Note: This article was originally written in December 2021 for the Daily Grindhouse Patreon. However, it was only available behind that paywall for a spell. I really loved this interview and feel it is now worth bringing into the light and re-publishing. I hope you enjoy it.
When perusing Simon Boswell’s extensive resume, it’s easy to get blinded by the range and depth of projects he has been associated with. From his early years as a solo and touring musician to the decades spent as a successful record producer and film composer, there are countless fascinating projects to admire. A highly sought-after talent, the acclaimed British composer has worked with everyone from Dario Argento to Alejandro Jodorowsky, Richard Stanley to Danny Boyle, Clive Barker to Michael Hoffman. Effortlessly versatile and naturally adept at cultivating engaging, effective, and supportive scores, it is easy to understand how Boswell has become one of the most prolific and well-regarded living horror composers. However, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Boswell’s career is that he didn’t intend to be a film composer at all.
Beautifully exhibiting the unpredictable and fortuitous nature of life, it was a casual chance encounter that set Boswell down the long and winding road of film composing. Having subsequently racked up over 100 composing credits, the ease with which Boswell has crafted hours and hours of wonderful music is truly something to behold. Thankfully for fans, Boswell is showing no signs of stopping. In an effort to share even more of his music with the world, Boswell recently released an album of his film music titled “Moans, Groans, and Bones.” In celebration, I recently had the extreme privilege of speaking with Boswell. In this special interview with Simon Boswell, we chatted all about his new album, working with visionary directors, adapting to changes in technology, and so much more.
RR: You recently released a very special album called “Moans, Groans, and Bones.” Tell us a little bit about it and what inspired you to create it.
Simon Boswell: I’ve been meaning for a long time to start getting around to doing some sort of “Best Of” release, having done so many horror films and genre films over the years. So it suddenly occurred to me, well, Halloween's coming up, so I might as well put one together. And that’s exactly what I did. I’ve just been arranging and going through all the different scores, and it’s a very broad selection of things.
RR: You also included a lot of previously unreleased tracks from some of your scores. Why did you decide to release those now, and what are some of the films they are pulled from?
SB: Well, it's just that I haven't done proper releases of most of them. So I just thought it's an opportune moment to just throw the odd piece in from various ones which I think are from some really good films. And some of them were really good scores from my perspective, but maybe were just kind of weird or a bit unnoticed. One of the main ones would be THE HAUNTING OF RADCLIFFE HOUSE, otherwise known as ALTAR. The film was directed by Nick Willing, with whom I’ve worked on various movies over many years. I’m really pleased with the score I did for that. Ditto for JOHNNY FRANK HARRETT’S LAST WORD, which is a Simon Rumley film. I just thought there isn’t a better time to put this stuff out there and I hope that people enjoy it, really.
RR: It’s a great project that really effectively highlights your range and long-running career as a composer. Speaking of that, I’m actually really curious about how you entered the field.
While your career has always been in music, it wasn’t until you worked on Dario Argento’s PHENOMENA that you entered the film scoring world. How did that opportunity come about, and what did you learn from that first film experience?
SB: At the time, I had been in various bands in the late 70s and early 80s, none of which really particularly took off. I was also at the same time a record producer and was producing some of those bands. It just kind of happened that I was in Italy, and I got into producing various Italian pop singers and singer-songwriters. So, I was spending a lot of time in Rome and recording studios. I think a friend of mine who was sort of looking out for my career as a record producer said, “There’s a party tonight. You must come along.” And, at that party, I met this Italian guy who talked at me really, really fast in broken English with bits of Italian. At that point, you know, my Italian wasn’t so good. It’s much better now. So, I talked to him for about 20 minutes and at the end of it, I turned to my Italian friend Vincent who was there and I said, “I’m not sure, but I think this guy just asked me to do some music for his film. I don’t know who he is.” And he said, “Oh, he’s Dario Argento.” I had never heard of him actually at that point. So, that’s how it came about.
Then, he just kind of threw me into the studio with what remained of Goblin at that time: Fabio Pignatelli and Claudio Simonetti. Goblin seemed to be a bit...I don’t want to be rude about it, but they seemed a bit like Spinal Tap, where they were always splitting up and breaking up and getting back together. [Laughs] So I started off for about a week in the studio with Claudio Simonetti. I had never planned to be a film composer so I had absolutely no idea really what was involved. Nor was I really a fan of film music. It wasn’t like I studied it and listened to it. I had become aware of it really through Ennio Morricone and the spaghetti westerns. That was the stuff when I was a sort of young teenager. I’d hear this stuff and think, “Hey, that’s really weird. It’s got twangy 60s guitar on it, but it’s also got an orchestra, choir, people grunting, and all kinds of stuff.” And that thought stuck in my mind.
But apart from that, I ended up in the studio with Claudio, and we were very different in our musical tastes. He is, was, and remains a kind of a prog-rock kind of person who is really synthesizer and keyboard-based. And I had just come out of, I guess, what was punk rock in the UK and this sort of goth scene where I was producing a few goth bands. So, I was more guitar-oriented and wanted to do some kind of more Gothic-sounding music. That’s really what happened. So, we decided to split up, and I was just given a few cues to do. It was my first experience so, most of the score is by Goblin, by Claudio. But I realized in the process that doing film music is something that you don’t really think about until you get to do it and realize that you can really do anything you want. I mean, it’s so mind-expanding to approach something from a visual perspective.
