enjoyed the original film, I guess I was only 8 or 9 when I saw it. Tangerine Dream's music did stand out to me, though those were my "early" years in film music and of course, appealed to me only for the reasons Ridley Scott and the producers aimed for it to.

Goldsmith's score is far superior (which is actually an understatement). Lord of the Rings would benefit from such a score. Let's keep our fingers crossed for that DVD release!

Jeron

quote:

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Confirmation has come, if somewhat bliquely, that the long-rumored "director's cut" of LEGEND featuring Jerry Goldsmith's score is finally close to being a reality.

Reps at Universal have confirmed this.

What kind of film a longer LEGEND will turn out to be is anyone's guess.

I think there should be a campaign to put Jerry's score on a music only track.

We'll see.

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(I know he wouldn't mind me putting this up, so...)

As of know, he didn't know of a set release date, but probably before the end of the year.

Goldsmith's score is warm, emotional, and sweeping in scope. It truly does have a "Disney" sense of wonder about it. It also plays directly to the characters in a really wonderful way. LEGEND's characters were stock "types" and Goldsmith was able to communicate their "feelings" to the audience in exactly the way well-written score should.

Tangerine Dream's approach was to play AGAINST emotion and evoke the strange and otherworldly aspects of the film. They went after atmosphere and mystery and got it, big time. I guess you could say they scored the "world" of LEGEND and Goldsmith scored the people who lived there.

Indeed "Legend" is probably Dream's finest work to date. But still wrong.
As Paul Andrew MacLean well pointed on the liner notes of the Silva Screen gorgeous release of Jerry's complete score:

"... The Dream's style is strongly rooted in Eastern traditions, while LEGEND's was rooted in Western lore of Britain and northern Europe. Their music feels stylistically out of place, such as the sampled sitar playing a quasi-pentatonic melody, while the more gritty, rock-styled cues clash with the delicate, faerie-tale quality of the film, as well as affecting the credibility of Tom Cruise's performance (the slick, RISKY BUSINESS-style of certain cues clashing with Cruise's playing a kinder, gentler, kind of teenager)."

However, I still think most of the problems of the film remain. It is easier, however, to ignore them given that the music carries the film so well (yes, I said the music carries the film).

Apparently, however, even the European release of the film is trunucated, with several portions (most noticably one of the score's stand-out moments, the "Fairy Dance") being cut out of the film in a most ham-fisted manner.

I've seen the American release with Tangerine Dream's score, and I thought it contributed effectively in spots from what I remember (I haven't seen it in some time, and really have no wish to see it anytime soon).

Earlier this year, a friend of mine graciously loaned me his copy of the Japanese version that contained Goldsmith's score (he's a big fan of Goldsmith). This gave me the oppotunity to reassess Goldsmith's work in the context of the film, and also to see which score worked better. Like I said, I really had no problems with Tangerine Dreams work in the film, but Goldsmith's score seemed to be much more intricately associated with the fairy-tale world of LEGEND, being more unpretentious and complimentary. To some extent, this was exactly what Tangerine Dream did, but less successfully.

However, as time went on, I gave it a few more listens here and there, each time picking up new elements that I really enjoyed. Eventually, I found myself humming the Unicorn motif to myself, or the "My True Love's Eyes" theme. I began to listen to it all the time. Now it is one of the MiniDiscs I take with me everywhere.

One of my favorite motifs is the heroic theme that Goldsmith wrote, not so much for the melodic line but for the orchestration, with the French horn quoting the theme with the wrenching strings underneath.

1) The European version with Goldsmith's score.
Sadly, the European version - while it is longer than the American one - is just as botched up. Too many people who messed around with this thing, I guess. Goldsmith's music is there, but big chunks of it are not used the way Goldsmith intended it.

2) The American version with Tangerine Dreams' score. The shortest version of the movie, and even more butchered than the European version. However, I think the music by Tangerine Dream works quite well the way it is. It simply has the unfortunate faith to be be constantly compared to what may well be one of the most famous ever rejected scores by a "legendary" composer.

3) An American network version of the movie. Now this one was the worst of all. It's basically the American version with parts of the European version edited back in to make it longer. As a result, that version has original music from Tangerine Dream and Jerry Goldsmith as well as the temp track chunks of PSYCHO II. Yuck... what a melange of music that one has... even musically less aware viewers probably note the stylistic breaks in this version.

Briefly, whereas Goldsmith’s work as a ‘film score’ is okay, I much prefer Tangerine Dream’s synthesizer-heavy ‘new age-ish’ musical accompaniment in the MOVIE. Having said that, I believe Goldsmith’s work on LEGEND to work much more successfully as ‘album’ music away from the movie (as far as movie music can succeed away from its intended medium) than Tangerine Dream’s admittedly effective scoring. This is one of those cases of good MUSIC not necessarily equating to good SCORING (and vice versa)…..though as I have said, I believe both Goldsmith’s and Tangerine Dream’s LEGEND work to be meritorious (though not classic) as film score, and from a purely musical standpoint….indeed, it just goes to show YET AGAIN, that the poorest of movies can ‘inspire’ musical scores of an acceptable quality.

As to Goldsmith’s LEGEND, some have described it as this composer’s ‘Magnum opus’, whereas others have been rather less impressed by the romantic/impressionist fusion that Goldsmith provided. Certainly Goldsmith’s work is on a grand scale….not only does he provide orchestra, choir, solo voice, choreographed sequences and electronics in abundance, there is also a vast array of thematic material….some of it inspired, some of it extremely derivative of Ravel and Debussy (to name but two)….but that’s no problem, GOOD ‘FILM’ MUSIC IS GOOD ‘FILM’ MUSIC, wherever it comes from. In addition, of all of Goldsmith’s film-scores, his work on LEGEND one would think to be an unlikely candidate for rejection (if only partial)….not that Goldsmith is particularly prone to rejection.

Goldsmith’s LEGEND album is definitely worth a listen….in fact, many listens. This is one of the few soundtrack albums in existence, in my opinion, that is sufficiently ‘deep’ to provide good reason alone for repeated listenings.

Bye the bye, I would draw a strong parallel between Goldsmith's score to Legend and Star Trek: TMP...both are extremely top heavy constructs which require more than a casual hearing. Because the palette Goldsmith draws from is so thick with colour and virtuousity, he ultimately defies the comfortable standards of linearity we generally associate with a soundtrack recording. This may, to some degree, explain the preference many have toward his Secret of NIMH.

Anyway, I don't see many similarities between "Legend" and "Secret of NIMH", except that both are outstanding scores for fantasy movies.

In fact, while "NIMH" is 100% pure underscore, relying much more on textures and independent motifs for each scene, "LEGEND" carries the movie all the way, being an active part of it - reinforced by the fact that the characters even sing togheter with the music, becoming the score a new character in the movie, being sometimes the only thing that makes you understand what's going on (like when the Unicorn's forgiving Cruise's character).

Of course, for those who never saw the European version with Jerry music this probably won't make any sense.
But, along with Tim Curry impressive performance and Alex Thompson breathtaking cinematography, Goldsmith's score is among the highlights of the history of cinema.