I remember the first scene that I actually wrote music for was of the young Jennifer Connelly in PHENOMENA being chased down the corridor and falling backward into this sort of pool of gunk and body parts. I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. At this point, I was in a different studio, a studio of my own, and so I made this rather unlistenable collage of sounds. Scraping the plectrum down the bottom string of an electric guitar and just making weird, weird sounds. I asked the producer if he could get ahold of a violin for me, and he said, “Oh, you play the violin?” And I said, “No, I don’t play the violin.” [Laughs] I just wanted to make some more unlistenable sounds.
But when I played this for Dario, I was a bit nervous, you know? This was the first time for me. And, he came in the room and he sat down to listen to this aural collage of nastiness. And then after, he turned to me and said, “It’s beautiful.” So I suddenly realized, you know, “My god. You can do whatever you want for films!” Providing it works, of course, and enhances the experience. So that’s really how it went for the first score.
RR: What an incredible first director to work with, and it’s extra interesting to me as you would go on to further work with so many other directors with similarly strong visual styles.
For example, you’ve worked with directors Lamberto Bava, Richard Stanley, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Clive Barker. How important is that to you as a composer? Do you ever find it challenging or particularly helpful to match your music with these strong visual styles?
SB: That's a very, very good point, and it is hugely important. I mean, I think the composer’s inspiration is the picture, you know? I also take the pace of what I’m doing from the way it’s being edited and the way that the actors are delivering their lines. I always say it’s like a sort of sandwich; the whole film is like a sandwich. Sometimes, the music is just the leaf of lettuce in a sandwich, but at other times, it can be more leading and be a more substantial benefit. But it’s always a collaboration, and the images are the first point of inspiration for me. So, if the film doesn’t look so good, I’m not so inspired. It’s as simple as that, really.
RR: Along those same lines, you’ve also worked on a lot of films with really incredible practical and special effects at different evolutionary stages in technology. In particular, I’m thinking of films like DEMONS 2, HACKERS, and LORD OF ILLUSIONS. Has the evolution of special effects technology affected how you score at all? How difficult is it to score scenes that are in flux with gaping visual effects holes?
SB: Yeah, and that’s another very good point. Obviously, visual effects have changed a lot. But mainly in these early films that I was doing, I could actually see the effects that they were doing. I mean, they were literal physical effects that they were filming. Sergio Stivaletti especially was doing amazing stuff at that time with the DEMONS films. And, as it developed and the CGI came in, I began to have to do films where the effects weren’t ready when I was actually scoring the film. I’d just be staring at a blue or green screen. The main one that this happened on was LORD OF ILLUSIONS, the Clive Barker film. I had to keep ringing up Clive and asking him, “What’s happening in this scene? I have no idea!” [Laughs]
I think it has become harder for composers the more that the technology has developed. Of course, it’s a big help for the actual writing and makes it easier to make the films themselves, but the post-production process is very different. You’re often left waiting, and there are 10 seconds of some blank green screen where I don’t know what’s going on. It’s a really interesting thing. I mean, everything has developed over the course of the 30+ years that I’ve been doing it. So, the job is still the same, but the way that they approach music...I would like to get back to how the Italians did it in the 80s when I first started.
A lot of people think I just sat in Italy doing these things, but PHENOMENA, the first film I did, was the only Italian film where I wrote the music in Italy. I used to go over there and sit with the director and the editor in the cutting room, which, of course, was on analog 35mm tape on an old Moviola. And, they used to watch the picture on an old screen about four inches by three inches, you know, a tiny, tiny little thing. And I would go back there with the music on ¼ inch tape, and they’d transfer it onto magnetic tape and put it on the Moviola. They had such a different way of approaching it.
I would put my piece of music on, and everyone will be like, “Yeah. Great, great, great.” And then I see the director look at the editor, and then they stop. They then wind back a bit and they just cut the tape and put another piece of music on. It didn’t have this kind of refined, almost obsessive-compulsive thing that we have now with computers and beautifully cross-fading the music. Ditto with the picture. It was very much like broad strokes on a big canvas. I liked the way that they did that. We’d be hearing a piece of music of mine, and when they didn’t like it, it would just cut into something else. It has the effect of propelling you to the film in a quite brutal way. Which also, I think is missing now in movies. The possibilities now are just too great and too numerous.
RR: You have a rather exciting event happening on December 11th in London [2021]. Originally, you were joining forces with Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti to share a night of live performance. While Simonetti has had to cancel recently due to health reasons, you’re still going on with the show. Tell us a little bit about how this special event came to be.
SB: A good promoter in London who I know rang me up, and he said that he had Goblin booked to do this show on a specific date because they were doing a tour around Europe. They were going to be in France, and it's quite easy to hop across and do a London date. And the promoter just asked if I wanted to do the show with them. I hadn’t met or talked to Claudio in a very long time, but we have subsequently now about this gig.
It’s a fantastic venue, and it’s going to be really exciting, I think, for the horror audience to hear us performing live. I’ve expanded my band to 10 people for this particular gig with strings and all kinds of stuff. It’s going to be great fun. Come along if you’re in London! Or anywhere near! [Laughs]
RR: Oh, how I wish I could! There’s something so great about seeing composers like you perform your film music live. It’s a really special experience and I’m sure your London fans are simply salivating.
SB: I really hope so. I mean, I'm kind of slightly underexposed in terms of doing it live. I kind of came late to the game really. For instance, Claudio has been doing it for decades in various combinations. But yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. We’ll be doing stuff from LORD OF ILLUSIONS, DEMONS 2, SANTA SANGRE, HARDWARE, DUST DEVIL, PERDITA DURANGO, a whole broad suite of stuff. It’s being filmed as well, so hopefully, if you can’t make it, you’ll still be able to see it at some point.
Boswell’s new album, “Moans, Groans and Bones,” is now available to purchase and stream via Bandcamp.